Thanks to Smith Business Insight for the photo
A post about the need for the NHS to switch from paper-based technology to machine-readable formats.
Does this post sound like gibberish? Don’t stop reading – it is actually quite simple, it’s just that this week I have faced a number of digital difficulties that I wanted to share with you.
The first concerns my ‘NHS identity badge’, a simple item required as a NHS Foundation Trust governor. Last year I received an email with an attached form to complete. Adding the information required I returned it to the sender. My email was never picked up and so predictably the ‘Microsoft Word doc form’ was not copied into the Trust’s data systems. This year I received a fresh authorisation by email, again as an attachment. Returning it duly completed resulted in a further email bearing a Word doc attachment that I was instructed to hand to the Trust’s photographer. But there was a problem. The attachment was illegible due to script overlay and the photographer struggled to read it. Fortunately I had kept a digital copy that we were able to enlarge to discern an authorisation number. He took the photo. I was given a card with my photo on it. Done, sort of!
Well, what is the point of all this? The first thing to note is that these barely-digital systems meant that a Trust employee is being paid to push paper in the form of emails and attachments at the end of which all I got was a photo with my name on it. The process involved six emails, if you include those from Human Resources. It used out-dated technology that was not machine-readable and could not be digitally checked, actioned and stored.
The second issue related to the ‘declaration of interests’ by Trust governors, an important statement by those holding a public office. In this case the Word attachment sent by email was ‘not available for edit’. I returned it as a Google doc which, it seems, could not be accessed by the Trust due to a firewall. Using copy and paste a solution was eventually reached, one that returned a document, the content of which needed to be manually transferred into a data system using translating software.
The experience told me that in each case lip-service was applied to NHS digital processes. Should I have worn a sword for my photograph, or used a pigeon to return my declaratory forms?
It is hardly surprising that the NHS is so finance-hungry. Whilst banking, commerce, and even the law, use digital systems effectively, here in our health service we remain decades behind other institutions. Is it mismanagement by managers or the resistance of staff? What happened to the energetic, visionary cyber-savvy recruit? Was she crushed in the first avalanche of paper?
Perhaps we need to wake up to the fact that if we want improvements to health care, we need to make financial savings on the simple administrative tasks that take up time, delay processes, and tie up staff in offices operating legacy systems?
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Ageing Effortlessly 