Strictly Come Designing
When the NHS Wales App team took to the hackathon floor, fab-u-lous ideas flowed
Four judges. A top score of 40 points. Rival teams taking to the floor for a chance to lift the trophy. You guessed it: it’s…a hackathon.
(For key facts about the hackathon — including a crucial one about cupcakes — check out the infographic!)
Background: A health app for Wales
Since 2021, Kainos has been working with Digital Services for Patients and Public (DSPP) on the NHS Wales App. DSPP was set up by Digital Health and Care Wales (DHCW) to help empower patients with digital solutions.
The NHS Wales App is a cornerstone of the DSPP programme. The app is based on the NHS England code base, but it’s not simply a reskin or lift-and-shift. Kainos has worked closely with DSPP to create an app that is tailored to the specific structure and processes of NHS Wales and the needs of its patients.
This bilingual app offers convenient, patient-empowering access to health services. It also benefits health professionals by offering more patient care pathways and reducing frontline administration.
After launching the beta version of the app, it was time to ask: What have we learned? What’s next?
The hackathon
To answer this, Kainos and DSPP team members gathered in the Kainos Birmingham office for 2 days of conversation and innovation.
Our goals were to:
- meet our remote team in person
- celebrate the success of the private beta phase
- foster team creativity.
Beyond these invaluable intangibles, we had another goal. Together, could we identify new opportunities? Were there features that we hadn’t even thought of yet?
We tackled these questions with a hackathon.
We began with 6 key challenges:
How might we…
- engage healthcare professionals
- spark public interest
- track adoption
- improve our release and features process
- create a personalised user experience
- apply user data to direct the app’s future?
One flurry of post-it notes later, we were off.
Taking to the floor
Here’s where the Strictly theme waltzed in.
The ideas would be judged by a celebrity panel (well, they’re celebrities to us!) — DHCW product owners Stephen Frith, Matt Cornish and Karla Scott, and Kainos Account Lead Daniel Kemp. Each judge would award a score between 0–10.
Unlike our ballroom equivalents, we weren’t judged on frames or fleckerls. Instead, we were assessed on:
- ‘wow factor’
- feature business value
- feasibility and readiness
The winning team would not only get the glory, but also, in lieu of a glitterball, a gold(ish) statuette.
The energy in the room buzzed with idea generation, shortlisted to:
- video consultations
- a ‘dark mode’ option
- personalised home screens
- integration with wearable tech like fitness trackers
- patient cohort support for chronic and long-term conditions
- using ‘big data’ to help users collate and communicate their care needs
- a GP practice analytics dashboard
Created by experts in user experience, coding and healthcare transformation, every idea could have earned the judges’ coveted ‘10’ paddles. In keeping with DSPP’s mission, each was created with the aim of patient empowerment, personalisation and better health outcomes.
And the winner is…
The winner of the coveted statuette was the GP practice analytics dashboard.
This will be “an easily digestible dashboard showing key metrics — searchable by practice. This allows them to see benefits/performance of the app at their practice, at a glance”.
What edged this idea ahead of its worthy competitors? It was:
- feasible — using data we already have from Google Analytics
- high value at a low cost
- compelling — the ‘wow factor’ for practice engagement and buy-in
Ultimately, by fostering engagement with the app from patients and their practices, the dashboard will help contribute to better patient access to primary care, and to better patient health and care.
Development of the dashboard began almost immediately, benefitting from the surge of energy and creativity that the hackathon generated. But that doesn’t mean the other ideas are left behind. Just as Strictly runners-up keep dancing on the roadshow, the remaining ideas still have the chance to shine; they went into the project backlog for further discovery.
Matt Cornish from DHCW commented:
The hackathon event in Kainos’ offices in Birmingham exceeded my expectations in every respect. It not only provided an overdue opportunity for our collective hybrid team to cement working relationships and celebrate our collective achievements, it also was an incubator of new ideas and innovative practice. The quality of what the teams produced in the time available was outstanding which made judging an incredibly difficult task. Importantly, this event was highly productive and FUN and the bar has been set at a very high level.
As a certain Strictly judge might say, the future for the NHS Wales App is fab-u-lous.
Find out more about the NHS Wales App
Infographic: The NHS Wales App hackathon in numbers
