New factory manager gears up for full production as NHS transformation drive gets underway, writes Julian Patterson
The government has announced plans to build a transformation factory within NHS England after a major review concluded that the NHS needs to “transform how we transform”.
The report was ordered by former health secretary Matt Hancock, who was frustrated by the slow rate of adoption of IT by the health service.
Mr Hancock commissioned former Tesco executive Laura Wade-Gery to lead the review, which was carried out by consultants McDisney.
It found that the health service is missing out on the digital revolution because it does not have a credible online shopping or cryptocurrency offer and is too slow to adopt critical technologies such as artificial intelligence, electric scooters and Netflix.
The review, which cost more than £600,000 and took two years to report, also concluded that:
- Transformation could accelerate change or even make it happen
- Services should be compatible with patients, wherever possible
- IT is exciting and innovative, but can also be complex and expensive
- Data is important and should be shared, but not with everyone
- Things should be planned, not just done at random
- Everything should be organised in a sensible way
Wade-Gery’s Magic Kingdom
The transformation factory is to be based at NHS England’s London office, Skipton House, which is to be renamed the Magic Kingdom.
The factory will be responsible for mass production of transformation components such as leverage, agility, scalability, methodology, focus and clarity, and for fabricating high-tech jargon at scale including devops, machine learning, cloud, toolchain, edge-compute and containerisation.
Eventually the factory is expected to satisfy most of the NHS’ needs for levers of value, alignment, architecture, core infrastructure and continuous improvement. Excess production could even see the NHS becoming a supplier of transformation raw materials and products to other government departments and overseas health systems.
Through the looking glass
One of the report’s author’s, McDisney intern Alice Wonderland, said: “IT is all about computers, data and networks. Transformation happens at the intersection of people, pastries and post-it notes. Traditionally they’ve been seen as separate disciplines with groups of ‘experts’ working in different organisations. It makes more sense to lump them together in a bloated bureaucracy with an ill-defined management structure and give it a silly name.”
Previous attempts to transform the NHS from a healthcare organisation to a fantasy-based IT powerhouse have failed. Transformation factory manager William Wonka said that he was confident that this time it would be the same.
“The suspense is terrible. I hope it will last,” Mr Wonka added.
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