I'm calling 'bullshit' on the whole Consultancy scam. @NHSX have commissioned @kscopehealth to help them produce a Digital Clinical Safety Strategy.
Consultancy takes cash, then go and ask dozens of actual (unpaid) experts.
So the Strategy will actually have been written by unpaid NHS safety and other clinical experts, but a private company pockets a wedge of cash for organising a few Teams calls.
On today's call they had us writing our responses in the Teams chat to make their job even easier.
@NHSX seems to be a machine for recruiting for highly paid Director of <NOUN> posts, and then outsourcing the thing that Director is supposed to have expertise in to an outside company.
I wouldn't mind if this "External Consultancy For Everything" model was resulting in high quality decisions. But it is very much apparent that consultancies are making stupid decisions, expensively, and unaccountably.
Case in point: @PA_Consulting were commissioned to plan for the IT systems behind COVID Vaccination in early-mid 2020. Their report has never been published.
All mass vaccination in this country (eg flu) is done by GPs, but PAC chose a *Pharmacy system* for COVID vax IT
Because of this, the existing GP suppliers @EMISGroup@TPP_SystmOne were initially told NOT to create point of care vaccination solutions.
It was only in Oct/Nov 2020 GP IT leaders got to hear about this report, by which time it was too late to change direction.
The COVID vaccination programme has been a success DESPITE, not because of, the Pinnacle system.
And GPs have delivered 75% of vaccines so far. We could have told @NHSEngland this would be the case, but PAC seemed not to know.
Just one of many failures of external consultancies, advising the NHS on health tech without even the haziest notion of how the NHS works, without any clinical knowledge, and without any technical knowledge.
Just when NHSX was all settled in and progress was starting to happen... No eruptions for years... New NHSE Transformation Directorate pops up like a shiny new Icelandic archipelago
...clouds of ash will obscure a clear view of anything for years. Progress will be impeded while locals move their goats away from the lava flows
...management consultancies line up to bathe in the fresh and copious hot springs created by the eruption...
Follow the #Rewired20 hashtag for updates on the Digital Health Rewired Conference, where we're running what we think is the first (or one of the first) Developer Conferences specifically aimed at Health Tech digitalhealthrewired.com/digital-health…
Among our great line-up we have the #NHSLogin team, demoing how you can integrate NHS Login into your patient-facing apps, for verified patient identity. Real APIs, demoed and taught to you by the team that made them.
Senior @NHSDigital developer @b_seven_e will be talking about her experiences of running an apprenticeship scheme for health developers within NHS Digital, the lessons learned and the benefits of the scheme.
I've kept quiet about this, but now ready to announce: I'm running a Health Developer Conference alongside the REWIRED @DHRewired conf - a hands-on, practical health tech conference inspired by, er, 'non-health' tech conferences. Talk is cheap - show me the code.
@DHRewired Lineup so far is looking pretty good! So far we have talks and workshops from: