Blog

Latest news and views from around the Bennett Institute

Posted

24 Nov 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
Understanding Repeat Antibiotic Prescribing in the Pandemic: Insights On Health Inequalities

The COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped many aspects of healthcare, including how antibiotics are prescribed in primary care settings. In this guest blog, Professor Diane Ashiru-Oredope lead pharmacist for antimicrobial resistance at UK Health Security Agency and our own Brian MacKenna, share some insights on repeat antibiotic prescribing and the link to health inequalities from a recent UK Health Security Agency analysis using OpenSAFELY.
Posted

21 Nov 2023

Categories
- OpenPrescribing
BNF to dictionary of medicines and devices (dm+d) map - now available

A common question asked of the Bennett Institute is ‘have you got a tool to map BNF codes to dm+d codes?’ We’ve created one to download
Posted

21 Nov 2023

Categories
- OpenPrescribing
Four new measures available on OpenPrescribing.net (and four have been retired)

We’ve been busy creating new measures for OpenPrescribing.net, and reviewing ones which aren’t needed any more.
Posted

21 Nov 2023

Categories
- OpenPrescribing
Recent improvements in OpenPrescribing.net measures

We’ve been busy doing housekeeping on OpenPrescribing.net measures. Here’s a summary of the main changes.
Posted

20 Nov 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
The future of OpenSAFELY: an important announcement from NHS England, DHSC and the Bennett Institute at Oxford

We are delighted to share the announcement from NHS England and Department of Health and Social Care below, setting out the future of OpenSAFELY.
Posted

14 Nov 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
Updates of OpenSAFELY Research on COVID-19 Therapeutics

In this guest blog, Bang Zheng and Laurie Tomlinson from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine describe some of their lastest work on the comparative effectiveness and safety of currently recommended COVID-19 therapeutics in the community settings.
Posted

7 Nov 2023

We're hiring! CLOSES SOON!

We have just advertised an exciting and unusual new job. An exciting fellowship based at Jesus College, and working with our amazing team.
Posted

31 Oct 2023

Categories
- OpenPrescribing
OpenPrescribing Autumn 2023 Newsletter

OpenPrescribing Autumn 2023 Newsletter.
Posted

30 Oct 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
Incidence and management of inflammatory arthritis in England before and during the COVID-19 pandemic

In this guest blog, Mark Russell describes the research that he has undertaken with the help of his team from King’s College London using OpenSAFELY.
Posted

4 Oct 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
Exploring the Impact of COVID-19 on common infections: Treatment Pathways, Antibiotic Prescribing, and Exposure

Xiaomin Zhong, Ya-Ting Yang, Dr Ali Fahmi, Dr Victoria Palin and Professor Tjeerd Van Staa from Manchester University have been using OpenSAFELY for analyses focused on the impact of COVID-19 on antimicrobial resistance since 2021. In this guest blog they describe some of their recent papers that have been published in peer review journals.
Posted

3 Oct 2023

Categories
- OpenPrescribing
Lifting the Lid on Special Container Changes

In this blog, we describe how OpenPrescribing tools helped identify and investigate a sudden £450k per month increase in NHS expenditure
Posted

2 Oct 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
Unlocking Discoveries Safely: Using the primary care data of 59 million patients to determine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on antipsychotic prescribing in at-risk populations

In this blog post Millie Green shares some of the findings from a federated analysis carried out using OpenSAFELY.
Posted

27 Sep 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
What Are Codelists and How Are They Constructed?

In this blog we explain what codelists are, how they are constructed and review existing literature on construction processes.
Posted

20 Sep 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
Why ehrQL?

Why did we create a new query language?
Posted

14 Sep 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
OpenSAFELY Wins CogX Award for Open Science Innovation

The OpenSAFELY Collaborative has won a prestigious CogX Award for the Best Innovation in Open Source Technology
Posted

13 Sep 2023

Categories
- OpenPrescribing
NHS England Medicines Optimisation Opportunities - A new dashboard on OpenPrescribing

In this blog we describe how to use and access the NHS England Medicines Optimisation Oppurtunitites dashboard on OpenPrescribing
Posted

27 Jul 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
OpenSAFELY Service Restoration Observatory: Key Measures

In this blog, we describe the development of a set of key measures used to monitor the ongoing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on primary care as part of the OpenSAFELY Service Restoration Observatory (SRO). The results from this work have now been published in eLife.
Posted

17 Jul 2023

Categories
- OpenSAFELY
Introduction to the Information Governance Team

Here we introduce the Bennett Institute’s Information Governance team, explaining who they are, and what they do.