The Power of Visualised Data: A Key to Understanding and Improving KPIs and Data Quality

Unlocking the Potential of Data through Visualisation

In the age of digital information, data is the cornerstone of decision-making in any organisation. However, the vast amount of data can be overwhelming, leading to indecision or incorrect conclusions, becoming a cause for concern when dealing with the healthcare of people in custody.   This is where the power of visualised data comes into play. By transforming complex data sets into graphical representations, we can unlock a deeper understanding to help make more informed decisions.

Visualising for Better Understanding

Visual data representation is not just about making numbers look appealing; it’s about making them speak. Charts, graphs, and other visual tools translate the language of data into a form that is easily digestible and accessible to all levels of an organisation. For example, a trend that might take hours to decipher in a spreadsheet can be understood in seconds through a line graph.

Enhancing KPI Results

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are essential metrics used to evaluate the success of an organisation and its people. Visualisation tools can track and display these KPIs in real-time, allowing managers and teams to react swiftly to changes. This immediate visibility leads to quicker decision-making and a more agile approach to reaching targets.  Visualised data also plays a crucial role in enhancing data quality. Inconsistent or incorrect data can easily be spotted in visual formats. For example, outliers in a data set that might go unnoticed in rows and columns can be immediately identified in a scatter plot, prompting a further investigation into data accuracy.

Creating a culture that values data-driven decision-making starts with making data accessible and understandable. Visualisation bridges the gap between raw data and actionable insights. When data is presented visually, it becomes a common language that everyone in the organisation can speak and understand.

Several tools and technologies are available to assist in data visualisation. From Microsoft Excel’s basic charts to more sophisticated tools like Tableau, Power BI, and Qlik, these technologies offer varying levels of complexity and customisation to suit different business needs.

In terms of Health and Justice, visualised data plays a crucial role in the ability to present complex information in a more accessible way.   Within the health portion visualised data allows the user to improve their understanding of complex data sets and therefore enhances communication to a broader audience, not just health care professionals.   Within Justice, visualised data increases the users ability to perform analysis.  Identifying patters and relationships between different data sets proves useful in the development of case studies.   This can help with the impact of policy assessments.  For example, policymakers seeing data in a more robust and visualised manner can make informed decisions based on the effectiveness on justice programs aimed at the improvement of recidivism rates.   This vital to the H&J Commissioner when health’s needs analysis and input into the specification for H&J healthcare tenders.

Conclusion

In conclusion, visualised data is a powerful tool in understanding and improving KPIs and data quality. By turning data into visual stories, organisations can gain insights more quickly, make data-driven decisions, and foster a culture that embraces data as a key asset. In the ever-evolving landscape of healthcare, the ability to effectively visualise data is not just an advantage; it’s a necessity.

SONAR CMS comes with the functionality to visualise your data is a more meaningful and impactful way.   We allow the user to manipulate their reporting views to create dynamic and informative visuals that enhance the story of data and provide meaningful insights into the behaviours of your KPI results.  

John White

Founder & CEO

House of Lords – Justice and Home Affairs Select Committee

Cutting Crime: Better Community Sentences

Just after Christmas, the House of Lords Justice and Home Affairs Committee looked forward to a world of better health treatment after custody, with a stronger range of specialised services - a world which, I hope, SONAR can help to deliver.

The Committee published its report “Cutting crime: better community sentences” on 28 December. It argued that community services can succeed in reducing reoffending: “with the right investment, intensive community sentences can succeed where short prison sentences fail”. It also looked at best practice in providing rehabilitation services.

The Committee strongly emphasised the importance of health treatment after custody. As it said, “helping people on probation face their addictions or mental health issues helps reduce crime”. It drew attention to the New Chance programme, an adult diversion programme for women in the West Midlands. In this programme, after treatment, people who had mental health issues had a 37 per cent lower reoffending rate than the control group. Among those who had substance misuse, the results were 55 per cent lower. SONAR’s ability to collect and share health information pre- and post-release is highly relevant here.

The Committee also noted the success of women's centres. As part of its probation reforms in 2021, the Ministry of Justice let contracts worth around £50 million for services tailored to female offenders through women’s centres. These have provided courses, such as confidence-building; tailored support, for example for victims of domestic abuse; and mental health treatment. The Committee called for this kind of service to be expanded to male offenders as well, raising the prospect of a network of rehabilitation centres across the country. Again, SONAR's ability to join up services, and to ensure that all professionals have up-to-date health information, will strongly support initiatives of this kind:

• The SONAR Secure module (holding healthcare information for prisons and other custodial environments) and the SONAR ReSet, (for people transitioning back into the community) share information seamlessly.

• They comply fully with NHS and criminal justice standards on privacy.

• The SONAR ReSet Hub is designed to support probation teams after release - for example, by flagging when an ex-offender has missed a medical or other appointment.

Improving health is a wonderful end in itself but, in the criminal justice system, it has the extra benefit of reducing crime too. I look forward to engaging with the House of Lords Committee as we continue to explain how SONAR can support a modern health and justice agenda.

Better Healthcare in Police Custody – Why a single national system is the safest and best value route to better outcomes.

I would like to bring you up to date with our advocacy campaign for better healthcare in police custody. We have been able to discuss the ideas with leading stakeholders in police, healthcare and in Parliament, and I am very grateful to all those who have met with us. I am delighted to say that there is universal agreement on the need for a better system and the benefits of better sharing of health information. The discussion has turned on the best way to deliver those benefits – I believe the arguments on quality, cost and ease of implementation point towards a single national system.

To recap, the best way to organize healthcare in police custody in England and Wales has been a concern of governments for over a decade. Custody healthcare is currently commissioned by individual police forces, creating the risk that healthcare information will not be shared between forces (and between forces and other parts of the criminal justice system). The Bradley Report (2009) pointed out that “police custody is now the only major stage in the criminal justice system where primary NHS-commissioned care is not available”. It recommended that the NHS should take on responsibility, and the Angiolini Report strongly supported that view in 2017. Improving police custody is still an urgent need: in the last two years, 25 per cent of coroners’ reports of deaths in police custody have referred to difficulties in sharing or collecting health information. In total 23 people died in police custody in 2022-23.

In our meetings, it has been great to see that stakeholders in police and health see real benefit in improving the sharing of healthcare information. They would judge a new system on its quality, its cost-effectiveness, and its ease of implementation. We have discussed three options: the current system; a regional model; and a single national system.

Some have supported the current model on the grounds that it provides a choice of healthcare information systems for the commissioners in the 42 forces. Competition between providers will lead to better products and competition is the main advantage of the current model. Its disadvantages are the difficulty of sharing information between different systems, as described above, and the cost of duplicated competitions and contracting across the 42 forces. It would be very difficult to implement a joined-up service between 42 police forces and the rest of the criminal justice system.

Others have suggested a regional model, with forces sharing data on a regional basis. This would preserve some competition between forces and would be easier to implement. But there would remain difficulties in sharing information between the regional groups, and the rest of the criminal justice system. There would also be duplicated costs of competitions and contracting.

A single national model would still offer the benefits of competition, since companies would compete to provide the national system. It would also deliver information sharing between forces and would be much easier to integrate with the rest of the criminal justice system. It would also save costs in competitions and contracting.

The evidence points to a single national system. For those concerned about the creation of a single national provider, there would still be strong competition between providers, and choice for the commissioner, when the national contract was let and in future competitions. A well-written contract and effective contract management would enable the commissioner to work with the provider to deliver quality improvements. The current prison clinical system has been a proven success over the last ten years in successfully sharing patients’ clinical data between sites.

As I say, it has been fantastic to discover the shared wish for improved outcomes in custody healthcare among senior stakeholders. I look forward to continuing to explore the best way forward this year.