Data and the NHS

[cromwell]

There is a man called Marc Warner who owns an Artificial Intelligence company called Faculty.
He is trying to use AI to help the NHS. To help with the cancer backlog, to help with the throughput of NHS patients, to help with waiting lists.
To ensure a good result in one area without creating a bad result somewhere else.

So to do this you have to analyse data. When Warner started off in Kettering Hospital he had a shock, because the data available was virtually useless.
Patient information was split by speciality within the hospital. By the NHS's own admission the left hand can't see what the right hand is doing.
This is interesting to me because I once worked on a similar project in a police force. Criminal information was split across a crime system, an intelligence system, a command and control system, etc. We wanted to centralise the information, to create a central nominal across all systems.

So I feel for Mr Warner. Is the Ronald Smith in oncology the same R Smith who has a record in Rheumatology? Do they live at the same address? Oh they do. Same guy, right? So merge the record. Then it turns out that R Smith is Raymond Smith, Ronald Smith's son. Ooops. So now you have to untangle the merge. Oh, you didn't save the data? So now you don't know which one is in Oncology and which in Rheumatology?

Data quality is going to be a HUGE issue. Warner was working with the NHS at the start of the pandemic and was having his staff copying and pasting thousands of Excel spreadsheets into the format that he needed to get data ready to analyze. The prospect of having to do this across the NHS is enough to make anyone shudder.

The data will be held on different platforms, in different formats. The data Warner needs may not even be held by some departments. Some may be held in free text format, badly spelled, wrongly spelled. Then you have the issue that GP records are seperate from hospital records (or used to be) and may be held in different formats again.

Good luck Mr Warner, you'll need it. But if it comes off it will be a massive step forward.

[Workingman]

At the GP one day: hit the Union flag, hit to start, hit my day of birth, month of birth and the first letter of my surname. I am then told I am logged in and the that wait is two minutes for my 11:10 appointment.

Time passes. 11:10 - 20 - 30... with no call from the doctors, so I go to reception. She looks at the logs and it turns out that there is a Francesca B (female) on the books and that is obviously not me.

Just another little spanner...

[Suff]

If they stopped promoting people to the limit of their incompetence, then it would help.

I recall #1 daughter was being begged to apply for FD of a large NHS trust. She was, at the time, acting FD. She refused.

I asked her about it at the time and she said "It is impossible to deliver. They keep adding more and more mandatory procedures but less and less funding to deliver them".

The person who won the job was from outside the NHS. First thing he did was to require everyone to re-apply for their job. #1 daughter applied, as requested, but also applied out of region for another job. When the new FD came and told her "good news you keep your job", she replied "good news, I have accepted a job out of region and this is your formal notification".

He lasted 2 years and was booted for failing to do an impossible job.

WM you mentioned press the UK flag and enter your details. How many flags were on that screen? How much money did the Government spend on it? How much wasted IT time and money which could have been used to sort out Data issues?

Here in France you get a receptionist. She speaks one language. French. She can sort of communicate in English but if you don't speak that you are stuffed.

France is in the EU, with the same equality laws and the same directives. Clearly what the UK deems "mandatory" is simply about UK laws. We can change those.

About time they started sorting their mess out and stopped hosing the wall down with money. Of course it is now fragmented. Trusts, patient care groups, England/Scotland/Wales/NI. Too many fingers, too many pies, too little money to go round.

[Workingman]

WM you mentioned press the UK flag and enter your details. How many flags were on that screen?

It is either eight or ten. I am quite good with flags but didn't recognise a couple.

[Suff]

Yes, in the end you have to wonder whether we're providing a health service or a translation service. Especially as the doctor's don't speak all those languages.

[miasmum]

Flags? There's posh.

We just have press male or female, day you were born, initial of surname and to be honest if your surgery did that they would know you weren't Francesca. Maybe they should ditch the flags

[Workingman]

The flags are to provide the information about the appointment in the language of the user - it is quite a multi-culti area. Unfortunately our system does not have the male / female option otherwise it would have known.

[Suff]

My GP has similar, there are also about 10 flags. Common system?

[cruiser2]

I have been ordering repeat pescriptions on line. Had problems last year which were sorted.

Had similar problem in March. Aftera phone call to the surgerey got one and a half pages of nformation which meant nothing to me.
So I went to the surgery. After stating my case several times I was seen by a young member of staff. She altered the way I log on
to order my repat pescriptions. I have tried it as I was running low on two of them. It has worked like it should do.
To me this is just a simple thing which should be standard for every surgerey and pharmacy.

So good luck to Mr Warner with his data and trying to get a common system