Scope of the possible with Power BI

Power BI

overview

Published

March 12, 2026

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

Three random comments from previous attendees

A very good overview, a very good introduction, quick but very worthwhile.

a lot of questions, could be good to have someone else fielding the questions, so that the presenter can continue on topic. - It was really interesting and very informative. - Very informative and knowledgeable, gave me a good understanding of what Power BI is and what it can do.

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
Marywell Healthcare Centre	265	AB24 5HT	NHS Grampian	Aberdeen City South	30561
Levenwick Health Centre	2716	ZE2 9HX	NHS Shetland	Shetland	39072
The Lennox Practice	4939	G83 0UA	NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde	Alexandria	85225

Load some data

Preview

Add to a map

Add interactions

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

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