Skip to main content

Sprint 2

Posted by
Application Capability Framework delivery team at SCW
Published

Investigating how DCF could map to OAM service types

The team needed to develop an intial map from DCF to OAM’s service types. But these weren’t populated yet in the OAM metamodel so the team looked at the NHS data dictionary. However, it wasn’t easy to get a list of which NHS business descriptions are also services.

The team referred back to the archived NHS data dictionary treatment function codes for comparison. This list looked much more comprehensive - but on closer examination was not nested consistently. The team took this away for further review and investigation.

Importing application capability types

As well as Acute (also referred to as ‘Core’ or ‘Foundation’ and typically referring to hospital trusts) DCF has separate ‘products’ for different care settings:

  1. Community
  2. Mental health
  3. Ambulance
  4. Maternity

The discovery highlighted that users didn’t always understand how or where to access these separate ‘products’. Language and presentation were confusing for some:

‘I was a little bit confused… because I think when you first did [DCF], you didn’t have maternity. So I was looking in community for my community midwives’

The team imported Maternity and Ambulance user stories, mapped to application capabilities. In this process, it became clear that these products had been developed separately - for example, Ambulance is not mapped to Application Functions.

Creating data import template to map data to fields
Data import scripts

Fixing import issues

The Excel spreadsheets are not consistently formatted, so the team designed a pre-import data consolidation and validation process. Existing content can be deleted and replaced fairly easily in the import tool.

Website phase banner

The team considered if the prototype website needed to be labelled as a prototype. It currently isn’t because it requires password access, but the Nightingale theme doesn’t support a phase banner or similar approach so this could be a future coding requirement. However, previous research on NHS services suggests that phase banners can be confusing for users. The team decided to avoid using phase banners.

Update: in Sprint 9, NHSE asked the team to provide a feedback form linked from a phase banner, as the alpha would be kept available from April until a decision was made on next steps and funding. The team coded an NHS style phase banner based on the NHS Standards Directory’s beta banner, with a link to a Gravity Forms feedback form. Read the documentation for the approach and code.