Scope of the possible with Power BI

Previous attendees have said…

• 73 previous attendees have left feedback
• 99% would recommend this session to a colleague
• 96% said that this session was pitched correctly

NoteThree random comments from previous attendees

• Really helpful and easy to follow
• Was interested in whether Power BI might be a useful way to provide access to our ‘siloed’ data to management. The answer is yes, if only NHS restrictions would allow us to use Power BI 😂
• I learned enough about the to gain the confidence to attend the training course. It’s nice to know it’s not going to be too complicated or scary!

Session outline

• this session is a non-technical overview designed for service leads
• Why Power BI, and why this session?
• Power BI demo - build a simple dashboard
• Strengths and weaknesses
  • obvious
  • less obvious
• Alternatives
• Skill development

Power BI?

• newish (c.2015)
• based on Microsoft’s SQL reporting products
  • proprietary, closed-source, paid-for
• integrates functions from several other Microsoft data products (bits of Excel, PowerPivot, PowerQuery…)
• produces interactive dashboards

Why this session?

• there is a lot of fluff talked about Power BI
  • e.g. elaborate visualisations, fancy real-time data products…
• Power BI in general is promoted as a no-code tool
  • that’s just not true, as we’ll see
• Power BI has a sales-y focus
  • that conceals some of its most useful properties
• so Power BI, as a platform, requires some translation to the complicated reality of health and social care data
  • and Power BI offers real strengths in managing and exploiting our data, even when the pain-points are taken into account

Power BI demo

We’ll use a pair of Excel files. These are based on three datasets from the Scottish Health and Social Care Open Data portal:

• GP practice size data - which is based on the GP practice details dataset and the Health Board 2014 - 2019 dataset
• Demographic data - which is based on the GP practice populations dataset

GP practice data

Name	PracticeListSize	Postcode	HBName	GPCluster	Code
Hamilton West Medical Practice	6598	ML3 9AQ	NHS Lanarkshire	Hamilton	63461
Yell Health Centre	961	ZE2 9BX	NHS Shetland	Shetland	39015
Keith Medical Group	7348	AB55 5DJ	NHS Grampian	Moray East	32904

Load some data

Lots of different data loading options

Preview

Friendly tools for previewing data

Add to a map

Clever use of commercial postcode data

Add interactions

Visualisations are interactive

Publish

Add more visuals

30-odd built in, hundreds of free additional visuals, thousands of (often dodgy) commercial add-ins

Add more data

• we could add the health board names, to make our visual more useful
• we could also get GP practice demographics

Add more data

Totally different data, but harmonised process for loading

Re-shape that data

Neatly-integrated PowerQuery, gives loads of scope for tidying and fixing data

Data modelling tools

Full suite of relational tools for the more ambitious projects

Pre-packed visuals

Microsoft’s Tornado chart

Demographics

These can be cross filtered to give national/board/practice level insights

Strengths

• by far the easiest way of producing interactive data products
• great tools for tidying data
• good for iterative projects
• data hubbing / self-service data
• scaling
• potential to manage complex and sensitive data on existing infrastructure

Weaknesses

• really needs clean and tidy data
• publication can be complicated and expensive
• steepening pain curve. Easy to start projects, but more involved analysis is messy
• complex IG landscape
• messy skills development journey