From strategy to impact

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Summary

Service Provider

NHS Digital support NHS staff at work, help people get the best care, and use the nation's health data to drive research and transform services.

The brief

Identify how to contribute to the mental health goal in the NHS 10-year plan.

What we did

Identified what could be done, what should be done and took the first steps in the right direction.

Impact

Created a portfolio of work that NHS Digital is best suited to tackle and delivered several enhancements and a service. The main service we developed increased access to mental health services 4X better than before (according to NHS Digital analytics).

Journey

Knowing where to start

Our brief was broad, so knowing where to start was the first hurdle - we conducted desk research, reviewed NHS strategic objectives and decided to focus on adult depression and anxiety due to its impact on people, the economy, and NHS projects and objectives.
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Key-note: The team included people with and without negative mental health experiences.

Sing on door that says Mind Lambeth & Southwark

Learning from specialists like Mind (mental health support charity)

Understanding anxiety and depression journeys

We cast a wide net to help us understand how anxiety and depression impact people, how they manage it and in varied contexts. We ran interviews with a diverse range of people across several towns in England, interviewed clinicians and experts, and time-boxed absorbing academic research.

Conducting research with Mind therapy groups

Differences and similarities across user needs

We learnt a lot about people, their stories, sometimes sad and sometimes inspiring. Research, synthesis and iteration helped us distinguish between experiences at different journey stages, for example, people at the early stages, people in the middle (often making changes), and people who had learnt to sustain positive mental health. Unsurprisingly, we learnt about variations in experiences and coping mechanisms; we were surprised by the amount of commonality.

Analysing what the "sea" of research notes we gathered

Making some sense of the system

The NHS model of procuring psychological services is complex and varied; sadly, this translates into users' experience. Users face different barriers, hurdles and pain-points depending on the provider and user's location. While there is an argument for variability, the lack of good practice means some providers offer a service that supports people while others hinder the people's challenges. We mapped out and outlined some best practice but were limited by the complexity of the system (we fought and failed).

Simplifying and visualising pain-points and systemic complexity

Identify the right opportunities for NHS Digital

We wanted to ensure we took a bird's-eye view of how the NHS could better support users. We mapped learnings from users, the NHS and the broader ecosystem's offering. Mapping allowed us to identify individual opportunities and the connections between them. We used this to determine where NHS digital could have a significant impact.

Portfolio of work presented in a service blueprint

Designing the service and complementing opportunities

We designed enhancements to key touch-points that would require little effort while maximising our OKRs. For example, we developed videos of people telling their stories about how they got help. These concepts were distilled from a long list and had strong backing from our research. These were designed to complement the core service we developed; for example, we worked with Public Health England to run a social media campaign.

Workshop sketch of idea to address opportunity area

Words matter

Words matter has never been more true than in this project. We invested significant effort towards understanding the language trade-offs and how to structure content to inform and support people without deterring others from applying. The service we launched could be described as unsophisticated or straightforward. Yet, there are layers of complexity we grafted to make it work for users and the varying levels of support they need.

Conducting user research in libraries to learn and iterate

Service

View service

125%

Increase in people finding psychological therapies

More likely to self-refer to get help

Ipad, showing NHS.UK website's find psychological therapies service landing page which informs the user that they can self refer, the types of therapies available, that they must be registered with a GP and a start button

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