I recently felt like I was back at university when I was part of a team who were grilled (in the nicest possible way!) by colleagues from the Government Digital Service (GDS) to determine if the new website we've been working on for the UK National Screening Committee (UK NSC) can be launched.
Over the course of about 5 hours, we were asked about the rationale for the new website, the technology that's being used to develop it, and perhaps most importantly of all, how we've involved users to understand what people need from the website.
We were all extremely relieved – and proud – when we found out that the website had passed the assessment and we could go ahead with the launch. It's due to the huge amount of hard work over a period of several years from colleagues in the UK NSC secretariat and Public Health England.
Prof Bob Steele, UK NSC Chair, said how delighted he is to announce the new site and that:
We hope very much that the website is a major step towards increased transparency around the work of the UK National Screening Committee and towards improving how we engage with our stakeholders and members of the public.
Easier to engage with the UK NSC
I'm therefore delighted to let readers of the PHE Screening blog know that the new UK NSC website went live this morning.
Please do take a look and let us know what you think.
The website:
- is more appealing and engaging than the old UK NSC page on GOV.UK, with regular news and features
- highlights the roles and experience of committee members
- makes it much easier to browse the UK NSC's recommendations, and find and respond to consultations
- allows people to subscribe to topics they're interested in so they'll never miss out when the committee starts reviewing a condition
Here's a very short video which shows you round the new website:
Subscribe to the new UK NSC blog
As part of the new website, we've also created a new UK NSC blog for news and updates from the committee.
This has been requested by many stakeholders in our recent user research and will help to highlight the committee's independence and distinction from implementation bodies.
It means that from now on, if you want to keep in touch with the UK NSC you'll need to subscribe to the UK NSC blog (even if you've already subscribed to this PHE Screening blog). We’ll keep the blog articles we’ve already written about the UK NSC on here, but we just won’t be publishing any new UK NSC articles on this blog from now on.
The first blog article is a short video message from Prof Bob Steele, which is well worth a watch. Plus there's also a fascinating article explaining the work of the UK NSC's new artificial intelligence (AI) task group.
PHE Screening blog
The PHE Screening blog provides up to date news from all NHS screening programmes. You can register to receive updates direct to your inbox, so there’s no need to keep checking for new blogs. If you have any questions about this blog article, or about population screening in England, please contact the PHE screening helpdesk.