Tired notes, whilst watching the World Cup final.

I ran the ‘Rabbit Run’ yesterday, and I think I’m feeling it after an hour in the heat running over dunes, almost entirely in Zone 5. Good event, two river crossings and a surprising amount of mud considering the heatwave we’ve been having.

Mumsnet

I spent a good chunk of last week Mapping out the various ways that results currently surface in the NHS App. Ralph and Jeannie summarised the current situation really well in the team’s recent design history post.

For the NHS App to be helpful, it needs to be dynamic, it needs to aggregate data from primary and secondary care, combining lab analysis with doctors comment, comparing data against ‘normal ranges’, sometimes trending them. At the same time for the NHS App to be helpful it needs to maintain some kind of predictable consistency that enables people to find, refind and make use of their results regardless of the service, or organisation has provided them.

Currently these two things pull against each other. Single services have thought about how they share results, but they’re not all doing it in the same way, because in isolation different approaches work for each type of result. Finding a way to bridge that gap is the work. Combining disparate and unpredictable feeds of data into a consistent user experience, that inevitably requires influencing other teams to reconsider how they communicate results.

Bringing the examples to life is hard, because its practically incredibly difficult to try to replicate realistic data. So I found myself delving into Mumsnet, Reddit and various others forums (fora?) to see what people might be sharing on ‘Can you help me understand this’ threads.

Meta-Analysis

The other half of my week was looking at ‘improving delivery conditions’. The work is somewhat meta – which was reinforced to me this week. The team’s summer intern joined us with very little context about what we’re doing. Its sometimes helpful to be forced to and step back and explain what we’re doing, if nothing else it makes you realise how much you take for granted.

In this case we’re service mapping the assurance processes that teams have to go through to in order to ship within the NHS. Its analysis of internal processes, with the intention of improving them, to ultimately decrease time it takes for teams to realise value. But all of that is about five steps removed from what people assume when you say ‘digital in the NHS’.

Its the kind of work I’d have been very sceptical of a few years ago, but in many ways its the ‘hard work to make it simple‘ for internal teams.

Silly hat parade

I graduated from my doctorate this week, I took the day off and managed to celebrate a little. I’m learning that I’m bad at celebrating, which is a shame and I want to change that.

It feels slightly surreal that so many people got in touch to congratulate me (see being bad at celebrating) so thank you if that was you. The morning was enjoyable, well organised and people I’d never met were congratulating me (and everyone else).

I’ve never really felt part of the university, which maybe has been a missed opportunity over all these years. Some of that is practical, I’ve worked throughout my doctorate which has made it really difficult to participate in any of the events and activities the uni provides for post-grad students. But the messages I’ve received and comments from the staff on the day make me wonder if I should have prioritised it more.