About the Author

Chris Beeley works for Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust as the lead analyst and programmer for staff and patient experience. He uses a variety of open source tools (PHP/MySQL, Apache, R, Shiny, and Ubuntu) to collect, collate, analyze, and report on patient and staff experience throughout the organization. He was the author of the previous edition of this book.

He has been a keen user of R and a passionate advocate of open source tools in research and healthcare settings, having completed his PhD. He has made extensive use of R (and Shiny) to automate analysis and report on a new patient feedback website. This was funded by a grant from the NHS Institute for Innovation and made in collaboration with staff, service users, and carers within the Trust, particularly individuals from the Involvement Centre.

I'd like to thank all the staff, service users, and carers at the Involvement Centre in Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust for welcoming me and for their ideas and support to build the best patient experience portal in the whole NHS. I believe that it's only by giving our service users a voice that we can provide high-quality care that treats people with dignity and respect. The trials and tribulations of managing the towering stack of technology, which brings the final product to the world, is made much easier because the relationship that I have with the people at the center makes the process meaningful and fun.

I'd also like to thank everyone in the R world, especially everyone at RStudio. R was my introduction to the world of open source software. Along with patient experiences, R and open source software are my great loves in life. Open source software is on the rise everywhere, including healthcare, because it's cheaper, better, and because the message of open source—that we can achieve more when we cooperate than when we compete—is a profound and urgent one.

This book is dedicated to my children, without whom all of this would be possible.