Inclusive Digital Transformation Week: looking ahead
We’ve made it to the end of our first ‘Inclusive Digital Transformation’ week! We’ve loved sharing some of the work we’ve had the privilege to deliver and shining a light on our team and the people and organisations we are partnering with.
After two years of looking at how digital innovation can help tackle health inequalities and making sure the digital transformation of health and care doesn’t compound existing inequality, we’ve made some progress but we know we’re not done yet.
It’s important to recognise that Inclusive Digital Transformation doesn’t belong to us. It is all of ours and we all need to take collective responsibility to make sure that we don’t waste the opportunity that we have to put inclusion at the heart of digital transformation before it’s too late, and before we sleepwalk into creating a two-tiered health system. One for those who have and can, and one for those that don’t and can’t.
We’re proud of the reach and recognition of our programmes and of the difference being made across systems and on the national agenda, most notably with the Digital Health Inequality Pioneers programme. This has felt like a major step in pushing Inclusive Digital Transformation out into the system to take forward.
“Inclusive Digital Transformation in the Health Inequalities domain is central to the delivery of NHS England and Improvement’s strategic priorities. Through innovative programmes that establish and employ digital guiding principles and digital solutions that are co-produced with the input of community groups, we are seeing progressive examples for other Systems to consider, as they develop their own initiatives that mitigate against the misery of digital exclusion.”
Changes
This week we’ve also heard from our amazing Managing Director Roz about her exciting new adventure moving from blue to green and the opportunity that I’ve been given to step up into the role.
I’ve been a friend of Thrive by Design since the early days of mHabitat back in 2015 when I was part of the team at Yoomee who designed and delivered the first iteration of MindWell, our mental health information service. And now I am unbelievably proud and honoured to be leading the team.
Over the last seven years I’ve seen mHabitat evolve and iterate to make sure it’s focussing where we can add most value, which I know has not always been easy. Despite the changes the team have had to make and the challenges they’ve faced, one thing has always remained strong – our mission led approach and our core values.
Hold
The future
Our mission remains the same but over the next 12 months we’re going to be pushing ourselves even further and challenging ourselves with some tough questions:
How do we move Inclusive Digital Transformation from a good idea into a commonly embedded, sustainably funded focus for health and care?
Making sure the value of inclusion is understood and is driving transformation from the centre of the NHS all the way through to the front line and our communities.
How can we be even more inclusive in our work?
Not just the work we’re doing that focuses on tackling exclusion but making sure everything we do is inclusive – from the way we support and grow our team to the approaches we take in our projects. I’ll be sharing more soon about our push to move beyond co-design to inclusive co-design and co-production and I’m delighted that we’re welcoming two new inclusive co-designers to the team who will help us with this.
How can we have a greater impact?
This is how we measure our work - the genuine impact it has on people and their lives. We want to be looking back in 12 months time and be able to see how our work has made a tangible difference in helping people provide and access quality and equitable health and care.
How can we keep growing as a team?
We have an ongoing internal programme of work called ‘Thriving People’ where we look at how we can improve ourselves. Last year the team worked with the brilliant Dr Mole Chapman to increase our awareness and understanding of anti-ableism. We want to continue to be honest about what we don’t know and make sure we take the time to explore and learn about things that we know we can improve on.
As well as these challenges, I’m really looking forward to supporting the team. I want Thrive by Design to continue being an environment where this incredible team can do what they are best at… using their humility to truly understand the complex and often heartbreaking inequalities that exist in health and care and working with people affected by them to co-design a better, more inclusive future.
Fireside chat
In this fireside chat we catch up with our incoming managing director Tim Brazier on inclusive co-design and what’s next for Thrive by Design.
Join nearly 300 people from a diverse range of backgrounds and places on our Inclusive Digital Transformation Challenge community on FutureNHS.
To find out more about our work email us on info@thrivebydesign.org and follow us on Twitter @TweetsByThrive.
