Talend and Snowflake support patient data management for mental health charity

UK charity Mental Health Concern has been working with Talend and Snowflake to leverage data-driven insights and improved agility for better patient data management.

Mental Health Concern selected global data integration and management vendor Talend to integrate multiple systems and data sources present in its infrastructure, in the aim of improving decision-making around patient treatments.

Recognising the need to leverage more readily accessible data-driven insights, the non-profit organisation combined Talend Cloud data integration and governance solutions with the Snowflake integrated platform, which allows for continued data operations at scale.

While boosting the health of its data, these partnerships have allowed for more informed decisions, with the view of considering new approaches in line with patient needs.

By helping to identify weaknesses and advising on how to improve data health, Talend’s user interface enabled the Data and Insights team at Mental Health Concern to protect patient data with built-in NHS-compliant security controls.

Five systems in total have been integrated, providing up-to-date data visualisations, replacing manually created ad-hoc documents with more accurate reports that can generated more quickly — giving staff more time to focus on delivering suitable care.

Approximately 14 hours per week have been saved on Mental Health Concern’s previous manual processes, with over 250 million rows of data streaming being built in just 90 days for even faster reporting.

“Our goal is to make mental health services very, very easy to access, and we want to make our services available to more people over time,” said John Slator, head of data and insights at Mental Health Concern and Insight IAPT.

“That meant our data architecture strategy had to change. We needed to start basing our decisions on data rather than hunches, and we needed modern tools that could give us insights today and grow with us.

“Talend has enabled us to explore new use cases that weren’t part of our original project plan. But most importantly, we have been able to create a data culture that gives our organisation greater agility and confidence in the accuracy of our reports.” 

Gareth Vincent, senior vice-president and general manager EMEA at Talend, commented: “With access to integrated, trustworthy data that guides core decisions about everything from operations to therapy options, Mental Health Concern is able to serve more people.

“We are proud to support Mental Health Concern with timely and trusted decisions for greater patient care.”

UK-based Mental Health Concern, commissioned by the NHS since being established in 1986, provides a wide range of services, including dementia nursing care, supported housing, 24-hour specialist adult care, dementia respite care and community wellbeing groups.

Related:

How COVID-19 drove the charity sector to embrace techExploring how the pandemic drove the charity sector to embrace tech and boost operations.

Overcoming NHS waiting lists with digitised care pathwaysFinland-born telemedicine startup Buddy Healthcare is helping the NHS to overcome growing waiting lists and resource challenges by digitising care pathways.