Weeknote: 14th -20th June
Who did i speak to outside of my organisation?
Monday: I spoke to the Health Innovation Manchester Team about their approach to integrating health and care and finding out what smart foundations they are building to enable them to adapt services as the population need changes. As a system they have made concerted efforts to properly innovate and think ahead to what the needs of the population will be, not what it is right now. I was keen on understanding how they balanced adapting the architecture whilst ensuring that current services weren’t disrupted as new digitally-enabled ones were brought to life.
Wednesday: I joined the NHSE Data analytics team in speaking with the West Midlands ICS team about their data analytics function, how its supported decision making during covid, supported LTC planning and the vaccination programme. Again, I was keen on understanding the nuances that they have to deal with whilst truing to innovate and raise the agenda of data-enabled decision-making as an ICS. This conservation helped to adjust my thinking on how my programme can best support ICS’s to install the necessary digital and data smart foundations.
Friday: 1st conversation was with Stuart Crichton who is the CCIO at LAS. It was so useful to speak with him about the digital and data journey that the LAS have been on and where they want to go. There are a number of great datasets which could act as a reliable early warning system for ICSs and in a care coordination function. It resulted in a number of actions for me to take away and ensure that they are linked in with Radhika who leads PODAC at NHSX and the wider ICS digital and data programme that is ever-evolving.
2nd conservation was with Kate Walker who i have followed on Twitter for a while. We spoke for no more than 4 minutes after the ICS Digital and Data lunch and learn, but her feedback was super-useful. Kate has a wealth of experience with change and transformation across a number of organisations and she warned against a view that we should try to procure, procure, procure for the ICSs. Rather, we should see what works currently, adapt, localise and reuse across the regions so that we start as we mean to go on, sustainably.
What did we achieve?
- The Integrated Care Systems: design framework was published and I was pleased to see some of what I contributed to the digital and data section had made the cut! Its the first time that I have contributed to a national guidance document and made me more determined to make sure that my programme supports ICSs on what it contains.
- ICS Digital and Data Lunch and Learn session on the Digital strategy for Pharmacy, Optometry, Dentistry, Ambulance and Community went very well, Radhika did a great job and we had almost 40 attend. We started them as a way of covering different topics for ICS staff that are interested in digital and data and what they can do locally.
- The ICS Digital and Data Future NHS workspace went live on Thursday and Amy Fox from the team was instrumental in getting this over the line. In less than 24 hours the structure is taking shape and the content and ICS information is being uploaded to our store. The hope is that we grow a digital and data community similar to the PHM workspace area.
- M365 for ICSs — There were at least 7 meetings about M365 and Teams in relation to the ICSs and it was really good to start mentally developing a strategy on how i personally feel this would be beneficial to an ICS using a variety of use cases and settings.
What didn’t I get to do?
I got involved in some cross-org work which meant that I was unable to progress some of the user-centred work that I am collaborating on Simon Dixon with. This work will be crucial to the successful digital transformation across ICSs and it will require more of time to make sure that we can develop it sufficiently so that it makes an impact.
This made me think about my time and how I failed to plan appropriately when a sudden demand of my time away from this work was made. I need to put measures in place to allow myself to plan and ‘do the doing’ outside of meetings.
