In our latest interview series, Angela Sharda speaks to Stephen Slough, CIO at Dorset CCG, Dorset HealthCare University NHS Foundation Trust and Dorset County Hospital NHS Foundation Trust about his role and how digital health has been impacted by Covid-19.
Talk us through why you decided to become a CIO
I’ve always enjoyed working with technology; I like helping people and finding solutions to problems. In my early IT career, I was working in delivery and the more practical side of the job. I didn’t want to become a leader that didn’t go through the process of learning the different aspects of the technical job. I always liked the idea of running a team and my ambition grew from there.
What projects have you been working on over the last 12 months?
We have been supporting colleagues piloting a remote consultation solution that we have been trying out and Covid-19 has pushed this all forward, so what we were hoping to roll out this year has now been done in a couple of days.
We have been driving forward new ways of working in primary care – with all the GPs, looking at how we can support pharmacy and different imaging solutions.
We have done some work with our data warehouse – we have developed the Dorset Insight and Intelligence Service, where we pulled together data from all different organisations in the county to start to give us a view about the patient’s journey. It’s provided us with some really useful insights with the Covid-19 situation. It has also allowed us to present an interactive dashboard for system status which has been widely used.
What challenges have you encountered in the last 12 months and how did you overcome them?
Money is always a challenge in the NHS but another problem is the scale of work that we are trying to undertake.
The complexity that comes with these projects – they may look simple from the outside but trying to get organisations that have been in competition with each other and now make them work together is quite difficult.
This takes a change of behaviour and making people understand that working together could benefit the population. The change of attitude has been difficult to overcome. We need to be pragmatic and build relationships and trust. It’s important to remember to not over promise on what you can deliver.
What impact has Covid-19 had on health tech and what are the main lessons that have been learnt during this time?
This period has been all about remote connectivity that’s for our staff and patients who are connecting back into the care setting. We’ve had to rapidly develop some work on infrastructure in order for those interactions to take place. The patients enjoy this way of interacting and the clinicians are engaging with it.
During this pandemic our digital teams have worked so hard to make sure our NHS colleagues have the tools and technology they need to keep their care services going. Our CCG and primary care staff have been able to work from home for a while and for them it’s been a relatively pain-free journey.
One of our trusts has previously seen around 400 people on an average day connecting remotely to our service but since Covid-19 we have seen this number being pushed up to around 3000. This has meant that there has been a huge amount of extra work, such as, the service to support the VPNs and laying in extra network connectivity in the building so that we can connect our colleagues back in when the data traffic is coming from outside our network. It’s been challenging but we have been supported by the carriers that we use and our internal teams have gone over and beyond at this time.
Covid-19 has shown me not to underestimate people in my team, I knew the NHS workforce had some great talent but this pandemic has highlighted this. We have some great people in the NHS – resourceful, professional and driven. We need to continue to invest in the development of our workforce.
What is your advice to aspiring CIOs?
If you have ambition, the drive to keep going and the vision to deliver through technology then this job is for you. Learn from the people that you work with and the leaders you have worked with in the past. This role is all about the people; you need to have a good relationship with your colleagues and clients – take care of them and treat them well. Lastly, don’t give up, be prepared to learn and act with conviction.
