While I recognise the valid points made elsewhere in this discussion about this guy’s luck and/or cheating, I can’t help wonder about how we would react differently to an AI “oracle” that gave useful solutions to problems we can’t /couldn’t solve. Where is the boundary between experiential evidence and statistical “proof”?
For the benefit of some below, the design shown in the news article is only a concept image [1]. The final design will be revealed nearer the time the new note is issued.
I'm the tech lead for the NHS website (www.nhs.uk) and I oversee the team who are building this frontend library.
With respect, I think you fail to appreciate the importance of effective communication of health and care information to members of the public.
The NHS is under incredible financial strain due to an ageing population and one of the UK government's key strategic goals is to reduce demand on GPs and hospitals through channel shift, i.e. providing much better information online so that citizens can prevent illness and also find better avenues for care (e.g. their pharmacist).
This is much more difficult than you might think. For example, a very large number of people seeking health and care advice in the UK are "old" and not used to using the internet. At NHS Digital we have had to carry out extensive research into how best to communicate advice in a way that is suitable for all audiences.
NHS Digital has a key role in the UK health and care system and our goal is to share (and perhaps mandate) our technical solutions to these communication problems. Through this we aim to save the NHS money and promote better citizen health and care.
In addition to NHS.UK there is the Empower the Person programme that is all about supporting patients to access the right service first time. Have a look at www.nhs.uk/transformation Recent example of improvements shows a GP Practice reducing many weeks wait times for GP appointments to a day or two by introducing triage and Online Consultations. There is also 'channel shift' by pointing patients at more appropriate services: 111 Online, Community Pharmacist etc
I'm the tech lead for the NHS website (www.nhs.uk) and I oversee the team who are building this frontend library.
Your comment is a good explanation of how things work.
My employer, NHS Digital, is working on this frontend library as a way to spread good practice throughout the federated health and care system you describe.
In short, we spend money doing the research on how best to provide information to users/patients and then we promote the uptake of the technology we develop to best satisfy them - with the overall goal of improving self-care and reducing the need for costly GP appointments and hospital visits.
I'm the tech lead for the NHS website (www.nhs.uk) and I oversee the team who are building this frontend library.
I largely agree with what you have written above, however things work very differently now in NHS Digital.
Every piece of work we embark upon is based on strict requirements from a commissioning body (typically NHS England or Public Health England) and is managed tightly according to budget and demonstrated realised benefits.
We have a highly capable layer of delivery managers who help translate and interpret these "business goals" into things which our agile teams of developers can work towards.
It's not perfect, but we're improving all the time. If we fail then the money taps get turned off quickly, and we move onto something else.
This is a very difficult question to answer comprehensively because our "website" does a lot more than just present information to people! Most of the content you can see on www.nhs.uk is Python/Django/Wagtail plus a whole heap of infrastructure. But there are aspects of our service written in C# or JS for example.
Ah, thank you. RSS would be great for me (and that API looks really neat!), but I meant more generally - perhaps for people who don't browse HN.
The content on Behind the Headlines is fantastic, but the page seems a bit unloved. If I search for "health news" on Google it doesn't appear at all (I checked the first 7 pages of results). The SEO for the individual articles is admittedly much better. I think I personally found the page by accident when I was looking for some news about the NHS.
So, I'm not sure what I'd recommend (other than perhaps an email newsletter for the less technically-inclined). It seems like you have a real diamond in the rough there with great content which is let down by presentation.
I'm the tech lead for the NHS website (www.nhs.uk) and I oversee the team who are building this frontend library.
NHS Digital are working on a "Standards Library" encompassing how to go about building healthcare websites and services (as opposed to generic government services) which encompasses not only the design of a website but also the whole lifecycle of the service.
We still have work to do, but I think 2019 will see the release and adoption of our ideas across the UK!
