The Clinical Effectiveness Group (CEG) is a not-for-profit unit, founded by practicing GPs.
CEG is part of Queen Mary’s Centre for Primary Care, within the Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. We have been working in partnership with primary care teams in North East London for 30 years, helping to improve population health in some of the most ethnically diverse and disadvantaged areas of the country. Our team of clinicians, health data scientists, analysts, researchers and facilitators take primary care data from electronic health records across the North East London region – covering more than 2.4 million patients – and turn it into life-saving research and innovation.
North East London faces exceptional challenges. Barking and Dagenham, Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney are among the most disadvantaged boroughs in the UK. Waltham Forest, Redbridge and Havering are all above average levels of deprivation. But our academic evaluations show GPs in these areas achieving top national rankings for their health services after adopting our tools and support. Through and beyond the pandemic, we are sustaining that excellence and supporting a strong recovery.
If you don’t measure it, it’s invisible. Using data to fight health inequalities in the socially diverse communities of North East London is what drove us to establish CEG, and it still runs through all our clinical effectiveness programmes, research and resources. We pioneered ethnicity recording in the patient health record, and offer a range of in-practice tools that ensure no patient is missed and everyone is given an equitable chance of care.
We partner with others to produce the best results. We work closely with other universities, local authorities, charities, NHS trusts, commissioners, clinical leads, GP practices and their networks. We also work with industry partners to complement our expertise and allow our tools to do more for the NHS teams we support.
We are building capacity for health data science through Queen Mary’s membership of the NIHR School for Primary Care Research, significant funding from Barts Charity, and our Wellcome Trust-funded PhD programme Health Data in Practice. We also support local GP research, numerous prestigious NIHR fellowships and CEG Quality Improvement Fellows. Most importantly, we work with the NHS to turn knowledge into action and improve clinical care.