Weeknotes s07e04
TL;DR: Thinking about our Data Warehouse. Marcos on the CIO Touchbase. SLF session and our transformation schemes.
[week ending 31/01/2025]
Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? As part of the recruitment into one of the first EMAP DDC roles, I was part of a panel to interview for our Training Lead — an important role to coordinate training across the East Midlands Nervecentre Trusts.
I had a short meeting with two people from University of Nottingham school of Computer Science. We talked about our two institutions working closer together. There are some masters projects needing to be kicked off soon, so I’m hoping we can sponsor a couple this time around after missing the boat last year.
What situation caused the strongest emotional response this week? I’d had some second-hand feedback last week, so wanted to meet with the people who’d provided feedback and hear what I could do to improve the situation. I observed how I was slightly apprehensive, but mainly positive and keen to learn more so I could start to address the issue. I was very far from anxious. The thing here that I applied here from the Kings Fund programme I did last year was to consciously think about how I was feeling as I went into that situation.
What did you learn? It was good to meet up with Duncan, the new Chief AHP. Turns out he has relatives that don’t live very far from me. I learnt that although the AHP family includes 14 professions, we only have 11 of those at NUH.
Proteus from TCS came and gave us some thoughts on our Data Warehouse and future suggestions. This has been a long-standing discussion between us, so I was pleased we got the NUH team together to play back the TCS report. One of the acronyms on one of the slides references KQL, which I’ve subsequently looked up and found out more about it. I spent many years using SQL, so it was good to find a SQL to KQL cheat sheet to aid my understanding. I also found out more about columnar storage.
What did you enjoy? Two different 1–2–1s with members of the REACH network, discussing their career aspirations. In one we reviewed their CV and potential job roles they were looking at. In the other we looked at the Skills-Passion Matrix and also User Manuals for me.
I managed to cycle to work for the first time this year — panto took about 2 weeks out of my life. I was terribly slow, and the mud was pretty thick, but delighted to be back on it again.
I was really proud to have raised the profile of the work Marcos had done on forecasting hospital occupancy over the post-Christmas period. This week, Mark and Marcos presented to the weekly gathering of NHS CIOs “the CIO touchbase” from across the country on this work.
It was great to meet Sally from NHSE face to face this week. Sally leads the NHS Service Desk community of practice, and runs the NHSE service desk. She joined us for a couple of days to help complete a review of our desk and give us some thoughts on what we’re doing well and where there is room for improvement.
We had our Digital, Information and Transformation Leadership meeting this week. We tried to fit too much into the short slot we had together, but it was a very energising meeting from my point of view all the same. Colin kicked us off with a ChatGPT-inspired ice breaker — asking us all to think about what job in health we’d like to do for one day. It was fascinating to go round the room and hear the view, which ranged from health secretary to being a porter. We took a moment to celebrate the achievements of the year that I’d shared out at the end of last year. We also talked about progress of our strategy and financial bids for this coming financial year.
Kay finalised this month’s Digital, Information and Transformation update, which I was able to share out across the Trust.
What did you achieve? This week was the Trust Senior Leadership Forum. This is a gathering of the Trust’s c.200 most senior leaders. Paul (CFO) and I led a session on transformation, where we got various leads to discuss the Trust 5 Strategic priorities and the four strategic transformation workstreams. I think the session went well and the room seemed well engaged. We got each person to capture thoughts on a MS-Form, so I look forward to seeing the results when the deadline for post-meeting thoughts ends next week.
I had a really good catch up with Lisa about everything from EPR programme, to digital dictation and links to the PMO.
I got a first draft of a paper for Board Development next month completed, which is focused on the Darzi review, and in particular the Analogue to Digital shift.
What are you looking forward to next week?
- Engaging with the 5-day challenge material from Race Equality Matters as part of Race Equality week
- Reviewing all the expressions of interest for the 4 places on the Shadow Committee of the Digital and Data Strategic Committee
- Quarterly Service Review meeting with GE
- Taking part in a moderation exercise for a bit of a national procurement I supported
- Gold on Call x 2
- 1–2–1 with Anthony
- On the panel for Consultant interviews
Interesting Stuff read/consumed:
- AI won’t eat your job, but it will eat your salary.
- AI in the NHS: Are You Ready? by Jack Rodber.
- Artificial Intelligence is a Horseless Carriage. Interestingly I only just spotted that this was from 2018.
Books finished this week:
- Fiction: Persuasion by Jane Austen. That’s one of the two classics I have a target to read this year ticked off.
- Non-Fiction: None
Currently Reading:
- Fiction: None
- Non-Fiction: Essentialism by Greg McKeown
