Welcome to the Clinical Developers Network,

Who am I?

I’m Matt Stammers and I just founded the clinical developers network.

I am a Gastroenterology registrar currently working in the UK NHS full-time. I love my specialty and I love the NHS, but I am persistently frustrated by IT issues both within, and outside of the system.

For a long time I have looked on as successive groups have tried to change things without much success. There are many reasons why these projects normally fail – (lack of lean thinking/planning, lack of cooperation/joined up thinking, low involvement of users and lack of attention to user-requirements, etc.) However, if I was to pinpoint the single biggest reason that would be: A lack of engagement from clinical staff. They are not engaged because they were not involved in the project development, they don’t understand how ‘geeks’ think and fundamentally the project wasn’t designed with them in the forefront of the developer’s minds.

This is a major challenge to both software designers and clinicians – until it is addressed there will continue to be failure after failure in implementation.

Enter: The clinical developer

The clinician developer is a hybrid-doctor who understands both worlds and knows how to speak to both sides. Now the clinical developer comes in many shapes and forms. Some like me love the technical things and machine learning, others love UX and design, others just love building websites and some don’t actually code themselves but they use tools to develop. This is for the majority the best way to start.

After all, the clinician developer doesn’t seek to displace full-time developers but rather to bridge the gap. What does the clinician bring that no other can? A deep understanding of the problems! Only clinical staff have this perspective.

So if you want to find out more then head over and sign-up to join the community. Tell me what you think and most importantly tell us about who you are and what your up to!

Together we can #change #healthcare for the better

To find out more visit www.clinicaldevelopers.org – signup to our mailing list for updates, tips and tricks.