Multi-Threat Dashboard for public health

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The UK Health Security Agency is a government agency in the United Kingdom, responsible for England’s public health protection. 

Burendo is a key partner, supporting UKHSA by providing full end to end delivery capability to ensure that every member of every community is protected from and kept informed about the impact of infectious diseases, chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear incidents and other health threats. 

“Burendo’s partnership has been instrumental in transforming our data management. The new dashboard empowers us with real-time insights, future-proofs our operations, and delivers massive cost savings. This is a game-changer for the UKHSA, enabling us to better protect public health.”

Raj Mehta, Deputy Director UKHSA 

The Data Dashboard 

Bringing together data and statistics in one place 

The UKHSA data dashboard aims to make public health data of use, interest and importance available in an accessible way.  

The data dashboard focuses on data from respiratory viruses such as COVID-19, influenza and other infectious diseases. The dashboard will expand to present a wider range of data on public health topics including other infectious diseases as well as chemical, environmental and radiological health threats. 

Statistics 

The dashboard now not only gives an incredibly detailed picture of what is happening on a national level – but also what is happening in your region. 

The dashboard has: 

  • over 80,000 unique users every month, with the capability to manage millions of unique users at a time. 
  • reports on national threat viruses including Covid, Influenza and other respiratory viruses.
  • breakdown of weekly incidents (death, hospital admissions, etc.) and vaccine uptake..
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80,000+

unique users every month

What we did 

Burendo & UKHSA: A collaborative approach to protect our nation.

Burendo combined their resources with those of the UKHSA to construct a data-driven environment that puts user needs and budgets front and centre.   

  • Recognising Limitations: With the UKHSA operating as across multiple business domains, Burendo advised them to form a cross-functional team to increase decision making and delivery outcomes. This new approach allowed for collaboration and process acceleration, delivering high-grade software at speed and automatically through DevOps. 
  • Embracing cloud software: The solution is fully cloud-based, leveraging the on-demand scaling and resource management of AWS. Additionally, it adheres to FinOps principles for optimal cost control and environmental sustainability. 
  • Transparency: Fostering a culture of trust and transparency was crucial. To do this, the team used Jira as their project management tool and hybrid Scrum-Kanban methodologies, keeping things running smoothly. 
  • Users: Prioritising user needs, the team modelled their approach on the GDS framework. Continuous user feedback from six key personas informed rapid alpha and beta releases, ensuring continuous improvement. 
  • Accessibility: Committed to inclusion, the team promoted accessibility including the sharing of complex visual data with visually impaired users and text browsers. This has included the adoption of “sonification of graphs”, allowing visually impaired users to listen to graphical information. Additionally, the team delivered a simplified public API, allowing rapid access to structured data. 
  • Data Pipeline: Seamless integration with data pipelines was essential to remove manual intervention and delays to publication of data. This led to the development of a data integration layer, allowing the UKHSA to publish on demand, without need for any intervention from the team, including emergent data on new threats. 
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Results 

Within six weeks, the UKHSA Dashboard team delivered an Alpha service, which it rapidly evolved to a private-Beta. This performance smashed all previous performance metrics. 

The team has continuously led the UKHSA on performance metrics (TopPE) during this period since its formation.

The new service is sustainable, with GreenOps cutting its cost to a fraction of what it used to be and providing the UKHSA with large savings and considerable cost predictability. 

With this, the UKHSA has adopted the team’s approach as the typical model for technology product delivery across the entire organisation. 

Turning the dashboard into a data-driven rather than intervention one is groundbreaking for the UKHSA, leaving in place future plans and making it an integral part of their future response. 

The ability to deliver data rapidly to all audiences, including the visually impaired, will be driving many services across the organisation we provide.