Transformation blog posts 2018

NHS login – improving access to digital health and care services

The hugely exciting NHS App will be accessed using a new NHS login service – a single login for digital health and care services in England. Find out why an NHS login is a game-changer.

NHS Digital Academy – recruitment for cohort 2 open

Member of the NHS Digital Academy's first cohort, Bolton NHS Foundation Trust Chief Information Officer Phillipa Winter, shares her experience and encourages people to apply to be part of cohort 2.

From Childline to online: how mental health apps can support teens

Today is World Mental Health Day, with a focus on young people and mental health in a changing world.

Design principles for health and care

Dean Vipond, lead designer for the NHS website, explains the design principles for people making services and tools in the NHS.

Working with the voluntary and community sector to empower people to manage their health and care digitally

Nicola Fulton, stakeholder engagement and communications lead for Empower the Person, which is part of the Digital Transformation Portfolio, discusses how forging a strong strategic relationship with the voluntary and community sector will make a real difference.

Improving social care information on the NHS website

Developing a new care and support guide on the NHS website is enabling people to get social care information

How digital apps are helping to realise personalised care for people and deliver real savings for services

Read how Richard Pantlin is co-ordinating the work of digital initiatives for NHS England's Personalised Care Group and using apps to improve self-care and produce better health and well-being outcomes.

Improving help for patients with type 1 diabetes on the NHS website

The National Diabetes Audit found that only 30% of people with type 1 diabetes have stabled blood sugar, compared to 68% of people with type 2 diabetes. This means a higher risk of things like A&E visits and complications. A team of us at NHS.UK looked at how we can help people with type 1 diabetes.

A manual for designing and building digital services

Over the last five months we have been working to put together a new NHS digital service manual to help people who build digital services for the NHS save time and work in a consistent, user-centred way.

The power of three

Justine Brightwell and the GP IT programme are thinking in threes preparing for this year’s Health and Care Innovation Expo 2018

Widening Digital Participation – how far have we come?

Incredibly, we are now a year and half into the delivery of phase two of the Widening Digital Participation (WDP) programme and our partnership with Good Things Foundation. Programme lead Nicola Gill writes about progress we've made.

Challenges of an NHS 111 call handler

Having just left the NHS 111 service to join NHS Digital Laura Tweedy reflects on the challenges and the benefits of this essential service

On track for Expo 2018

Programme manager Hadleigh Stollar is getting ready for the health innovation Expo 2018

Making the NHS website better for everyone

Leigh Mortimer, a product manager at NHS Digital who has been leading a team of skilled designers, researchers and developers reveals a range of improvements to the NHS website he and his team have delivered.

Service design at NHS Digital

How NHS Digital is designing the end-to-end service from the user's point of view.

A day on the frontline

NHS Digital graduate trainee Sarah Norman talks about her day on the road with paramedics in the north east and how her experience helped the development of a digital urgent care support tool

Electronic Maternity Care Records - what women want?

Roger Carter, programme manager for the Digital Maternity Programme, updates on progress being made in introducing electronic maternity care records and the benefits they will bring to patients and NHS staff.

How free NHS WiFi is already benefiting our GP practice

Dr Kirsty Gillgrass, a GP at Crystal Peaks Medical Centre in Sheffield, shares how implementing NHS WiFi earlier this month has already provided real benefits for staff and patients.

Are the bots taking over? No, but we’re going to put them to good work

Dr Indra Joshi, NHS England clinical lead for digital experience and Nikki Patel, head of evaluation & research in NHS England's Digital Development team, report back on a captivating debate on AI in the NHS.

A nurse's take on how digital technology has transformed patient care during her career

NHS Digital clinical specialist Jane Smith began her nurse training in 1985. The world looked very different then. Here she writes about some of the biggest changes technology has brought about transforming patient care.

A case of digital emergency?

The digital revolution is alive and kicking in urgent and emergency care, writes Dr Sam Shah, director of digital development at NHS England.

NHS Digital Academy: how Digital Leaders are integral to adopting digital services across the system

Harpreet Sood and David Farrell report on the latest from the NHS Digital Academy programme and how it is developing the next generation of leaders

The past, present and future of innovation to support and empower the patient

Hazel Jones and Jackie Tatterton work in the Apps and Wearables programme and here, they talk about how innovation has touched their field in the past, the present and potentially in the future.

The past, present and future of innovation in cyber security

NHS Digital head of data security Dan Taylor considers the past, present and future of innovation in cyber security in the NHS.

The past, present and future of innovation in general practice

NHS Digital clinical advisor Dr Peter Short shares his views on the past, present and future of innovation in general practice.

Call the midwife – the past, present and future of innovation in maternity services

Digital midwife and clinical advisor at NHS Digital, Jules Gidgeon on how ultrasound is the digital innovation with the biggest impact on midwifery during the NHS' 70 years, and how new technology is constantly making delivering new babies safer.

The past, present and future of innovation in mental health

Consultant psychiatrist and senior clinical lead at NHS Digital Dr Nick Venters writes on his views on innovation in the field of mental health as the NHS celebrates its 70th anniversary.

The past, present and future of innovation in nursing

Caron Swinscoe, Senior Clinical Lead at NHS Digital, is a registered general nurse who spent the first 18 years of her career at the patient’s bedside before moving to nursing leadership in 2000. Prior to joining NHS Digital, she worked as Chief Nurse of Health Informatics and Head of Clinical Engagement at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust.

The past, present and future of innovation in healthcare

NHS Digital director of innovation and partnerships Tracey Watson reflects on the importance of collaboration in healthcare and top innovations of today, tomorrow and the last 70 years of the NHS.

The past, present and future of innovation in hospital and secondary care

Michael Folan, clinical and business informatics team lead at NHS Digital, reflects on the major innovations which have impacted on hospital and secondary care in the past 70 years and looks ahead to developments set to transform the NHS still further.

Evidence for Effectiveness in Digital Health Innovations

NHS England's clinical lead for the Empowering the Person portfolio discusses ways of evaluating the safety and effectiveness of digital health innovations, and how you can help inform that debate.

The past, present and future of innovation in pharmacy

As the NHS celebrates its 70th birthday, pharmacist and senior clinical lead at NHS Digital, Mohammed Hussain, shares his views on the most significant innovations in pharmacy in the past, present and future.

The past, present and future of healthcare data innovations

Professor Daniel Ray, Director of Data at NHS Digital, reflects on the three major milestones in data and technology that have impacted on the NHS and looks ahead to three significant developments that could transform the NHS still further.

The past, present and future of digital technology innovation in healthcare

NHS Digital director Cleveland Henry on why the birth of NHS Choices was one of the most significant innovations in the NHS, providing quality, detailed information to patients where and when they need it.

NHS.UK content migration update

NHS Choices’ new content management system is up and running and making a real difference for users, says Charles Creswell, product group lead for care and conditions

Digital Campaigns: 2017 round-up

Sophie Jordan is a content designer working in the Digital Campaigns Team. This agency-style multidisciplinary team work in an agile way with Public Health England to deliver digital products for their National health campaigns.

Making the case for the personalised approach

Three of the speakers at today’s Long Term Conditions (LTC) Summit at the QEII in London explain how the event provides a stark reminder about the critical challenges facing people with LTCs.

Healthy eating: from research to recommendations

Victoria Hunt (product lead, health promotion) and Jagruti Shah (business analyst) serve up some recommendations from the healthy eating project.

Healthy eating: identifying our users’ needs

Krupa Suthar (user researcher) summarises the key findings from the NHS.UK healthy eating discovery.

Healthy eating: a content transformation

Olivia Sharp (content designer) explains how she approached redesigning healthy eating content based on user needs, with help from Dushyant Arora (UX designer)

I say Personal Health Records, you say…

I say Personal Health Record, you say Patient Portal… discoveries from NHS Digital’s ‘Personal Health Records (PHR)’ programme

Working together for a digital future

As work on patient facing digital tools and services gathers pace and a new roadmap is published, NHS England’s Chief Digital Officer examines achievements so far and plans for the future.

A Design Sprint: learning at pace

We’ve recently been looking into how we can help manage the impact of urgent prescription requests on the NHS 111 service. By supplying NHS 111 clinicians such as nurses, pharmacists and GPs with additional information about patients’ existing electronic prescriptions, we hope they will be able to make quicker, more informed decisions about whether or not to prescribe urgent medication.

NHS WiFi: Connecting patients to digital services

The NHS WiFi project continues to move at pace. In just 12 months, over 3000 GP practices are now offering free NHS WiFi to over 25 million patients. Most of our 16 ‘high priority’ trusts who received funding in August have now rolled out Wi-Fi across their estates and the remainder are expected to do so before the end of February.

Growing the NHS Apps Library

Hazel Jones, apps and wearables programme director at NHS Digital, looks at how we are moving forward in supporting the development of apps that put patients in control of improving their own health and wellbeing.

The challenge? A single, simple NHS app

Last month saw the end of the discovery phase for the new, single NHS app. David Hodnett, NHS Online delivery lead talks through what the team found out and the next steps for this exciting programme.

Sharing knowledge in the pursuit of better health care

This month the NHS hosted a visit with colleagues from the Swedish health industry to share our experience of assessing apps. Karina Tellinger McNeil at SALAR gives her highlights and an insight into the work around digital health taking place in Sweden.

NHS Choices social care discovery – an update

A few months ago we started a ‘discovery’ – a 12-week period of intensive research – looking at adult social care information and advice on NHS Choices and elsewhere. We’re almost at the end of this phase of our work, which feels like a good time to share some of the things we’ve found.

NHS e-Referral Service Paper Switch Off

My first job in the NHS in 2003 was working on the procurement of the first national electronic referral service for GP to first outpatient appointments (known then as Choose and Book). I can still remember the jubilation when we got our first ten bookings completed and now, its successor the NHS e-Referral Service (e-RS) handles 50,000 patient referrals a day. But despite the proven benefits to patients and clinicians, we’ve collectively missed the opportunity to maximise the technology investment with utilisation rates hovering around 52% for several years – until now.

Accessibility in digital tools and services

The NHS is for everyone, and those of us designing digital services for the NHS have a responsibility to ensure that everyone can access them. Find out what we are doing to ensure that our digital tools and services are accessible.

Defining digital standards for the NHS

With the particular needs of healthcare users and NHS having a strong, trusted brand, we’re noticing more and more that we need to go beyond the GDS standard and define our own universal method.

NHS.UK Product Manager’s Manifesto

Led by our new Head of Product, Marc Heasman, the Product Managers working on NHS.UK recently created a manifesto to describe our commitment to the ways in which we believe we should work. This is the first version of our product team manifesto, and we’ll continue to work on it.

Winding down Register with a GP

'Register with a GP' has been trialed in private beta. This helps us learn about the usability of our service in the real world. In this post I’ll share what we learned, some of the challenges we faced, and what led to our ultimate decision to stop working on Register with a GP.

Our plans for social care information on NHS Choices and the findings from our research

We recently completed a discovery – a period of research – to understand what social care information we should feature on NHS Choices, and how we can make that information easy for people to find and use. In this post you can find out a little bit more, download pretty much everything we learned, and discover what’s next for social care information on NHS Choices.

Working with stakeholders to develop a guide to digital inclusion

As part of its Widening Digital Participation programme, NHS Digital and NHS England are now producing a guide to digital inclusion for local health and care organisations. In September we wrote about the discovery phase of this project.

Mental health discovery

We recently ran a discovery on mental health, focusing on understanding the user needs of people with mild to moderate anxiety and depression, and understanding the role of NHS.UK in supporting these needs.

Transforming pharmacy services with technology

Digitising the prescribing and distribution of medicines has an enormous potential to improve patient care, increase safety and make our system in the NHS more efficient.

Improving mental health through better data

This #MentalHealthAwarenessWeek I was uplifted by the mental health journey NHS Digital is taking, and extremely proud to be able to help transform mental health services through the day to day work I do.

Improving online access to therapy services

Product manager Rosalyn Hewitt and her team are making it easier for people to access an anxiety and depression service via the NHS Choices website ….

How NHS WiFi is helping to create efficiencies for staff with better outcomes for patients

Community midwife Julie Haigh, of North Cumbria University Hospitals NHS Trust, shares her experience of the benefits of free NHS WiFi at GP practices in Cumbria.

Continuity in change

Dr Simon Eccles, the NHS national CCIO, reflects on the tremendous work that has gone into the development of the NHS’s Long Term Plan and the contributions from both internal and external partners.

The National Record Locator Service

The National Record Locator Service launches on 27 November and I’d like to tell you a little bit about our collaborative approach to the development and delivery of this project.

Do you know what your users need…and who they all are?

The lead user researcher for NHS Digital's Personal Health Records programme,  Matt Lund, sets out how they're ensuring they constantly involve users in the development of their Adoption Toolkit. 

The role of CCIOs in Digital Transformation of the NHS

Ayesha Rahim, Perinatal Psychiatrist and Deputy Medical Director/Chief Clinical Information Officer at Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust reflects on her role as CCIO and talks about how the NHS Digital Academy has helped her to do her job more effectively.

How apps and wearables can support patients with epilepsy

Consultant neurologist, CCIO, CSO (clinical safety officer) for Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Rupert Page, talks about how apps and wearable devices can support patients with epilepsy. Staff at all levels need to be engaged in driving change through digital if we are to succeed.

Scaling up: delivering a national 111 online service

NHS 111 online - 111.nhs.uk - is now available across the majority of England, and digital uptake is rising month on month. In this blog, Debbie Floyd, from the NHS 111 online programme at NHS Digital, reflects on what she’s learnt from being part of delivering a large scale, digital change programme across the NHS.