Beauty is what’s on the inside. There is beauty in diversity. A fascination with beauty can become a tyranny, unbearable and drive us to despair. Beauty is the manifestation of the secret laws of nature. They are unfathomable.
Across the room there is something that is beautiful. The petals are as if they have been sculptured. They are the colour of a maiden’s blush. Stamens, dipped in chocolate pollen. The stems, ramrod straight.
A vase of ‘Stargazer’ lilies. Their faces look up, into the warm, autumn sun. Exotic and scrumptious.
I can tell you where to buy a bunch, I can explain how to grow them. I can even tell you their botanical name.
I know this because, from the other side of the room, I lifted my iPhone, thumbed open Google search, hit the little square box and took a picture of these beauties. The Google-Lens data-base did the rest.
It recognised the picture and gave me an encyclopaedia of the what, where and how.
Just for fun I took a picture of the table-lamp. Google-Lens told me I can buy another one from the Conran shop, it’s in stock, how much it will cost and when I could expect delivery.
Technology is glamorous. Information and knowledge is beautiful.
The NHS, on the other hand, has a pretty ugly record when it comes to the management of patients and systems by the use of technology.
Despite a huge Corona-kick up the backside, that has shoved remote consultations front-and-centre, diagnostics and some internal communications stuff smartened up, I fear we are a lifetime away from introducing the NHS version of Google-Lens and all the benefits it could bring.
At the Tory Party virtual conference on Saturday delegates were treated to aWhite Paper on the future of technology in the NHS.
Ten NHS CIO-types and a handful of suppliers, whom, I am guessing, paid a good few-quid, to be included, gave us thirty pages of… frankly, seen-it-before, drivel.
It starts with an introduction from the former Secretary of State for Health, Stephen Dorrell, whose company produced this tosh.
I had the great good fortune to have been around when Dorrell was doing his thing. He is a thinker. This rubbish might make him some money but it diminishes him.
In ten paragraphs he tells us, the NHS has made meal of IT and the menu doesn’t look much better for the future. Err... and...
There are over 20 ‘should’ and ‘must’ recommendations. Not a whisper of ‘how’… just nuggets such as;
‘Purchasers should explore greater use of federations or managed service models, especially in those areas which are not core to health and care provision, such as digital technology for finance or HR…’
If the ten NHS contributors to the paper mean outsourcing or privatising the back-office, they should say so. They’ll be popular with the Tories but I doubt they’ll be popular with the the people they work with.
In fact, I don’t think any of them know what they mean. Can you make sense of this…
‘…While integration to drive interoperability should be the responsibility of the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), minimum digital functionality should be overseen by NHSX, seeking to overcome the challenges presented by a plurality of providers.’
I think it means someone should step up and get their act together to sort out interoperability, that NHS CIOs have been flanneling about with, since the Newcastle Declaration six years ago.
And, if they are recommending two departments should be responsible for, essentially, the same thing… they are bonkers.
How about this…
‘… All citizens will ultimately become digital citizens, but they must feel empowered and confident. Alongside a digitally aware workforce…’
Are the NHS workforce not citizens?
Was it not the workforce that drove all the tech-changes that enable covid-cocooned people to talk to the relatives, overturned daft GDPR rules to share information, opened WhatsApp channels and are now fighting a rear-guard-action to hang on to the changes that the NHS seems intent on clawing back.
Take a picture of NHS IT strategy, with Google-Lens and it would, likely, give you the life story of Heath Robinson and a picture of a Voltaic Pile.
The combination of political neglect and moribund IT leadership have got us here.
This is what I'm hearing; if you know different tell me, in confidence, here
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>>I'm hearing - Milton Keynes is looking for a new chair.
>> I'm hearing - at the virtual Tory Party Conference, No18 told the that '99% of all GP appointments are now, on line.' Alas, we know that was a 'mis-spoke...'
