2025 Bennett Institute Medicines Symposium

Whether you’re working in research, policy, or something else, this is a chance to connect and learn from those generating and using UK medicines data.

Day 1 will feature keynotes, lightning talks, and panel discussions.

Day 2 will be dedicated to hands-on workshops.

Event details

What you’ll learn

This year’s symposium is focused on medicines, NHS data, and open research methods. You’ll learn about:

• Ongoing work and recent findings from the Bennett Institute and our collaborators
• Tools like OpenSAFELY, OpenCodelists, and OpenPrescribing, and how others are using them
• Approaches to high-quality, reproducible analytics in the NHS
• Real-life examples of how data is being used to improve care, safety, and access
• Hands-on workshops to explore methods, tools, and workflows

Who you’ll meet

We’re bringing together people who often use the same data but don’t always get to work together. You’ll meet:

• Clinicians, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals who generate and use medicines data in everyday care
• Medicines optimisation teams
• Researchers, epidemiologists, and data scientists
• Policy makers and experts
• Data infrastructure experts and platform developers

Share your work

The Bennett Institute Medicines Symposium is where two worlds meet: those delivering medicines optimisation on the ground, and those researching, evaluating, and building the data tools that make it possible. This is your chance to share your work and discuss new ideas, collaborations, and approaches.

We’re looking for contributions that show how you’re using NHS medicines data to improve care, safety, access, or efficiency – whether in a research project, a quality improvement programme, a technical build, or policy development.

Day 1: Lightning talks (5-15 minutes): Fast-paced, inspiring stories or findings. Past and suggested topics include:

• Using OpenSAFELY for large-scale pharmacoepidemiology studies
• Analysing prescribing variation to target local interventions
• Integrating cost and safety data to inform ICB decision-making

Day 2: Workshops (up to 90 minutes): Practical, hands-on sessions to develop skills or tackle challenges together. For example:

• Reproducible analysis workflows in OpenPrescribing and OpenSAFELY
• Joint problem-solving between MO and pharmacoepi teams
• Visualising prescribing trends for public and professional audiences
• How to open up new medicines datasets safely and usefully

To join the conversation and share your work, all we need is a short title and an abstract (up to 300 words), follow the link to the submission form. Please submit your abstract no later than 10th October 2025.

We are also open to suggestions for other session types – please get in touch with milan.wiedemann@phc.ox.ac.uk with your ideas. We look forward to seeing you there!

Programme

Day 1:

• 09:00 - 10:00 Arrivals and coffee
• 10:00 - 17:00 Talks (lunch and coffee breaks will be provided)
• 17:15 - 18:15 Drinks and canapés

Day 2:

• 09:00 - 10:00 Arrivals and coffee
• 10:00 - 16:00 Workshops (lunch and coffee breaks will be provided)

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This event will be filmed and photographed, for educational and promotional purposes. The Bennett Institute at the University of Oxford will publish the recording and photographs on their website, social media and elsewhere, free for re-use under open licences. By booking a ticket for this event you are giving your consent to be filmed and/or photographed for these purposes.