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NHS Innovation Placement: Understanding NHS Data Flows

THE TRANSFORMATION OF PATIENT DATA FROM CLINICAL COLLECTION TO ITS ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION BY THE CLINICAL PRACTICE GROUP

NHS Innovation Placement: Understanding NHS Data Flows

THE TRANSFORMATION OF PATIENT DATA FROM CLINICAL COLLECTION TO ITS ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION BY THE CLINICAL PRACTICE GROUP

In collaboration with the Clinical Practice Group at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust, DiRAC is pleased to invite applications for a 6-month Innovation Placement focusing on curating and analysing data that is generated by two Clinical Care Pathway Groups as it traverses the Royal Free’s Clinical Practice Group (CPG).

Proposed start date: April/May 2026.

Applications are now closed.

Placement Information Pack

Research Context

The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL)

The Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust (RFL) is a major London Research Hospital comprising three hospitals, including Chase Farm, which has been recognised as one of the most digitally advanced hospitals in the UK. It is an NIHR Clinical Research Facility, housing the largest dedicated innovation team of any NHS provider, and an affiliation with University College London.

As a host organisation, RFL is able to provide:

  • Access to rich clinical patient data datasets, via the Clinical Pathway Group.
  • The ability to access unstructured text in patient data records, which accounts for 80% of clinical records, through the state of the art natural language processing (NLP) tool, Cogstack https://cogstack.org/
  • Ability to work with prominent clinical leads, clinical academics and healthcare data specialists
  • Regular feedback sessions with both the project oversight group and a variety of clinical and operational groups
  • A community of practice through RFL’s data experts working group
  • Hosting by the RFL innovation team, who will be able to support complex systems, patient and public engagement and design thinking

Placement Details

Location: London
Proposed start: April/May 2026

We are pleased to offer a 6-month placement with the Clinical Practice Group (CPG) at the Royal Free London (RFL) NHS Foundation Trust curating and analysing data that is generated by two Clinical Care Pathway Groups as it traverses the Royal Free’s CPG. This placement will provide hands-on experience in environments where data quality and flow are central to clinical decision-making. The CPG leads the planning and management of clinical pathways, redesigning them based on clinical evidence and patient feedback to improve care delivery.  This is in the form of updated Care Pathway Guidance.

Applicant Profile, Skills & Experience

We value these 4 characteristics in Data Scientists and any successful applicant will demonstrate these capabilities:

  • Self-Starter – Takes independent action to identify and solve problems. Seeks out relevant information needed to make decisions. Gets involved with new initiatives.
  • Success/Achievement Orientation – Delivers quality results consistently. Targets, achieves (or exceeds) measurable results. Sets challenging goals, focuses on critical priorities, and is accountable.
  • Problem Solving – Recognises problems and responds with a systematic assessment that identifies and addresses the cause of issue. Practical, realistic, and resourceful.
  • Innovative – Builds and improves processes. Generates new ideas and solves problems creatively.

Responsibilities

  • Undertake all required training and Sensitive Data regulatory requirements
  • Analysis of the existing praxis used by RFL
  • Contribute to proposing, designing and prototyping a proof of concept solution with an agile design approach.
  • Assess the quality of the proposed solution with a robust methodology and a strong emphasis on result reproducibility.
  • Communicate the results both to internal and external audience with the right level of technical details.
  • Link with the RFL teams.
  • Participate in multi-disciplinary teams to develop, communicate and execute a comprehensive system level test strategy.
  • Analysis of project metrics to provide data on gaps and areas for improvement, as well as data to base future schedules on.

Final Digital Asset

The primary Digital Asset is a prototype Database with a Modelling and Analytics Engine for the Clinical Practice Group.

 

The secondary Digital Asset is a schema to understand how the new database would be continually updated as updates are made to EPRs.

equal opportunity

The NHS welcomes applications from all. All applicants will receive consideration without regard to race, national origin, gender, age, religion, disability, or any other category protected by law.  

how to apply

Applications are now closed.

Placement Details

Placements are fully funded but you must get your supervisor or PI’s permission before applying – under UKRI rules participation in the scheme is only allowed with their consent.

The successful candidate will remain based at their home university. We do our best to offer flexibility; part-time working can be arranged as long as the placement does not exceed 1 year.

If you have any questions, please email them to DiRAC_placements@leicester.ac.uk