Introduction
This is the first of what I hope will be a regular approach to weeknoting my new role as a Service Designer at NHS England. Weeknoting is something I have followed from afar and wished that I had had the wisdom or possibility to adopt in my previous roles. In my last role at FOI such openness was not possible due to the nature of the organisation, and the work we did there, but I'm hopeful that my new role in the NHS will be more embracing of an open culture, and that I will be brave enough to share my 'workings out' in public on a regular basis.
What did I do this week?
This week was surprisingly quiet for the first week in any new job. It's not been possible to procure a computer for me yet so that has rather limited my access, or ability to complete even the most basic of mandatory training or intranet surfing that usually forms first week activities.
Reading
Based on the two short meetings I have had this week and the time spent looking through the publicly available information on the NHS England / NHS Digital websites, some of which I had already looked at before starting I spent some more time digging in to the Data Saves Lives policy paper, and the Better, Broader, Safer: Using Health Data for Research and Analysis Goldacre Report that preceded/informed it, as, I understand these reports and policy documents underpin the work that we as a team are currently engaged in, and the work specifically that I will be involved with around Trusted Research Environments (TREs) or the NHS England Secure Data Environment Service (SDE) as the specific NHS England implementation is now known.
I have also spent some time exploring the NHS Service Standard. The tenets are familiar, based as it is on the GDS Service Standard and following some fairly uncontroversial User Centred Design or Human Centred Design best practice.
I also began reading Platformland by Richard Pope.
Building
This week I have downloaded the NHS.UK Prototype Kit and had a bit of play around with it to get familiar with the Design System and the particular build chains that exist, or are currently being promoted within the NHS for service-level prototyping. This has been useful for looking at what I need to get up to speed with in terms of integrating these approaches with my own prototyping and development processes and build chains. All seems pretty straightforward so far and it will be interesting to see how much I can bring my development and digital prototyping skills to the role as it develops / and based on the skills mix of the team(s) I will be working with.