Dr Edward Hill and Dr Samuel Ball have developed and produced a podcast called Health Data Decoded.
Genesis of Health Data Decoded
In January 2025, we had an ambition.
We have both recently started new roles affiliated to the Civic Health Innovation Labs (CHIL). Launched in December 2023, CHIL is an interdisciplinary research centre, bringing together data, expertise, technology and community engagement to help tackle some of the most pressing health, social and economic challenges of our time.
Across the multiple projects in CHIL, there is a diverse range of experts from academia, the NHS, local government, charities and industry. Collectively, they are helping develop a new model for progressive data uses and responsible artificial intelligence in civil society. But how aware are the public of the pioneering research that is happening in CHIL? Or the depth and breadth of skills and projects it has?
So, what was our ambition? We wanted to broaden the forms of media that CHIL could use to share with the public both scientific research and experiences working on projects associated with CHIL. We wanted to develop a platform for those working with health data to celebrate what they’ve done, and the impacts they’ve made. We were keen to not only highlight academic staff, but also administrators, clinical and other professional services staff to help the public understand the support needed to make health research happen; and how they could be involved in the health research that powers our health systems.
Our answer: Make a CHIL podcast, Health Data Decoded!
Four episodes released and counting
We are currently releasing a new episode of Health Data Decoded on the last Friday of each month. Four episodes have been released so far.
- Who are we? | Sam Ball and Ed Hill | Listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube
- Data Action Accelerator & Project Management | Seonaid Lafferty | Listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube
- Data and Software Engineering | Albert Brennan | Listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube
- Data into Action Programme Director | Andrea Astbury | Listen on Spotify or watch on YouTube
Experiences so far
It has been very enjoyable to hear people speak about their roles and projects, which they are evidently very passionate about. Given the complex, interdisciplinary nature of CHIL; there are multiple projects that we are not linked to, it has also been rewarding to find out more about those projects through these podcast episodes.
The actual recording process has also been an interesting learning experience. We record episodes in the Broadcast Room on the Lower Ground floor 1 – 7 Abercromby Square. Through that it has been brilliant to meet and get to work with the operator of the Broadcast Room, Michael Bayliss (Senior School IT & AV Technician within the School of Histories, Languages and Culture; LinkedIn profile). The facilities and assistance given by Michael enable us to produce an audio and video podcast. The professional studio setup also includes lighting, which is super bright! The first time we recorded in the room that took a short time to adjust to; we have plenty of bloopers of the first episode where we forget what to say!
In our episodes our intention is to give explanations in layman terms to engage with a non-specialist audience; to demystify health research and encourage others to get involved. A common feature across episodes is that there are a lot of acronyms associated with methods and projects! As we get more experience, we hope that it will become a natural part of the conversation to unpack what those acronyms are when mentioned.
Future plans
Three more episodes have been recorded and are due to be released during July-September 2025. The three topics covered in the upcoming three episodes are:
- Public involvement and participation in the Liverpool City Region Civic Data Cooperative project.
- Project webpage
- Guest: Emily Rempel
- Civic HealthTech Innovation Zone (known as ‘CHI-Zone’)
- CHI-ZONE webpage
- Guest: Annemarie Naylor
- Health Economics & Equity at Liverpool (known as ‘HEEL’).
- HEEL webpage
- Guests: Liz Camacho and Will Whittaker
Monthly episode releases are planned to continue for the rest of 2025 and into 2026. An anticipated highlight of prospective future episodes will include a conversation with CHIL director Iain Buchan!
Listen and watch episodes of Health Data Decoded
Episodes of Health Data Decoded are available on Spotify and YouTube. Thank you for your support 😊
Making an episode of Health Data Decoded
Would you like to find out more about the process for producing an episode of Health Data Decoded? See our “Making a Podcast Series” resource – part of the Public Engagement toolkit.
Dr Edward Hill is a Tenure Track Fellow in Health Protection Data Science working within CHIL to solve interdisciplinary problems in epidemiology, infectious disease modelling and health policy. For more details, visit https://edmhill.github.io/. He is also a member of the JUNIPER Partnership, a collaborative network of researchers from across the UK who use maths and computer models to help understand and inform the control of infectious diseases (for more details, visit the JUNIPER Partnership webpage at https://maths.org/juniper/).
Dr Samuel Ball is a lecturer at the University of Liverpool who teaches artificial intelligence and machine learning to health experts to get better insights into our health. He has worked on leveraging AI for drug discovery applications, as well as developing screening models for eye healthcare. For more details, visit https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/people/samuel-ball.