Tim Almond

I’m just wondering exactly how much this is all costing. Well, it’s part of the £20 billion NHS "Supercomputer".

I’ve had a tonsil problem for a while now, so I’ve got referred by my GP to a consultant ENT. So, I get a letter for an appointment request, telling me that I can use "Choose and Book" to book it.

So, I log on, and (not surprisingly as Jackie Danicki raised it before) it tells me that my browser, with 15% market share isn’t compatible with their application. I wonder how Mac users who can’t just switch IE on feel about it.

 

So, I switch over to Internet Explorer, and it let’s me through, and then I get a real nice purty message…

 

Unlike Jackie, I didn’t get to see the system…

So I phone the call centre, and they tell me to call back Monday afternoon as the system is being upgraded. I then spit feathers, ask to speak to someone in charge. There’s some sort of systems upgrade taking place that’s going to take until the evening, but they’re trying to get people to call Monday afternoon.

All day, during a day you’re open? If I suggested that to some of the companies I know, they’d think I’d lost my mind. 

When it comes to their customer facing systems, companies in the private sector don’t like downtime. If it’s a 9-5 Monday-Friday company, changes get implemented out-of-hours, with developers sometimes going all night to get things in. For 24 hour companies, the changes are implemented in such a way to minimise downtime. So, things will get done at obscene times of the night, and/or the implementation strategy is geared towards a bare minimum downtime, which often means working out quite complex ways to achieve that.

But, then, why should the NHS worry about such matters as service? Where else are you going to go?

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Tags: Software Development, Health //