Pixelated pathways – a digital health blog

  • NHS Data – do we need a map or atlas?

    Die ganze Welt in einem Kleberblat – Heinrich Bünting 1581 Building on their recent report on preparing the NHS for the “AI era“, the Tony Blair Institute have announced an effort to map the the national data architecture of the NHS. This builds on the work published last year in The Lancet Digital Health which…

  • More agency. Not more agencies

    Weeknotes 1.9 Last week, attending UK Kidney Week for an excellent clinical update gave interesting context on the proposed UK MedTech pathway (join the consultation!).The ambition here is fantastic – creating a structure for assessing evidence (and affordability) to allow proven technologies to be more rapidly adopted into routine commissioning. However, framing this work against…

  • Data and clinical backlog management

    Weeknotes 1.8 The last week has posed interesting questions about productivity and what this means in the context of digital health technologies.  It’s clear that although we have more mature clinical systems and data sharing technologies than at any time in the history of the NHS, staff, patients and commissioners do not consistently feel the benefits. This…

  • Weeknotes 1.7

    I had a break and you should too… Coming back from a week off I’ve got the Inbox dread that so many people come back to. Sadly I’ve missed Email Debt Forgiveness Day but will be belatedly celebrating over the next week… Whilst changes in working patterns have had some huge advantages there has been…

  • Weeknotes 1.6

    Seismic changes! In the same week that Google again has suffered from another less than successful AI product launch (helpfully emphasising the importance of being confident in your training data!), EPIC have launched their first open source tool, seismometer. This should allow local assessments of models and prevent the type of outcome that, in retrospect,…

  • Weeknotes 1.5

    Connect Conference 2024 This week the 13th Annual North West Connect Conference, hosted by the NW Digital Skills Development Network (DSDN) returned to Blackpool for two excellent days of education and building links in the profession. The closing presentation from Carmel McConnell (change activist and the founder of Magic Breakfast) challenged delegates to take action. That…

  • CCIO Weeknotes 1.4

    Safety in the white space Understanding how and why something works is critical be able to evaluate if it is safe to use. Computers and programmes deliver predictable results within the confines of different programming languages which, if not properly understood, can lead to unexpected results. Javascript, the most commonly used programming language is infamous for…