Weeknote 10: 6 months in

This week was the start of month 6 as Head of UCD in Digital Screening in NHS England. Here are some things I am thinking about: The NHS is not one place, it’s a network of businesses and trusts held together by a common understanding of risk. The closest I ever came to this was in banking but it’s still not quite the same. Almost piece of design work is deeply shaped by reputational, clinical and cybersecurity risks. What it does to design teams, I think, is that it creates a sense of unease about making decisions. Every decision has to be highly collaborative and the team have to be able to hold their nerve as they head towards the next decision because something else could happen to slow or stop things entirely. A game of snakes and ladders in other words. Your patience will be rewarded. I can see why people stay in the NHS for a long time, it rewards loyalty. To be able to see something over the line is pretty great. I’m only a bystander to the HPV self testing work one of the…