Explore the core issues

51爆料网 invites you to take part in a series of free online webinars ahead of our Waiting List Conference 2026: From Backlog to Breakthrough on 16-17 September.

With waiting lists in England alone at seven million, the聽conference is a shared call to action. The ELAB webinars explore many of the core issues being addressed at the two-day event. Reserve your place right away.

Details of four webinars and speakers are given below – register for your place now. And watch out for news of more events.

The webinars

Webinar 1: Bring your waiting lists to life with the NHSR Waitinglist Package

This online session led by Tom Smith, Head of Activity Analysis & Forecasting at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, gives an overview of some of the “facts” about waiting lists that are useful for NHS analysts to understand.

We’ll show how the R package implements these facts, and how various functions within the package can be used to turn raw waiting list data and histograms into actionable information. There is a surprising amount of “signal” hidden in your waiting list data – this session will help you draw it out and bring your waiting list data to life!

About Tom Smith

The formative years of Tom’s career were spent in automotive and aerospace manufacturing; troubleshooting, measuring, understanding, and changing people’s minds about difficult production problems. Applying the same thought processes to data in the NHS, and with the luxury of open-source reproducible analytics, the answers we need are around us if we dare uncover them in the data and information we can assemble.

  • Monday, Sep 7, 1pm – 2pm.

Webinar 2: Understanding efficiency, scheduling and capacity in operating theatres

Join Jaideep Pandit, Professor of Anaesthesia at the University of Oxford, for a session on understanding “efficiency” in the context of open theatres. He will discuss how most meaningfully to measure efficiency in the context of operating theatres, specifically rejecting surrogate metrics like starting on time or utilisation. 聽The session will then focus on how best to achieve efficiency, which is to schedule accurately. In the final part it will consider what is meant by capacity in the context of operating theatres, and how to plan for it for both elective and emergency theatres. The lecture will challenge many embedded notions and offer working examples to help the audience understand the principles.

About Jaideep J Pandit

Jaideep, also an NHS Consultant at Oxford University Hospitals and a Fellow of St John鈥檚 College, Oxford, trained in medicine at Oxford with a double first in physiology and medicine. He has served as Clinical Director of Operating Theatres and as Clinical Advisor to NHS England for Theatres. In addition to medical qualifications he holds a doctorate in operations (systems) management from the Said Business School and an MBA with Distinction.
His prize-winning book, 鈥淧ractical Operating Theatre Management鈥 is published by Cambridge University Press, and a second edition is due in 2027. He is the first non-American to serve as Editor-in-Chief of Anesthesia & Analgesia, the world鈥檚 oldest anaesthesia journal, in over 100 years.
Among his visiting professorships is one at Harvard, in association with the Beth Israel Hospital, where he co-directs a masters programme in quality and safety in healthcare.

  • Tuesday, Sep 8, 11am-12pm.

Webinar 3: Adapting the NHSR Waitinglist Package for Community Waits and Other Areas

Learn how Simon Wellesley-Miller, a Senior Analytical Manager with the NHS England South West Intelligence and Insights Team, used the NHS-R Waiting List package to model waiting times across community services, from deriving required metrics, conducting analysis, and producing waiting list metrics and visuals in an approachable report. This webinar will show the overall workflow, highlight some of the challenges in the data and how these were overcome. We will be delving deeper into the code, which should allow an understanding of how the package was utilised and how it could be adapted for other purposes.

About Simon Wellesley-Miller

Simon specialises in the intersection of healthcare data science and operational strategy. With an MSc in health data science from the University of Exeter, Simon is a dedicated advocate for “making data count,” focusing on embedding robust statistics and machine learning into the daily workflows of the NHS to address health inequalities and improving patient outcomes. He is a prominent figure in the analytical community, serving as an NHS-R Community Fellow and Deputy Director of Regions for AphA (Association of Professional Healthcare Analysts). He frequently leads initiatives like “Coffee and Code” to foster collaborative learning among healthcare analysts.

  • Tuesday, Sep 8, 2pm-4pm.

Webinar 4: Elective The Modeller’s Dilemma: How the Busyness of an EMS System Changes What Matters

Omda Readiness team has been helping EMS and fire fighting organisations across the world through discrete event simulation (DES) modelling for more than 25 years to help them make the best possible decisions when it comes to improving their effectiveness and efficiency. Tef Jansma explores how the EMS sector has changed dramatically during this period.

Decades ago, many EMS organisations looked more like taxi companies than organisations managing a entire prehospital pathways from call to care. These days, some EMS organisations are responsible for managing entire teams taking phone calls, triaging callers into the right priority, and ideally trying to help lower priority callers over the phone. For higher priority calls, when it comes to physically responding with vehicles, there are many different response models these days as well.

While EMS organisations still differ in size, scope, and response models, one factor has changed for almost all of them: they have become much busier, both in terms of the absolute number of patients they help, as well as their vehicle use. Tef will look at how the increased workload of EMS organisations keeps presenting new challenges for DES modellers – not only in terms of technical complexity and scope, but also from an ethical/societal point of view.

About Tef Jansma

Tef has a background in Industrial engineering and management at the University of Groningen. During his master’s, he did a specialisation in Simulations and a full time internship at an ambulance service in the Netherlands. A few years later he relocated to the UK to join the Omda Readiness team, formerly known as Optima.

At Omda, Tef has worked for many years with Predict, which is Omda’s dedicated discrete event simulation solution. Predict enables modelling the dispatch and vehicle operations of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) systems. Tef worked closely with many EMS organisations, not only in the UK but across the world. He has gained a lot of knowledge and experience in typical EMS challenges and how simulation scenario modelling can be used as an effective tool to find high-quality answers to support better decision-making.

In recent years, Tef has taken the lead in the Omda Readiness product development and business development. As of 2025, Tef is managing the global operations of the Omda Readiness team across the teams in New Zealand, Europe, and the United States of America.

  • Wednesday, Sep 9, 11am-12pm.

Webinar 5: Elective Patient Pathways (EPP) Dataset聽

This session is led by Emma Silvey, an analyst in the elective recovery analysis and modelling at NHS England and Sandra Rochfort, a senior analyst in elective recovery analysis and modelling at NHS England.

The Elective Patient Pathways (EPP) dataset links Secondary Uses Service (SUS) activity data with the Waiting List Minimum Dataset (WLMDS). By combining activity and waiting list records, the dataset enables analysis of care both within and around RTT pathways, offering a richer view of elective patient journeys.

This technical webinar will outline the methodology used to construct the dataset, including key linkage approaches and considerations for managing incomplete or inconsistent records while preserving pathway completeness.

The session will focus on the analytical value of EPP, demonstrating how the linked dataset supports deeper understanding of pathway structure, sequencing of care, and variation in activity. In particular, it enables analysis of the volume and type of hospital activity required to complete RTT periods, providing valuable insight into resource utilisation and elective activity planning. Attendees will gain an overview of how EPP can be used to generate more detailed and actionable insights into elective care pathways.

About Sandra Rochfort

Sandra is a senior analyst in elective care at NHS England, with experience spanning multiple analytical teams and the private sector. In her current role, she has led the development of the Elective Patient Pathways (EPP) dataset, enabling a deeper understanding of complex patient journeys. Her work supports national waiting list modelling and informs policy interventions aimed at improving elective care pathways.

About Emma Silvey

Emma is an analyst working in the NHS England Elective Analysis Team. Her work focuses on metric development for the EPP dataset to identify trends and improve usability for a wider range of analytical and programme colleagues. Emma is passionate about how data, evidence and practice combine to support service improvement and transformation; she previously worked in NHS librarianship and in frontline care, before moving into health analysis through the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme.

  • Wednesday, Sep 9, 1pm.

Webinar 6: Understanding Waiting Lists Using Simple Metrics

Tineke Poot introduces Little’s Law as a practical starting point for analysing elective waiting lists, linking the number of people waiting, the rate at which patients are treated, and the time they wait. By connecting the theory to familiar applied measures such as Referral to Treatment (RTT) clearance time, we will show how this simple rule can be used in the NHS to inform performance and planning discussions before analysts turn to more complex modelling.

About Tineke Poot

Tineke is Head of Elective Recovery Analysis and Modelling at NHS England. In this capacity she leads analytical work focussed on elective care, including conducting national modelling to support the UK government鈥檚 ambition to reduce elective waiting times. Tineke has worked in the public sector since 2009, applying operational research techniques to a variety of health areas. Her experience ranges from GP workforce modelling to COVID-19 simulation, but throughout her career she has often returned to working on Referral to Treatment (RTT) waiting times.

Notably, Tineke developed the modelling that informed the introduction of the England elective waiting time standard in 2012. She is passionate about using operational research and analysis on complex system problems to inform decision-making within healthcare and government.

  • Thursday, 10 September, 聽2pm- 3pm.

Webinar 6: NHSR Waitinglist Package in Practice: Modelling RTT Achievements and Misses

This session, led by Amy Makawana, Data Scientist, Analysis & Forecasting Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust, examines how her team has applied the NHSR Waitinglist package. It will walk through practical waiting list scenario modelling that quantifies the capacity increases required to meet RTT targets – and shows what is likely to happen if no action is taken. The sessions will provide dummy data and the code to enable you to follow along and take this away to modify for your own data and challenges.

About Amy Makawana

Amy worked in various laboratory NHS roles before shifting to data analysis and completing the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme in 2024. She has worked primarily on ICB level population health demand forecasting, and currently RTT performance and PTL analysis at NUH. Alongside this, she completed an analytics placement with PwC, and an MSc in Health Informatics at UCL and the University of Manchester. Her experience has shown her the operational impact of growing waiting lists on service delivery, shaping her interest in using analytics to support waiting list management.

  • Thursday, Sep 10, 11am-12pm.

Watch this space

Watch out for details of other ELAB sessions including:

  • Understanding waiting list using simple metrics
  • How to use the RTT planner
  • Waiting ambulances
  • Newsvendor
  • Webinar for public and patients.