Week 42: Merging
This week we had the news that NHS England will be abolished, with its functions brought back into the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC).
I don’t have much to say on that, except to offer sympathy and support for my colleagues facing uncertainty.
Staff vaccination appointments
I went out with some of my team to visit some of our users in Kent this week, out in a nondescript NHS building in Ashford (photo above).
We were there to talk about how they manage staff vaccination appointments. Every year, hundreds of thousands of frontline healthcare workers are offered flu and COVID-19 vaccinations, and this takes a lot of organising.
NHS Trusts use a variety of different booking systems for their staff vaccinations, including some commercial services, as well as self-built platforms.
Currently, NHS Record a vaccination doesn’t integrate with any of these, but it’s something we’re considering for the future.
It was great to hear from the team in Kent about the benefits and downsides of the booking software they use, and their desire for ‘1 system that does everything’.
Collecting in-service user feedback
I’ve been working on some designs for a way to collect quick feedback from our users as they use the service. Currently, we do link out to a feedback survey, but response rates are negligible.
The pattern we’re exploring would be presented within the service itself, at the top of existing pages, showing a single question with 1 word buttons to answer it:
Upon answering, the user could then offer some additional feedback as text:
Will it work? Let’s see. We’ll try it out, and learn from the results.
60 seconds with… me
Our monthly internal newsletter has a feature called ‘60 seconds with…’ which is an opportunity to get to know a bit more about your colleagues.
This week it was my turn to be featured.
It took me way longer than 60 seconds to answer the questions, so I thought I’d share them here too.
Can you tell us a little bit about your career to date?
I originally wanted to be a journalist or a radio DJ, but in the early days of the Web I started mucking about with websites and was hooked!
My first job after uni was working on the website for the Science Museum. The staff were mostly focused on developing new exhibitions, so we were free to experiment online, making lots of microsites and Flash games.
After that I worked for a digital agency and a few start-ups, doing a mix of design and development work. The first Government work I did was designing graphs and charts for the Race Disparity Audit, a project initiated by Prime Minister Theresa May. I then worked on a frantic Brexit-related project for the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), before joining the Department for Education (DfE) to work on digital services for teachers.
Who has been the biggest inspiration / influence on your career and why?
I never got to work directly with him, but I used to share an office with Matt Webb, who co-founded a design studio called BERG in the mid-2000s. They did some amazing, experimental work which spanned disciplines and was hugely influential. Matt is also a prolific blogger and generous with sharing his time and ideas.
He started the tradition of writing ‘weeknotes’ as a way of communicating what the studio was doing. That’s now a common practice in many organisations, as well as something many people do individually as a way of reflecting on their week. I started mine last year.
Matt’s blog recently celebrated its 25th anniversary! He writes at https://interconnected.org/home/
What is your proudest achievement?
Balancing building a career with also being a dad.
How have you found your time in this role?
It’s been a whirlwind! When I joined, Record a Vaccination was preparing for a small scale pilot, and was the most minimal of minimal viable products. Since then, we’ve steadily added features and improvements, and over a million vaccinations have been recorded!
I’ve also enjoyed making connections across the teams within prevention services and the NHS. I firmly believe that organisations operate more like ‘webs’ than hierarchies, as Tim Berners-Lee observed at CERN back in 1989.
What did you want to be when you were younger?
A journalist or radio DJ!
How do you relax / unwind?
A glass of wine with my wife or a trip to the pub with friends.
How would your friends describe you?
I asked and they said, “enthusiastic”.
What is the best bit of advice you have ever been given?
My son (aged 5) tells me: “You get what you get, and you don’t get upset”.
Not sure it’s great advice though!
Links
- Navigating changes at NHS England from Chris Fleming at Public Digital
- Keir Starmer’s decision to abolish NHS England is a high-risk strategy from Institute of Government
- What we learned about sharing breast and bowel results with GPs from the Explore team in NHS Digital prevention services
- The irrationality of governance theatre from Liz Lutgendorff
It was hailing as I left the office today! Where did the sun go?