James Higgott

London Ulez reduced nitrogen dioxide to legal limit, mayor says The mayor of London says the fall in airborne toxins is due to the Ultra low emission zone expansion.

184 years earlier than predicted, London has met the legal limits for toxic NO2 for the first time.

This historic milestone proves that bold action like expanding ULEZ works, protecting children’s health and giving millions cleaner air to breathe.

Currently, many GPs like to turn these systems off once they have received a certain number of requests for the day. It's similar to how they manage capacity via the phone.

There isn't a single digital triage service. There are about a dozen of these "online consultation" tools on the market (such as Accurx Patient Triage and Patchs. They vary in how they work from a simple form asking "What's up?" that is sent to a human to review, to a complex flow of questions.

Digital ID scheme: explainer

More full DSIT guide to digital id, rather better than the No10 announcement which still doesn’t link to it www.gov.uk/government/p...

This is excellent news. My friend John and I will be trying to get tickets.

I'm in a pub in Brixton for a talk about changing pub culture in Brixton.

It's part of the Festival of Encounters and the rest of the programme looks good if that's your thing and you're nearby festivalofencounters.com

My two (7&8) love Flip 7, Hey! That's My Fish, King of Tokyo and Deep Sea Adventure.

I'm going to Tortoise.
I hadn't spotted it was at 3pm, so thanks for that warning.

It demonstrates that I am still down with the kids.

5. NHS decentralisation is a strength. Primary Care in particular, but local NHS in general, is incredibly innovative. That is where the test + learn happens. The Centre needs to get better at giving local teams the basic national products (App, Notify, etc) and helping to scale up what works.

4. We already have the capability, the standards and the technology to build high quality national services. What we lack is the mandate to do so. Local areas can mostly do whatever they want on this front. And we don't invest enough in getting adoption of the national systems we do have.

3. The NHS is highly hierarchical, and this is baked in.
One Director of Nursing I worked with referred to her teams in military terms - taking orders from the top and doing what they were told.
The culture at the most senior levels of NHSE and DHSC is (with some exceptions) "do as I say".

2. Test + learn + rapid iteration in a clinical context is hard because people can die. Small experiments for trivial things are easy. But to try new models of care you need pilots and firsts of type, with the full clinical wrapper you'd expect in a service that's already operating at scale.

Great piece. I really enjoyed it. Thanks for posting it. Some thoughts:

1. I agree with your points about the capability needed. But I don't agree that adopting your three basic principles is "the easy bit". I think they are harder than the 3 issues you list afterwards.

I've read it. I like it. I'm going to read it again, then I have questions/thoughts.

What does digital-era healthcare really mean? A long read on the NHS, the 10 Year Plan, and what it would take to unstick the system

This new blog post from @jamestplunkett.bsky.social (informed by the thinking he's been doing with @richardpope.org and me) is essential reading.

Ha ha. Like all the best engineers.

It may be a bit obvious to pick Star Wars, but R2D2 is notably competent.

I really enjoyed it too, and the sole reason I went was because I saw Jeff Vandermeer post that it was 'creepy'.

7 flags from 7 different countries wrapped around a tree trunk in West Norwood. You can see the flags of England, Jamaica, Poland, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sweden, Turkey and one other that I can't be sure about.

I took this photo of some flags in south London a couple of weeks ago and I much prefer it to the racist nonsense that was on our streets yesterday.

Like in the Christmas Radio Times.

I'm arriving late Wednesday. See you on the Thursday. Top hat!

had some stuff to get off my chest about strategies ~ gilest.org/notes/strate...

Those engineers are really urn-ing their keep.

Yes, and the latest FHIR API work is going very well.

Missed opportunity to make a GothWifi pun.

I couldn't make it into the office today due to the strikes. Instead I'm working on a park bench in the glorious sunshine thanks to superfast #GovWifi from the local crematorium.

Fancy a change? Seeking air traffic control for DHSC digital projects - small to large, mostly national not NHS-facing. Open to all flavours of ddat specialists. flexible, diverse team based in London and Leeds. Talk to me, or to one of the team. www.civilservicejobs.service.gov.uk/csr/index.cg...

It's also a great cautionary metaphor. You might start out thinking you're going all the way from Euston to Leeds but can you still deliver value and benefits of your project doesn't make it past Birmingham.

It's got everything you want to avoid: exaggerated promises, unforeseen complications, poor governance and worse luck.