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

• Very good introduction to what Power BI is and demonstration what it is for and how to use it (basics) however the session may be less useful if you wish to do hands on practice and play around, as that requires Power BI Desktop (not licenced in all NHS boards)
• The session provided very informative information in simple language on what Power BI is, and how it can be used in many different ways.
• Really useful session to get an overview of how Power BI can be used, relevant to our sector

Why this session?

• Power BI is genuinely useful for health and care work
• but (like always) that recommendation comes with quibbles and qualifiers
• this session = non-technical, unvarnished advice about what Power BI does, where it shines, how it might help your service, and ways of putting it into action

Session outline

• what’s Power BI
• build-a-dashboard demo
• strengths and weaknesses
• alternatives
• skill development

Power BI?

• tool to build interactive dashboards
• newish (c.2015), proprietary, paid-for
• integrates functions from several Microsoft data products (bits of Excel, PowerPivot, PowerQuery…, SQL reporting products)
• a terminal analysis product: designed to make dashboards that users can use, rather that wrangle data/do statistical analysis

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
Doune Health Centre	4255	FK16 6DU	NHS Forth Valley	North West Stirling	25224
The Green Practice	10468	EH3 6EH	NHS Lothian	Edinburgh North West - Bridge	70094
Leith Surgery	11793	EH6 8HQ	NHS Lothian	Edinburgh North East - Leith	70179

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 simple interactive data products
• great tools for tidying data and wranging data sources
• shines as a way of data hubbing / self-service data
• happy with bigger data than Excel can handle
• nice iterative workflow
• scales well, especially if you’re working for a very large number of users
• potential to manage complex and sensitive data on existing infrastructure

Weaknesses

• terminal analysis product. Don’t expect/try to get data out of Power BI, it’s absolutely not designed to be used for that
• for most of us, users need to be licenced - or expect to spend extra money to make dashboards available to non-licenced users
• cross-organisation use is really messy
• adding extra features (real-time data, e.g.) can be complicated and expensive
• steepening pain curve. Easy to start projects, but more involved analysis is messy
• complex IG landscape - reminder for NHS colleagues about national guidance on Power BI
• low-code, rather than no-code

Alternatives

• R/Shiny - potentially free, flexible, code-based, requires infrastructure, unclear governance landscape
• Tableau - non-free, non-code-based, no infrastructure

Skill development

We have a range of different Power BI training options available. Please see the main Power Platform training page for details