Hurley Group KTP: utilising big data to improve patient care

Dr Ross Dyer Smith is a GP Partner at the Hurley Group, a traditional NHS Partnership exclusively led by practicing GPs which has provided patient-centred care in London since 1969. He set up a partnership with Kent through Innovate UK’s Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) scheme to take their very disparate data and put it into a format that could be used to make the organisation more efficient and ultimately, improve patient care.

Challenge

Alongside 11 practices across London, Hurley Group manages two urgent care centres, a practitioner health programme for doctors with mental and physical health problems, and a primary care gambling service. They also created eConsult, one of the biggest online consultation platforms in the UK. They hold a vast amount of data across the organisation but weren’t using it to its full potential. In the words of Dr Ross Dyer Smith, a GP partner of Hurley Group and company lead for the project, ‘It was like flying a large plane with no instruments.’ Hurley Group recognised that using this data more effectively could improve patient care and make the organisation more efficient, but lacked the knowledge and resources to do so.

Approach

‘At the time, I didn’t know what I needed so one of the things that KTP helped me do was to find the right person.’

Hurley Group was attracted to working with the University of Kent due to our reputation for world-leading research, and due to the fact that Canterbury is just a 50 minute train ride away from Stratford where one of the Hurley Group’s practices is based.

Following an initial discussion about the business’s ambition, Kent’s dedicated KTP team connected Dr Dyer Smith with Dr Daniel Soria and Dr Fernando Otero, experts in AI and data analytics from the School of Computing. The KTP team have a 100% success rate in applying for KTP funding from Innovate UK so were able to advise on how to scope an achievable yet ambitious project which would meet the funding criteria. They also supported the recruitment of a recent PhD graduate to the role of KTP Associate, creating capacity within the company to deliver the project.

Over the course of the 2-year project, the monthly meetings between the company, University and KTP Associate, with support from an Innovate UK KTP Advisor, meant that the company was able to build a strong relationship with the University. As explained by Dr Dyer Smith, ‘I think that relationship management is the thing that’s been really, really important to us. Being able to just pick up the phone and get a hold of someone who can answer a question when I get to the limit of my knowledge has made it a really, really fantastic partnership.’

Result

Hurley Group were able to work with Dr Soria and Dr Fernando to turn their data into something they could understand and trust. With expert academic guidance, Hurley Group have implemented a means of grouping Hurley Group practices into different bands based on a variety of different datasets. This has made it easier to compare the performance of practices at a glance and thus identify where to allocate resources and staff training. Dr Dyer Smith said, ‘We have learned an awful lot about our data within the group and how we can best utilise it.’

The KTP Associate, whose background is in computer science, is now an employee of Hurley Group. Speaking of what this means to the business, Dr Dyer Smith said, ‘My background is obviously very different. I’m a doctor and have an interest in data science. So hopefully, the combination of the two of us will really push our organisation forward over the next couple of years.

‘Our connection with academia has given us a lot more confidence and a bigger network to actually learn more from other people who are doing similar things and actually share some of our learning as well.’

‘I really feel this is just the beginning, it’s quite exciting that we’ve basically pushed the boat out into a vast ocean of exciting new ideas and possibilities. So it’s a very exciting time.’

Innovate UK Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) bring together forward-thinking businesses and organisations, academics, and graduates to solve complex innovation challenges which help our economy, society, and environment. If you would like to learn more about how your business can work with Kent via a KTP, visit our website or contact our team at businessrelationships@kent.ac.uk.