Blame the caffeine
I spent the last week and a half helping Richard Pope create a deck on what the NHS could look like if the technology that supports patients, clinicians, and admin staff was modern and interoperable. The purpose was to show how well‑designed, connected technology could reduce burden on everyone involved and let people focus on the stuff that matters when it comes to dealing with ill health.
We created 9 demos showing example journeys. For example, a patient does a pre‑consultation check‑in with an AI, which the clinician reviews before the appointment. Ambient voice supports the consultation itself, so the patient leaves with clear, structured notes and next steps. Stuff that is technically possible and happens in places within the NHS, but without consistency and join‑up.
The demos themselves were screens in the app and websites, stitched together using After Effects. Smoke and mirrors. I smashed a lot of stuff together. I think what we had in the end is really interesting, things I’d like to explore more in slower time.
Consistently inconsistent
I’d spent days building a vision of the joined‑up future. Then I dialled into a team day about how the work we’re doing can add value now.
The team has been through people changes – only 3 of the 7 of us have been in the team more than 3 weeks.
We’re close to wrapping up a discovery into how we might help prevention services present results to users. The team had been doing what a group of smart people do and questioning what we were doing and why. When I joined, there were a lot of questions and good ideas. I spent the next hour or so trying to explain why we were where we were. It doesn’t feel good to spend time saying ‘we tried that’, ‘we thought about that’ to a bunch of enthusiastic people. I think if I’d been a little less burnt out and distracted I could have seen the real question the team were asking.
They were asking why we were looking at results and whether it was really worthwhile. Teams in Digital Prevention are doing a good job of communicating what people need to understand through messages, as long as the results are positive and one‑off. A well‑written message offers the user what they need. It also gives the team what they need – easy to shape and iterate the content.
Improving results isn’t a big value add on its own. The point of results is that they’re a foothold – the first place we can start joining prevention services up, a way to support teams that aren’t working with the app. Two things sit awkwardly together. On its own, the results work is only the start. But it still has to be worth doing now.
You didn’t have to do it but you would anyway
The team were right to question the work we’re doing and think broadly. The answer they deserved wasn’t ‘we tried that’ – it was a line from this work to the future. I failed to make that clear in the moment.