Week 64: Final countdown
Our teams within vaccination digital services this week have been excitedly monitoring the millions of flu vaccination notifications, emails and letters that have been sent out, and the million plus vaccination appointments that have already been booked.
Next week, from 1 October, the vaccinations begin and the numbers being recorded will start to skyrocket.
For the Record a vaccination service, this winter we’re being used in more pharmacies than ever, and we’re also introducing a brand new, simplified and streamlined user interface.
I’ll write more about this next week when it’s live, but this week we emailed all 10,000 of our users to let them know it’s coming, with links to our updated guidance and a video walkthrough.
Prototype kit training
We ran the last of our initial run of training courses on the NHS Prototype kit up in Leeds. It was a long and exhausting day (7am train from London, returning 8pm) but I was pleased with how it went.
We had quite a few last minute drop outs, so a lesson learnt for next time is to over-book places in anticipation of this. We also had several new helpers this time, who are all experienced interaction designers that we hope can help run the course in future as part of our strategy for scaling it.
The course ended, as usual, with demos from each of pairs of participants. I invited our Head of Product, James Spirit, to come and watch them as a mystery special guest for a bit of extra drama. He was impressed with how much each team had learnt.
Next step is to review the evaluation forms, work out what to change, and then announce some more dates for the 80+ people on the waitlist.
Misinformation
I can’t not mention the outrageous misinformation from the American President about both vaccines and paracetamol. I’m glad that the NHS, DHSC and our Secretary for State have all called it out in the strongest terms.
The phrase that upset me the most, having witnessed how hard pregnancy can be, was the idea that pregnant women should ‘tough it out’. Not only is this medically dangerous, but I think it’s also deeply misogynistic.
Links
- The Chief Medical Officer has published Health trends and variation in England 2025 - chapter 5 is all about screening and vaccinations
- New guidance for helping users to find British Sign Language content has been published on the NHS service manual
- NHS makes it easier than ever to protect toddlers against flu has details about how pharmacies are now able to also offer the flu nasal spray vaccine for 2-3 year olds
- The diabetic eye screening team has published a design history entry on their ideas for transforming cohorting and the AI health coach team have published a summary of their discovery - love to see this working in the open!
Next week I have the excitement of waiting in for an engineer to come and repair our home heating. It turns out that the system of heat exchangers is pretty complicated, and everything had broken at once. I’m just hoping it can be fixed before the weather gets too cold.