Blog: Farewell to The Farr Institute
The end of 2018 saw end of grant funding for The Farr Institute. The Innovative Healthcare Delivery Programme (IHDP) was fortunate enough to be embedded within The Farr Institute for the last 3 years. As we continue along our path we extend our thanks to The Farr Institute for welcoming us and including us in its network.
The link between IHDP and The Farr Institute began in 2015. Through Professor Aileen Keel and Professor Andrew Morris' discussions, a collaboration started. At the time, Professor Keel was Chief Medical Officer for the Scottish Government. Professor Morris was the Scottish Government’s Chief Scientist and the University of Edinburgh's Director of The Farr Institute and Usher Institute. They identified overlapping objectives and aims between The Farr Institute and IHDP’s work and so, in its infancy, IHDP was welcomed into The Farr Institute community.
During the following 3 years, IHDP had a physical and digital home at The Farr Institute Scotland. IHDP joined the Farr office at Nine Edinburgh BioQuarter and joined their website. This allowed IHDP to reach online audiences for the first time.
Although The Farr Institute’s website has been archived since the end of its grant, we wanted to highlight their public-facing 100 Ways of Using Data to Make Lives Better case study series which, along with other content, will remain live into 2020. IHDP was delighted to contribute two case studies to support the series:
1. Innovative Healthcare Delivery Programme - This case study went into detail about IHDP’s mission to work with partners to fundamentally change the way data and analytics are used to improve health outcomes.
2. Using Data to Estimate the Effectiveness of Post-Surgery Chemotherapy in Breast Cancer Patients – By looking at the data of patients in Scotland, this project investigated the value of clinical trials in understanding the benefits of chemotherapy in treating breast cancer.
We’d recommend taking the time to dive deeper into the 100 Ways case studies - they are vast in topic but common in theme around the positive impact that using data in research has on patients. Of course, like us, we’d recommend sharing on social media using The Farr Institute’s successful campaign, #DataSavesLives.
The recent changes to The Farr Institute’s website have given rise to an opportunity for IHDP to create its own online presence. Development is already underway and you can watch our new webpages grow at our new website hosted by the Usher Institute.