Data Science: Using Open Data Sets for Research and Strategic Planning

Hospital worker in blue scrubs stood next to elderly man in wheelchair

Government agencies are increasingly making data available to the public and researchers. Examples include higher education data published by HESA, socio-economic data published by ONS, and health data published by NHS. Such data might provide a useful source for analysis, research and planning. A project could investigate what data is available in a certain field, and then explore how it might be used, for example by being prepared and interrogated using Python or R. Alternatively, a potential use could be decided, such as predicting the number of total hip and knee replacement operations needed in the next ten years, and then looking at how this might be predicted and what existing data might be used.