The Regatta
Busy one last week. These weeknotes coming to you late as I had fun sailing boats all weekend.
We did more things than this but mostly we:
- continued preparing the first round of research and testing, including consent and ethics docs plus outlining the first prototype to test
- turned ideas for a technical spike into a proper proposal we can plan work around
- enquired about using OpenSAFELY to statistically analyse GP patient records at scale, which will save precious time and money from running pilots with real users
- wrote, edited and published a design history on combining data from multiple sources, which we did at a recent hackathon
- edited another design history so we can get approval from partner teams
- had a really useful session with another partner team, learning about their release plans and how that impacts our alpha
- refined our hypotheses and assumptions again
- roadmapped the alpha, and sketched out our cycles of work
- mapped stakeholders and identified patterns for engaging them, and
- started working through what proportionate clinical safety looks like for alpha.
It was a chunky week. A couple of times I felt like I had lots to do, but Jamie and Rose kindly took a couple of things off my hands.
We’re held back from making progress a little bit. One of our partner teams is launching a private beta, which makes them very busy as you can imagine, and does hold us back from learning more about their world. That’s not something we can really avoid, so I’m making good use of the Blocked column on our kanban board.
I’m making sure to call out where systemic factors mean we can’t do anything at national scale or have to take a smaller slice. It was useful to read Dai’s post (linked below), which reminds us that momentum builds trust – which creates the space for wider change. But building up this evidence is important, because (as mentioned on last week’s soapbox) I suspect it’ll be needed to either address concerns in the press or feed in to designs of the Single Patient Record.
Other things
- Still enjoying borrowing books from the library, although after finishing The Living Mountain, I’ve gone back to reading The Dawn of Everything on Kindle while I wait for Empire of AI to be available.
- Also borrowed and devoured the audiobook of This Sceptred Isle: Empire to learn about the history of English colonisation. Despite glossing over England’s colonisation of Wales, it was pretty good and the contemporary accounts of colonising the Americas were enlightening.
- Had fun in Pisa and Volterra, and my first experience driving abroad was fine. Randomly found Ombra della Sera, a restaurant in Volterra serving excellent food. Add it to your lists if you’re visiting Tuscany.
- Saw Billy Ocean and Tom Jones in Crystal Palace park. Really enjoyable night, and Tom Jones has still got it.
- Had fun sailing an olfactory wooden Seabird boat at the Abersoch Regatta this weekend. We came fifth out of five. Need to be better at crossing the start line and knowing the course next year!
- Looking forward to a relaxing time at home this weekend…although I do have an itch to go fastpacking or bikepacking, a couple of nights camping.
Bookmarks
- Modernising the vehicle logbook by delivering value early, 8 mins. The DVLA modernised its vehicle logbook by delivering small, valuable digital services early instead of a big, slow overhaul. They started with simple tasks for car dealers to build trust and show progress quickly. This approach helped them gain momentum and improve the service step by step. (Aforementioned post by Dai Vaughan.)
- A barium meal: what the Government Digital Service’s story reveals about a Civil Service that struggles to reform itself, 15 mins. The Government Digital Service (GDS) showed how digital reform can improve government but also revealed deep resistance to change in the Civil Service. Despite some progress, the Civil Service struggles with outdated mindsets, siloed control, and a lack of bold leadership. True transformation needs political will and new ways of working beyond just management reforms.
- Don’t be a meat proxy, 2 mins. Any time anyone in a meeting, ‘Well, Claude says…’, you’ve now got a retort. A post encouraging people to not just copy AI answers to others without understanding them first. Read, check, and explain the AI output in your own words to add real value.
- An AI- armed public could bring the British government to a halt:, 5 mins
- At least half a dozen senior NHS leaders linked to Palantir, 6 mins
- Getting electronic patient records right: from digital notebooks to intelligent assets, 4 mins
- 4 things to do before integrating breast screening with GP records, 4 mins
- Using clinical judgement to improve vaccination record deduplication, 5 mins
- Weeknote 6: is it really that complicated?, 2 mins
- OpenAI and Anthropic models went rogue in cyber tests, UK watchdog says, 4 mins
- LLMs reward expertise, 5 mins
- The best way to protect NHS patients’ data, 2 mins
- Design as science fiction, 5 mins
- How to end the cycle of mistrust between the Treasury and everybody else, 3 mins
- The amber trap, 7 mins
- The myth of Treasury control: What’s wrong with the UK’s public spending system and how to fix it, 6 mins
- Credit where it is due corner, 2 mins