NHSOA-way
Welcome
Welcome to the NHS-OA Community Way book for the NHS-OA Community based on The Turing Way guides and Community Handbook. Like The Turing Way, this is an open source, open collaboration, and community-driven project. We are called NHS-OA Community but our contributors come from Local Authorities, Civil Service, Public Sector, Academia, Voluntary Sector, Charities and as individuals with no organisational connection. Our goal is to promote open source code other free and open source data science tools - and to do this in an open way by supporting and promoting open code sharing which includes other media content like videos of our workshops and conferences.
Contact us
The NHS-OA Community can be found on Slack and the core development team through the email openanalytics.community@nhs.net.
Our Community
The NHS-OA Community started in 2018 (as ‘NHS-R’) to promote the use of R in the NHS and the community has grown rapidly ever since. In 2026 the NHS-R community joined with the NHS.pycom community to become NHS Open Analytics. It is a community that is broader than the NHS as members come from public sector organisations across the UK, including Local Authorities and Civil Service, as well as academics and voluntary sector people who have an interest in healthcare.
Documentation is important in coding to show methodology as well as intention so the NHS-OA Community Way, inspired from The Turing Way, is our attempt to write about the Community.
The NHS-OA Community Way reflects our:
- values
- activities
- above all, the community
Everything here is available for free under a CC0 1.0 licence. Please use and re-use whatever you need, for any purpose and all the book is collaboratively written and open from the start. To make this book and the community truly accessible to everyone, we invite you to contribute your skills and bring your perspectives into this project.
The NHS-OA Community initially received funding for its activities but is now completely reliant upon volunteers. The NHS-OA Community is hosted by the Strategy Unit, which includes some administrative support and the hosting of an nhs.net email address.
We value the participation of every member of our community and want to ensure that every contributor has an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. Accordingly, everyone who participates in the NHS-OA Way project is expected to show respect and courtesy to other community members at all times. All contributions must abide by our code of conduct.
History
This book is based on The Turing Way book which was started as a technical guide. Like the NHS-OA Community projects we also have a need to pull together information on how to contribute to the projects but not all our projects are technical. As a community we have developed many channels of collaboration and communication through blogs, social media, podcasts and videos. This content needs a central point to promote it but also a way to explain how to get involved and contribute at whatever stage in your data science journey - hence the NHS-OA Community way.
Citing the NHS-OA Community Way
All material produced and shared by the NHS-OA Community is available under open licences for reuse and this book is available under a CC0 1.0 licence. We ask that you also read and, maybe, also refer to The Turing Way project in your work as it was immensely helpful in getting this project set up and is a great resource worthy of continued citation.