The framing of the use and value of artificial intelligence in healthcare is often polarised. Descriptions range from tools that enable and support clinical decision making to transformational technologies akin to medical artificial general intelligence. For clinicians this increases the challenge in evaluating and adopting new tools. ...

In online discussions around digital clinical systems there are some evergreen positions that have recently resurfaced... Why can't my EPR be just like my Apple/Google/Other product. These "just work" and don't need to be taught to users... Any clinical system that needs users to be trained is too complex and shouldn't be used... Whils...

Many NHS organisations, from NHS England to provider organisations, use patient stories to help drive improvement. These are described as: personal accounts of healthcare experiences, shared in a patient's own words These stories can be positive, negative or mixed. Used well, patient stories allow staff to better • learn about real lif...

Recently we've been revisiting our thinking around an organisational data strategy. For me, this means getting some sound principles discussed and agreed. A first pass at writing some ideas down feels a bit more like a data manifesto but (I think) gives a possible starting point. As a disclaimer, while I refer to my organisation, the N...

Recently a colleague described a possible future for our hospital group as ‘Digital By Default’. This tagline isn’t new, having been popularised by the UK Government Digital Service. However, it’s worth reminding ourselves and others that this was not intended to position digital as a pre-selected option, but was much more ambitious: “...

Initially posted to Medium 18th July 2020 Digital First is a bold statement of intent in healthcare, but one that, counterintuitively, poses a risk to meaningful digital transformation of services. In the NHS Long Term Plan, Digital First is used to describe providing remote consultations that "...allow for longer and richer face-to-fa...

I've had a few discussions recently about the principles we (try) to apply when building new documents in our EPR (acute provider with several specialist services). Embarrassingly these have been held between various ears rather than written down. This is a non-exhaustive, no particular order first pass at trying to put this right! 1. ...

After three interesting years, I've recently handed over a large programme of work as it's approaching the inflection point of being able to deliver some really exciting results. On the surface this seems like an odd decision ("...you've worked so hard at this for the last few years"), and one I thought I'd find hard. Actually I'm deli...