May 10, 2013
Well I have done it. My book Stop Saving the NHS and Start Reinventing it has been published in Kindle and paperback. It's aimed at NHS leaders and managers, but will probably interest anyone who is interested in the shape of 21st century healthcare.June 22, 2012
Alan Turing Enigma
In the photographs, dressed in jacket and dark tie, he looks like the prefect at my grammar school who cowered against the corridor walls when other pupils approached him. The mathematician and visionary Alan Turing is the subject of a compact exhibition at the Science Museum in London.
During the Second World War Turing famously helped to crack the German Enigma code using one of the earliest electronic computers, the 'bombe'. The cracking of the cipher, which the Germans believed impossible, probably shortened the war by years, saving countless lives.
Dozens of wheels rotated in each bombe making a noise like 'a thousand knitting needles'. And a legion of bombes supported decryption on an industrial scale. So effective was it that on one occasion a message was decoded in less than 15 minutes.
When the war ended, Turing worked on the government Advanced Computing Engine (ACE) project. Before such machines were invented, large scale arithmetical calculations were carried out by teams of specially trained women.
Computers were then quickly applied to complex problems in chemistry and life sciences. At Manchester University, Turing researched the relationship between mathematics and cell growth, beginning a new field he named Morphogenesis. At Oxford, in 1957, Dorothy Hodgkin used Pilot ACE and X-ray crystallography (a technique also fundamental to the discovery of the structure of DNA) to help her to crack the structure of vitamin B12 and was awarded a Nobel Prize.
Turing was condemned for homosexuality in an era when it was illegal. Under constant surveillance as a security risk, he apparently took a bite from a cyanide-laced apple. His death was officially declared suicide, though the exact circumstances remain a mystery.
As a leader in computation--particularly in programming--he deserved better. However, in recent decades he has been recognised as one of the greatest thinkers of the 20th Century.
June 17, 2012
Information Governance Industry
Has the NHS gone compliance crazy? In a few years information governance has expanded from a toolkit into an industry. NHS trusts are spending more and more on ensuring compliance—a trend accelerated by the large fines being handed out.
June 10, 2012
Twenty First Century Healthcare with IT
There was a good turnout of clinicians at the planning session with an NHS client the other evening. Main strategic work streams were quickly agreed, and we got onto enablers. I expected the usual suspects: more consultants, more nurses and more money. I was wrong. Almost all of the groups chose IT as a major enabler of change for the better.
Continue reading "Twenty First Century Healthcare with IT" »
May 30, 2012
Smart Phone
Wakes me in the morning, and I choose not to snooze. Check my emails at breakfast (quicker than firing up the laptop). Weather fine today, but cooling in the week--which is OK because the London Underground has a good service on all lines.
Check the news and tweets sitting on the Central line. Find the client’s office with GPS. Call my Mother on the way.
In Starbucks before next meeting and quick notes typed in. Read chapter of Hunger Games using the Kindle application (not great literature but engaging). Tackle a couple of chess puzzles. Get them right: brain clear this morning—always a sign. Check my notes on Evernote. Take a photo of an article in the free Metro so I can look at it later.
Life is a succession of choices, and this helps you to make them. Smart these phones.
