The National Care Experience Programme, in conjunction with Dr Adegboyega Ojo of Maynooth University, has been granted funding by the Health Research Board to conduct in-depth analysis of free-text survey comments.
The project, entitled “Generating actionable insights from the analysis of free-text comments from the National Care Experience Programme using Qualitative and Computational Text Analytics methods”, was granted just under €200,000 by the Health Research Board to facilitate the research.
The project aims to maximise the value and learning from the approximately 70,000 free-text comments received through the National Care Experience Programme surveys to date — the National Inpatient Experience Survey and National Maternity Experience Survey. These comments provide detailed and valuable information about what matters most to patients and service users. However, extracting this important information from free-text data is both time and resource-intensive.
Dr Ojo and his team will employ state of the art computational text analytics methods to identify the key care activities, resources, and contextual factors that are associated with both positive and negative experiences of care. The project team will develop a dashboard to display the findings in a way that’s easy to use and understand, both for patients and for those seeking to improve care. This tool will also allow for accurate, automated analysis of comments received in response to future surveys.
Public and patient involvement in the project will be crucial to its success, and a detailed programme of engagement has been developed. The Department of Health and the Health Service Executive (HSE) will also be heavily involved in the project. The project will run for two years.