The Bristol Observatory

              Incorporated in 1997 by John A. Pandiani, Ph.D., Sociologist 

                                             and Steven M. Banks, Ph.D., Mathematician

The Bristol Observatory (TBO) was founded to encourage and support rational data-based decision making in human service organizations at the state and national level.   We support rational management by providing valid and reliable measures of the functioning of systems of care. These measures are based on the analysis of information that is stored in existing administrative and operational databases.

One of our primary tools in this work is Probabilistic Population Estimation (PPE).  PPE is a statistical data mining tool that uses anonymous data sets to produce quantitative measures of access to care, practice patterns, and treatment outcomes in complex systems of care.  PPE provides valid and reliable measures of the unduplicated number of individuals represented in data sets and the unduplicated number of individuals shared across data sets.  The data sets used in these analyses are HIPAA compliant.

John Pandiani, co-founder of The Bristol Observatory, has a long-standing interest in the utilization of existing data resources to understand mental health and substance abuse treatment outcomes and the relationships among human service, education, and criminal justice systems.

Steve Banks, co-founder of The Bristol Observatory, focused on the development of statistical procedures relevant to the emerging age of information abundance, especially as they related to measures of access to care and treatment outcomes. Steve died unexpectedly on August 10, 2007.