Week 13: The RSV vaccine
![Photo of me in a health centre](/nhsnotes/images/health-centre.jpeg)
The big news this week was the official announcement that a national RSV vaccination programme will be launched this autumn.
I must admit, I hadn’t heard of RSV before joining this project, but it a respiratory syncytial virus which particularly affects infants and can be very serious.
My team are working on a service called ‘Record a vaccination’ which will be used by healthcare workers as part of the RSV vaccination campaign.
The 1 September rollout represents a slightly scary immovable deadline, but we’re prioritising accordingly, and we keep reminding ourselves that the launch is the start not the end, and we’ll keep iterating.
I also visited a health centre (pictured above) to do a blood test, partly to experience the digital and non-digital processes involved – but more on that in a future weeknote.
Pilot
Meanwhile we’ve also been going through what we learned from our pilot (recording Covid vaccinations) back in June.
There was lots to learn from that - both from the site visits and the feedback surveys.
I also took the opportunity to create a mission patch to celebrate the pilot, with stickers sent out to the team.
![A circular graphic with the text 'NHS Record a vaccination: pilot, 3798 jabs, June 2024' around the outside, and an outline of the UK with 4 hearts representing locations in the South-East](/nhsnotes/images/pilot-mission-patch.png)
CrowdStrike
The global incident affecting IT today hasn’t affected my team at all thankfully, but NHS England did issue a statement saying it was affecting EMIS, a GP system.
I checked in my NHS App, and sure enough, the section where I can see my GP records is down.
Yikes. Best wishes to everyone out there working on resolving this!
Links
Alex Edwards at dxw posted As an Interaction Designer, what even is my role anymore?.
A thoughtful piece, but it didn’t fully resonate with me as I’ve long understood and accepted that only part of my role is actually designing interactions – the other significant part is looking at how the service should work and what data is really needed in it.
This experience may well differ in other organisations and roles though.
Public Digital have posted a challenge: The case for public roadmaps.
I can sign up to that, although it’s easier said than done.
Gorgeous weather forecast for this weekend. Enjoy!