Session overview
NHS Digital has the data, design and technological expertise to build national digital products at pace. 2020 gave technology and data innovators some food for thought, so throughout 2021 we are running a series of events as an opportunity to have a virtual discussion about our work in response to the challenges of the past year.
Join us on 15 July 2021, 8:00am – 9:00am, for the second in the series of our Full Digital Breakfast events: Let’s talk user-centred design.
During the pandemic, working in a user centred way ensured that we responded quickly to the needs of clinicians, patients and the public. Our user researchers, designers and content designers worked at the forefront of the delivery of products in response to the pandemic, using evidence based user-centred design to enable and de-risk urgent decisions. In this session, Ben Davison, NHS Digital’s Executive Director of Product Development, and Dr Simon Eccles, Deputy Chief Executive, NHSX and Chief Clinical Information Officer for Health and Care, along with guest speakers, will have a conversation about our user centred response to developing and upscaling national services to meet unprecedented demand during the pandemic.
If you have any accessibility requirements that we can assist with, please email [email protected].
About our speakers
Ben Davison is interim executive director for Product Development and joined NHS Digital in April 2018. Prior to taking up the role as interim executive director in January 2020, Ben was on secondment to Genomics England as interim CIO.
Ben has an extensive track record in healthcare, digital transformation and establishing effective software organisations. Before joining NHS Digital, Ben led the digital transformation programme for the UK’s immigration systems for the Home Office, where he led the movement from a programme structure to a product-led, sustainable delivery organisation built upon high maturity engineering practices.
Prior to the Home Office, Ben was Head of Delivery and subsequently Managing Director for a global IT services organisation specialising in the build of custom enterprise systems for large scale digital transformations. During his tenure, Ben spearheaded the organisational transition from traditional engineering methods to large-scale transformation using agile techniques.
Ben also has a long track record in healthcare transformation, having been part of the original Choose and Book team and having played lead roles on a number of other large-scale healthcare programmes subsequently.
Dr Simon Eccles is the national Chief Clinical Information Officer for Health and Care, and head of profession for CCIOs. He is also the Deputy Chief Executive for NHSX.
NHSX is accountable for the delivery of the digital transformation program and the whole of the central NHS IT expenditure. Simon has responsibility for digital primary care, the digital transformation screening, and four missions of NHSX. These include reducing the burden on staff, empowering citizens, making clinical information available when needed, enhancing clinical safety and improving operational efficiency.
Simon was previously the national Medical Director in Connecting for Health. He was the Clinical Director for Urgent Emergency Care for NHS London and SRO for urgent emergency care in South East London. Simon was an early graduate of the major project Leadership Academy at the Said business school and still practices emergency medicine as a Consultant at St Thomas’s hospital, London.
Rochelle Gold is Head of User Research at NHS Digital and is responsible for user research strategy and standards across the organisation. She oversees a community of over 60 user researchers working in multidisciplinary teams to design and deliver health and care services. Rochelle trained as an occupational psychologist and has over 20 years' experience of conducting research in the public, private, academic and health sectors. She has previously worked for organisations such as the Probation Service, Commission for Social Care Inspection (now CQC) and the Centre for Criminal Justice, Economics and Psychology at the University of York.
Tero Väänänen is Head of Design at NHS Digital and has over 20 years of experience in solving complex design problems for organisations in the fields of health & care, telecommunications, finance, and entertainment. Currently he is driving NHS Digital to become more service design led, and is looking after the design strategy, design processes and design quality across NHS Digital.
His background is in computer engineering, user research, and service design and he is passionate about applying his design thinking skills in the health & care sector.