You can outsource risk, but you can't outsource reputation


Cyber attack hits major London hospitals. ‘Significant impact’ on King’s College Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ and south-east London GP services, say NHS leaders. A cyber attack has crippled three major London hospitals, causing operations, blood tests and transfusions to be delayed for weeks. The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) is investigating the source of the ransomware attack, which led to chaos in A&E departments on Tuesday. NHS leaders said there had been a “significant impact” on King’s College Hospital, Guy’s and St Thomas’ and GP services in south-east London. The Telegraph understands that security sources believe the hack to bear the hallmarks of a criminal activity. The attackers behind it are believed to be

Over the last few weeks, I've had several people ask me about the recent hack on the NHS. A ransomware attack has meant that several hospitals have cancelled operations and there is now an urgent demand for blood donors. What does it say about the state of NHS IT that this attack has happened? Nothing. […]

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Nurses should spend less time helping patients and more time ordering bandages


Crop of an oil painting. The Agnew Clinic (or The Clinic of Dr. Agnew) an 1889 oil painting by American artist Thomas Eakins. It shows three male doctors operating on a patient. A female nurse looks on.

I was speaking to the absolute epitome of a pub bore. Flapping his jaws about how the problem with the NHS was too many admin staff doing absolutely nothing. "Quite right!" I said, feverishly agreeing with his red-faced ranting, "Nurses should spend less time helping patients and more time ordering bandages!" He paused, slightly, as […]

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That costs the same as five nurses!


Pamphlet for the New National Health service.

Tom Dolan has an excellent blog post which touches, in part, on comparative cost. If you're working for, say, a TV company - then you know exactly how much an hour of TV programming costs on average. If you want to do something like build a website, it's quite natural for people to evaluate its […]

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Poorly folded letters lead to exposure of medical data


A letter addressed to me. Just inside the plastic window you can see the word "colonoscopies".

I returned home from holiday to a pile of letters. Mostly junk, a few Christmas cards, and something from the NHS. This is what the envelope looked like: As it happens, I'm not particularly concerned about who knows I had a fairly normal medical procedure. I've blogged a bit about it and Tweeted about the […]

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Giving Blood - Part Ⅲ


I just made a donation. Find out how you can at blood.co.uk.

Last time it was a mid-pandemic trip to a giant shopping mall. This time, a pre-Xmas trip to a youth centre. Glamorous! I always feel slightly boring when I answer the pre-donation questionnaire. No, I haven't been travelling to exotic locations, having sex with multiple strangers in exchange for drugs and money. I could blame […]

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Vax³💉💉💉


Leaflet describing SpikeVax.

I am in awe of how simple the booster shot booking process was. I visited the site on my phone while in bed and hungover, typed in my NHS number, confirmed a few details, and it listed a pharmacy a 20 minute walk away as having appointments. A couple of weeks later and my 2xAZ […]

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Three Things I Wish I'd Known About NHS Technology


Pamphlet for the New National Health service.

It has been a year since I stopped working for NHSX. A few weeks ago, someone reached out to me inquiring about a job there. They wanted to know what they needed to know before joining. As well as the normal moaning about the quality of vending machine coffee, I told them about three things […]

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Vaxed and Waxed


Me holding my NHS vaccination card.

Nine weeks ago, I got my first does of the AZ vaccine. Yesterday, I received my second. Despite all the dire warnings of overloaded websites and limited slots, the booking process was boringly anticlimactic. I entered my NHS number, date of birth, postcode - and was then given a choice of locations. I picked one, […]

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Excel as a mapping tool


System dialogue saying opening Hospital Map XLSX.

About a million years ago, my wife's work sent her on a training course optimistically titled "How To Use Excel As A Database." We were both horrified. Excel is a perfectly good spreadsheet program - but it is categorically not a database! OK, it has rows and columns which sorta look like a database table. […]

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Weeknotes: Vaccinated - Part 1


Me holding my NHS vaccination card.

I know exactly what I was doing on 9th April 2020. I was worrying about open-sourcing the NHS Covid Tracing app. I was worrying about tech standards for booking test slots. I was worrying if I'd ever see my family and friends again. I was worrying if the NHS websites would contain enough semantic HTML […]

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