Breast Cancer Screening

At NHS Digital, the breast cancer screening service needed digital transformation in order to work better for patients. I saw an opportunity to lead on service design work to understand current process for blueprinting, uncovering pain points and failure demand across multiple touch points both offline and online.

I quickly identified that for this work to be a success I had to build relationships and trust with senior stakeholders across PHE, NHS England, and NHSX. As part of this approach, I sought out frontline workers who provide key support for the breast cancer service across the UK — speaking with radiographers, analysts, clinical administrators, and programme managers over a four month period.

As part of the user centred approach, I mapped out several journey maps based on existing and additional research from the perspectives of key user groups. This meant I was able to highlight key pains and frustrations from different service users' experiences, including the routine pathway for those over 50, transgender and LGBTQ journeys, high risk pathways, and journeys for users with access needs.

Through four months of interviewing support staff, I was able to identify the steps and actions, technology, and policies of the end to end service — and speak at length across the programme highlighting these.

This blueprint of the national breast cancer screening service is now used as the de-facto map by different departments and business design teams, to identify quick wins, budgeting efficiencies, and areas of policy improvement across the care system.

It has laid the groundwork for NHS Digital to focus and prioritise where the most damaging parts of failure are, and for improving the cancer care experience more broadly.

This work introduced previously distanced and detached stakeholders to the patient experience, building empathy around the real lives and problems faced by cancer care patients. The service blueprint became a living document used across teams and departments to inform prioritisation, policy decisions, and future service improvement.