Get an isolation note service
Superfast service design for the first service launched in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Can you go to London for a meeting about Wuhan flu?”
This was the message that started my involvement in NHS Digital’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Collaborating with colleagues from Department of Health and Social Care, and Department for Work and Pensions, I and others had to design and deliver a service that would mainly do two things:
- Ensure people with COVID symptoms stayed at home for 14 days, and didn’t return to work early because of money worries
- Protect GP surgeries from being overwhelmed by requests for fit notes (commonly known as sick notes) that isolating people would need to show their employers.
Speed and effectiveness were the keys for this service. Something needed to be launched as soon as possible, as the need for people to isolate was already here.
Focus on viability
People often talk about ‘minimum viable product’ (MVP), but the team needed to be really clear on what would be a viable service that people could trust. We designed the digital part of the service so that users would be emailed a downloadable certificate, stating they had symptoms and would need to isolate. Integrating email delivery took longer, but meant users could retrieve their certificate later. This was what made the service viable, rather than just presenting users with, say, a web page that could be easily closed and lost.
Despite the urgent timescales, the team still managed to run user research with potential users, and usability testing before launch. This was critical for identifying issues or queries, when the service would be used by millions of people.
Keeping focus as things change
Policy changed daily during the 3-week process of designing and delivering the service, so close collaboration as a team was critical. We kept a decision log to understand who the service was for, and who it wasn’t for. We also regularly reviewed our problem statement, as circumstances changed, to ensure we were still headed in the right direction.
The result was a service that launched just after the country first went into lockdown. Over 1 million isolation notes were downloaded in the first 3 weeks. By March 2023, over 5 million notes had been downloaded, helping people stay at home and stay safe.