Week 63: Getting across the line
We’re into the final couple of weeks before the autumn vaccination campaign really ramps up, with flu vaccine appointments now being booked for the 1 October onwards.
On NHS Record a vaccination we’ve shipped some new features over the past week, including support for the pneumococcal vaccine, MMR vaccine and the nasal flu vaccine - each of which has required a small amount of extra design.
We have another change in the works which hasn’t quite shipped yet, but it’s close. I won’t tempt fate by writing about it yet, but it represents months of detailed design and development work to improve usability. We’ve been testing it out this week and noting down minor snags and issues, which then get categorised into ‘must fix now’ or ‘can fix later’. Thankfully there’s not many of the the former.
None of it counts until we get it across the line though.
Next week we’ll be preparing our comms plan to help our users understand what it all means.
Prototype kit training
This week Ed and I did a trial run of our NHS prototype kit training course with 3 willing participants. It was a chance to test out the flow of the course, practice how we explain the different sections, and get a sense of whether we’d pitched the level about right or not.
It went fairly well, they got to the end and seemed to enjoy it, but we had plenty of things to improve upon too. One thing that trips up beginners is that they’re having to learn 3 different languages: HTML, JavaScript and Nunjucks (our templating engine). Each of which uses different types of brackets and syntax. We don’t introduce them all at once, but even so, it’s a lot to take in.
I’m grateful that one of our guinea pig participants was Fred, who’s an ex-teacher, and was able to give us some pointers (and terminology) on teaching theory. The main one I remember is ‘differentiation’, or how you adapt lessons to cater for students of different abilities. We had thought about this a bit, but it’s something we can do more of, primarily by setting ‘stretch goals’ for anyone who’s gone a bit further or faster than others.
Next week we run our first course for real, with 10 participants, and then another 12 the week after. If those go okay, we’ll schedule some more dates after that. There were over 100 people from the NHS requesting a place, so we have quite the waitlist.
I’m excited not just to teach designers new skills, but also to build an internal community of people who can build interactive prototypes, and who can help and support each other.
The only bittersweet note to mention is that this course is based on material that Vicky Teinaki helped develop, and who would have been teaching it alongside us. We miss her still.
MMR vaccination history
With MMR vaccination rates still too low, cases of measles have been on the increase. The NHS urges parents to prioritise getting their children vaccinated, but also says that adults can get the vaccine too if they’ve not yet had it, and if they’re not sure, to check with their GP.
I’m fairly certain I probably had it as a child, but neither I nor my parents can remember for sure (I only remember the BCG vaccine, which was given at school). So I thought I’d follow the guidance and ask my GP to check.
My GP does have an online form for enquiries (although it’s only open for 4 hours each weekday morning), so I filled it in and awaited a response.
Like most adults, I’ve moved home (and GP) about a dozen times since childhood. In theory, the paper records should have either been passed on from GP to GP, or have been digitised at some point. These are sometimes called Lloyd George records, and there’s a new service to access some of them.
I had images in my head of my GP rifling through old paper files in dusty filing cabinets, or requesting them from an off-site storage facility deep within a mountain.
In practice, my GP phoned me to say they had no record of my childhood vaccinations, and offered to book me in for a MMR vaccine.
This shows the importance of our work to improve digital records of vaccination history. We can’t easily get all the records from the past (although maybe we can try), but we can make sure that vaccinations happening now aren’t forgotten about in future
Links
- The strategy is enquiry from Giles Turnbull is a brilliant takedown of strategy documents that promise much but fail to be taken seriously.
- Matt Luct, another new weeknoter from our prevention services gang, wrote Reflections on having a public backlog. We’re not quite at the point of having public backlogs yet, but maybe soon?
- I enjoyed this documentary from Phil Edwards on YouTube: How millions of sugar cubes stopped polio. It’s an amazing story, and it’s not just about the scientific development, but also the people and logistics that made it all happen.
- The remorseless rule of my fitness tracker from Tim Harford is a great personal account of the curse but also transformative potential of fitness trackers. It’s an FT article so that link may or may not be paywalled for you.
- Neighbourhood Health was launched by NHS England and the Department of Health and Social Care this week, as slight vague website along with a press release promising funding for 43 sites. I’m not sure what to make it all just yet.
There was a thunderstorm outside whilst we were 9 floors up in our hermetically sealed office this week. Other colleagues didn’t seem as excited as I was. Next time I’m going down to the lobby to watch and hear it properly. Never miss a good storm!