Community Handbook
NHS-R Community regularly host webinars, workshops, blogs and podcasts to share the communities knowledge, experience and often, enthusiasm, for subjects ranging from specifically technical (R, Python, git) to where data science has helped analytical problems in healthcare data. There is always scope for trying things out with the community and the following sections are guidelines on what we have tried and is in no way a definitive list.
Until October 2024 NHS-R Community used a Zoom account as well as hosting events using MS Teams. Zoom is no longer used as the hosting organisation NHS Midlands and Lancashire CSU do not have it on their approved software list.
Webinars
NHS-R Community host an hour long virtual webinar most often on a Thursday, usually the last of the month. Sessions are recorded and posted onto the NHS-R Community YouTube channel and collated together in the playlist Webinars. Content can relate to anything healthcare (including social care) and/or R coding. Webinars on other data science subjects like Python and Git/GitHub are also very welcome.
There is no restriction on who can attend the webinar and people can join/sign up through the NHS-R Community website.
Suggestions for webinars can be emailed to the core development team.
Workshops from volunteers
To volunteer any workshops please contact the core development team.
Introduction to R and R Studio
NHS-R Community host volunteers running the Introduction to R and R Studio course once a month virtually. This usually is on the 3rd Wednesday of the month and is over two half days but is flexible to the availability of the person leading the workshop.
Co-hosts can also attend and assist with:
- checking the chat,
- any technical issues with the Host leaving the call (if a Host has a power cut for example and leaves the meeting it closes for everyone) and
- it can be agreed between the host and co-host to share sections of the training.
Materials are available in a chapter form from NHS-R Community GitHub to allow people the flexibility on what to cover in a session according to the time available. There is enough content for 3 half days, however, most often only 2 half days (or 1 full day) is volunteered.
These courses are very popular and are often fully subscribed and have a waiting list. We encourage people to join a full workshop as people have been offered places as people have notified they cannot attend and we also use these lists for future courses to invite people in advance of sharing publicly.
Recordings are always made available to attendees but are not always made public as recordings are already on available. However, if you wish to have a workshop you have led included these can be added if permission has been sought from the attendees before recordings have been started. See section Video Recording for more information.
Contributions and changes to the materials are always welcome and can be made via the GitHub repository.
Other workshops
Workshops, other than the regular Introduction to R and R Studio, are very welcome and we’ve had talks from other languages (Python) as well as specific subjects like statistics. All workshops are recorded and, unless specifically requested not to, are shared publicly. See section Video Recording for more information.
The length of a workshop can vary according to the content the person/people wish to deliver and have been 1 hour long, half a day or a whole day.
Workshop formats often include some code along or exercises.
Podcasts
Podcasts were originally shared through SoundCloud with a paid account and are now available through Substack and on YouTube with manually checked subtitles.
If you are interested in being in a podcast please contact the core development team.
Video Recording
YouTube
We always intend to share recordings through YouTube publicly, however, we do respect where trainers or presenters ask specifically not to share recordings. We are able to edit parts of videos using YouTube editing, cutting or blurring parts and will do this when notified.
All videos are first uploaded as Unlisted which means that anyone can access the video with the share link. We ask that this link is not shared beyond the original people emailed.
If a video is not to be made public it will be moved to Private where only people can be given direct access to view the video. This cannot be the default setting, unfortunately, as it relies upon having a Google mail and because the videos are often signed up from a work email we cannot use this functionality.
If you had access to a video that becomes Private and still require access, please contact the central email with details, and if you are happy to share a Google email then please email this, from a work email so that we can verify your details.
Subtitles
YouTube applies automatic subtitles after a period of time of uploading but at the moment we don’t currently amend those subtitles given the time it requires. However, this is something that we would like to do in the future and this may mean we get support from community members.
We are copying Podcasts over to YouTube to include subtitles and are using Clipchamp to tidy them.
Blogs
We host blogs on the NHS-R Community website which is a Quarto site and we welcome contributions from anyone who wishes to write about R, health and social care, data science techniques and can be just text or can include code. We review blogs before posting and will give feedback if there are any reasons that we can’t publish. Blogs are rarely removed so some will be out of date due to the changes in the programs like R and best practice.
Blogs can be submitted as a Pull Request to the Quarto website GitHub.
Accessibility
We have an accessibility statement on the NHS-R Community website outlining the design decisions and detailing non-accessible content. It is likely that things will have been missed and we encourage comments, issues and suggestions for improvement.
We have not currently assessed for compliant status as this is not something we can confidently assess ourselves. We have checked pages using the Web Accesbility Evaluation Tool to highlight areas for concern and improvement and acted upon many of its recommendations.
We collate useful Government, Public Sector and R based links related to accessibility in the Open Analytics book.
Subtitles
Currently our YouTube recordings only have automatically generated subtitles which are not sufficiently accessible. It is an ongoing project to check recordings and correct text and we welcome assistance in this.
The move of podcasts from Soundcloud to YouTube has offered the opportunity to apply subtitles and this has been generated using the free software Clipchamp.
Alternative text
Pictures and charts in any of the NHS-R Community outputs including the website, blogs and books are expected to have alternative text or Captions for greater accessibility. There are good practice guides like Webaim and Turing Way. Public bodies have a responsibility to produce accessible products and details are explained in Government pages like Digital accessibility and for specific analytical publications guidance from the Government Analysis Function.
We encourage corrections that need to be made for accessibility in all NHS-R Community products and code and these can be through issues, pull requests or emailing the core development team. Where appropriate our courses include details on how to code for alternative text, for example in the Introduction to Quarto.
As with anything new, getting started with something like adding alternative text to pictures and charts will take effort and not necessarily be correct first time. We have certainly made mistakes in NHS-R Community but we constantly strive to make improvements.
Coffee and coding
Coffee and coding is a group that was originally set up from NHS England and has been extended to anyone within the NHS-R Community. Details are in the blog.
In response to feedback and to assist with accessing these sessions, we have decided to mix up the days and times these meetings are on. Hopefully, this will allow us to increase our reach. We will still be running a session every two weeks, but the day will change across Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays.
We strive to maintain community led content and would very much like to tailor these sessions to be useful, no matter what stage you at with your R journey.
There is a constant call to show us what you have been up to, anything you are working on, any issues you may have. This is an opportunity to share what you have learned and to ask a wider audience how to do things. Get some friendly feedback and QA. We very much want to foster this as a safe space to ask questions, get advice and create possible spin off sessions if there are specific areas to cover.
Your input into making these sessions interactive and your feedback is critical in steering these sessions. These are your sessions, and you have a voice as to what you would like to see.
Getting calendar invitations
There is no requirement to book in for Coffee and Coding but the following information details how to get the joining link if you haven’t already got it and how to get calendar appointments.
The group is virtual and through MS Teams on the same link. Booking is through https://events.nhsrcommunity.com/coffee-and-code/ which generates an email with the link and a calendar invitation ics.
Note that the events are only for 2024.
Each event in the calendar needs to be selected and booking can either be as a guest or you can create an account. Setting up an account can be useful for joining other NHS-R Community events as detailed in the membership access section.
There is a short survey, which appears for each event, but there are only a few questions that are mandatory and these can be copied from the first event using a Copy answers from above button. The following short clip shows how to select multiple events, fill in the survey and copy the answer and confirming selection as a guest:
If you do create an account the survey answers you have made can be retained for future events (there is a tick box at the bottom of each survey):
The email that is sent to confirm will contain an .ics file for each of the events which can be opened and saved as an Outlook appointment:
More information about the ticket system see the section on membership access.
Recordings
Recordings are available through Future NHS which is a platform that anyone can join but workspaces are sometimes restricted. The NHS England R Community workspace where the Coffee and Coding recordings are not restricted.
Social Media
NHS-R Slack
https://nhsrcommunity.slack.com/
The NHS-R Community use the free version of Slack to facilitate conversations between members. Many people join the Slack group and enjoy reading the conversations without ever joining in and that’s ok as this is the best place to find out what’s happening with the community and a lot can be learned from others’ conversations. Because this is a free account we don’t have a history of posts but they would be available if we moved to a paid account.
Accessing the Slack
Some organisations’ emails have been added to the white list but because there are so many public sector organisations it may be that you require an individual link to join. Please contact the central email the core development team for the link. Links that are shared are only available for several days.
It’s best to use an organisational email for the group, but not necessary, and you are also able to change the email once you’ve joined.
Deletion of accounts on Slack
Unfortunately with the free account we are unable to change email addresses which has affected some people when they move to a new organisation and require a password reset or use the Slack system of emailing a joining link. However, we can delete any old account to avoid confusion to others on the Slack so they will only tag or direct message the active account.
Other than this situation, we would only ever delete an account due to Code of Conduct issues.
Slack security
Administrators on the Slack can see email addresses and we can bulk email, however, we do not and have not used emails to contact people in bulk. Emails are not visible to others on the Slack workspace but people can Direct Message (DM) and those messages are not visible to administrators.
In line with good security principles we strongly suggest using two factor authentication for the Slack group.
You will need this for each Slack workspace that you have joined.
X (formerly Twitter)
The account for X is no longer used for active content; however, the account will not be closed completely because account names are recycled.
Fosstodon server on Mastodon
With the change in ownership to X and a great deal of the NHS-R Community audience moving to Mastodon an NHS-R Community account is also managed through the open source content server, Fosstodon. This account is managed by the administrative support for NHS-R Community.
Website
As of October 2024 we closed the WordPress site and moved to Quarto published through GitHub.
We use a redirect on the GitHub URL to
www.nhsrcommunity.comand as this is a private URL it is owned by an individual as the hosting NHS organisation does not manage private URLs.We explored the creation of an nhs.uk URL in 2024 but as the rules required the URL to include the name of the hosting organisation this would have meant the URL would have been
www.midlandsandlancashirecsu.nhsrcommunity.nhs.ukwhich was felt by the NHS-R Community Committee to be too long and organisational specific.[To be used once agreement in place for external booking system] Membership access to courses
We restrict the numbers to workshops and offer these to Core members. Webinars though, don’t have the same restrictions and so are open to everyone.
Core membershipis available to all NHS, public sector, civil servants, voluntary sector, charities and academia. Ticket systems like Pretix allow for accounts to be set up directly with them and through this we can offer “season tickets” once accounts have been accepted asCore membersbased on the email address. Any restricted ticket event will be restricted to all or mostlyCore membershiptickets.We are currently going through NHS Midlands and Lancashire CSU Information Governance and Cyber security systems to approve the Pretix system.
Pretix is an open source ticket system built on Python. Whilst it’s possible to host your own server we will be using the managed hosting system from Pretix itself.
The approval for
Core membershipwill rely on the core development team approving on a case by case basis and if you are in a situation where you would like a Core membership but cannot apply (for example you cannot use your work email or will be retiring) please contact the core development team with details of your situation.We also allow Core membership for anyone who has retired and was in these services and ask that you contact in advance, if possible, of your retirement and from a work address.
Account deletion or changes
Please contact the core development team for any of the following:
To delete or change and account we can
Anonymizeyour account where:Event data retention
Pretix offers the use of data shredders and we will remove all data from an event 3 to 6 months.
If this is an event that occurs on a series of days (like for Coffee and Coding) we will delete the event which is distinct to the order so future registrations are unaffected.
Security of account
We recommend using 2FA (two-factor authentication) for any ticket system account you may set up to sign up to NHS-R Community events.
Password resets and updating of details
It is possible to change email addresses/names and request a password reset directly with Pretix or contact the core development team where we can trigger a manual password reset.
Waiting list
Event systems like Pretix allow for automatic waiting list management which means that a ticket can be automatically reassigned to a person next on the waiting list. We can change the settings for this and the default is 48 hours, but for popular events or those that are occurring in a few days we will reduce this response time.
Surveys
We will use surveys for events to collect data that helps us understand. The following questions were used for Coffee and Coding,
*are next to mandatory questions:Further questions for coffee and coding: - What would you like to see more of in coffee and coding? - What would you like to see less of in coffee and coding? - Are there any topics you would like us to cover in the future? - Any other comments?
We can extract the data from the surveys from Orders > Export > Order data which provides an Excel document with email addresses, order dates and times as well as answers to questions.
If we were to ask any questions that relate to protected characteristics we will detail why this is being asked and also ensure that we have appropriate Information Governance approval.
Disaster recovery
We will back up who has signed up an event and will not have access to these lists so, in the event of Pretix being unavailable we will:
Depending on the type of event, when it is running and how long access to the registration system is expected to be unavailable we may either ask people to contact us about their registration, cancel and reschedule or cancel until further notice.
Alternative arrangements will be to use another event system that does not charge for free events or, if this is not possible to use, collect registrations manually. Under these circumstances we may not be able to offer a waiting list process.