On organisational data

I’m back from a couple of weeks holiday away in Scotland – think trains, islands, whisky, ferries, mountains and a plentiful supply of Irn Bru Original.  Some of my colleagues have suggested I should have been away longer (and I’m tempted to agree). 

My holiday was “book-ended” by attending a “service owner’s” course run by We Are Snook, a design house.  Having cast aside my usual doubts and wishes for space to just “get stuff done” and cleared my head, I had an exciting time – it was an excellent four-day course made all the better for being in-person in the new Business and Events Centre in the Leeds Hub.  We need to take the opportunity to shape our service offering and embrace user centred (re)design of our services.  Information Standards Architecture are a pilot area for the upcoming changes and we are (mostly) looking forward to the user centred approach to service redesign (and yes “users” includes our staff). 

Organisational Data Service

I had the delight of meeting the Organisational Data Services team for the first time in nearly 10 years – it was great to meet some past (and now new) colleagues and to meet people who have joined since I was last in Exeter.  For some it was the first time they had seen the refurbished Hexagon House – a refurb that seems to have gone down well. 

The team are in the middle of planning for the most notable change in organisational structure since the 2013 implementation of the last Health and Social Care Act. Modelling and implementing the changes in the ODS team shouldn’t be hard – doing so in a way that doesn’t break the myriad of systems across the health and care sector is a bit more tricky.  A chief executive whose NHS Mail account description doesn’t have their organisational name on doesn’t sound too bad, however all GP smart cards stopping isn’t a good April Fool’s joke.  It brings the importance of the ODS team’s work to the fore and shows how dependent the health care system is on IReS products.

I could add more but your editor would chop it down, so I will conclude by saying the last six weeks has shown me the importance of getting out of the house, reconnecting with people and spending quality time together without the barrier of a computer screen, Teams and flaky network connections.