The NHS is one of the greatest ideas and institutions in Britain. I’m deeply committed to the idea of healthcare free at the point of use and how the NHS puts that in action every day of the year. I’m fortunate enough to rarely use the NHS but this summer I witnessed for myself the dedication of the NHS staff and their work. It made me humble to witness the NHS in action.
Yesterday the BBC and others reported the NHS in England will prohibit the purchase of Fax Machines. This seems to be part of a wider effort by the new Health Secretary to modernise the service. See the Health Advisory Board here.
This issue highlights the difficulty for IT professionals. We know there are many ways to improve productivity in the NHS but how do we convince non IT professionals to change?
I’m convinced we have to improve telling the stories of how technology can improve how we work. Today as an industry we typically lead on numbers. Deploying technology x will save y pounds and z in man hours. These remain necessary (many projects still require CFO/Finance approval) but we lack an emotive side. We need to tell how technology will actually impact people, these are almost certainly intangible but we should stand by these stories. Let me provide one small real life example in a video conferencing project I deployed a couple of years ago.
The company spent circa $5million on video conferencing globally and within a year saved much more than that in travel savings directly attributed to video conferencing. Everyone from CEO down was happy how the project went.
If the above was left to itself it seems to make sense but let me add this real story I received during the implementation. It was from a manager in the business.
I really appreciate you providing me the ability to have video chat. I’m based in the UK and have one direct report in Sweden. I constantly feel guilty that I can not have the same interaction with my direct report in Sweden that I have with my team in the UK. If I were to visit Sweden every week it would mean I’d have to be away from home consistently and I have a young family. Before video chat I was faced with the choice of feeling guilty about not providing enough quality time for my work colleague or my family. Now I can accomplish both and you’ve reduced my stress levels considerably. Thank you so much.
So coming back to the Fax Machine in the NHS – what stress and guilt can we help reduce by replacing the Analog Workplace with Digital Workplace? Let’s find those stories and share them widely. Let’s also be cognisant that forcibly replacing the Fax Machine may in fact generate more stress for people who have worked in a specific way for many years so when we make changes let’s make sure we do that with those people in mind too.