Hello

I am delighted to say as we enter  2016, I have been asked to provide a leadership role for the  transformation of NHS.UK and I have accepted that challenge. I feel extremely privileged to help many talented teams, from multiple  organisations, form around a new purpose and a new culture. I think this  reitterates the Department of Health, NHS England and HSCIC’s  commitment to making this a success and showing openness to a new model  of cross organisational working, with a software engineer right at the  leadership level.

NHS Choices currently occupies the NHS.UK URL and it is a huge success with over 50m unique visitors per  month. So why transform it and what is going to make it different?

Well the thing is we have to work  some of that out, it is a great information seeking web site and a  portal into many other systems and services, it is loved by users with a  satisfaction rate of > 85%, but it isn’t always user needs focused  and doesn’t always connect people with the services that can meet those  needs first time.

The volume to site is significant,  but it doesn’t mean it is the best we can do. We now need to change our  focus and evidence that it actually has either a positive or negative  effect on the NHS front line services that are under significant  pressure on a day to day basis. Designing with hypotheses and deciding  with data.

Essentially it needs to provide  fulfilment in a way that can help patients do the right thing for  themselves and actually solve problems for the health and social care  system too, in a digital way, that is more cost effective and lets our  loved medical professionals do the things they are great at by getting  rid of the wasteful things they don’t want, or need to be doing.

So I now get to work with some of the  country’s best talent, building digital services that can have an  impact on patients and the NHS. It is going to be a long journey, but it  is about the journey and not the destination that is the most important  thing, as we will never be finished.
I look forward to giving a progress update soon.

In the mean time, checkout http://digital.nhs.uk and http://alpha.nhs.uk