IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jorsoc/v54y2003i10d10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601617.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Operational Research for informed innovation: NHS Direct as a case study in the design, implementation and evaluation of a new public service

Author

Listed:
  • G Royston

    (Quarry House, Quarry Hill)

  • J Halsall

    (Quarry House, Quarry Hill)

  • D Halsall

    (Quarry House, Quarry Hill)

  • C Braithwaite

    (Quarry House, Quarry Hill)

Abstract

Delivering modern and responsive public services requires informed innovation drawing on a combination of design, planning and evaluative skills. The development of the national 24-hour telephone helpline service NHS Direct provides a case study demonstrating how, through using these skills, OR has been instrumental in achieving public service innovation. Firstly, OR analysts led strategic design and scenario-planning work, assessing the evidence on the performance of ‘direct’ services here and around the world and developing scenarios of an NHS where much greater use was made of modern communication technology, such as telephone call centres, to provide services. Secondly, we did modelling work to help determine the size, distribution and staffing of the call centres required in England to meet the likely demand and satisfy service performance targets. Thirdly, we set out evaluation criteria and developed performance-monitoring systems. NHS Direct has been one of the best-received innovations in the history of the NHS and Operational Research has made a crucial contribution to its development.

Suggested Citation

  • G Royston & J Halsall & D Halsall & C Braithwaite, 2003. "Operational Research for informed innovation: NHS Direct as a case study in the design, implementation and evaluation of a new public service," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 54(10), pages 1022-1028, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:54:y:2003:i:10:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601617
    DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601617
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601617
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601617?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Royston, Geoff, 1998. "Shifting the balance of health care into the 21st century," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(2), pages 267-276, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. D Worthington, 2009. "Reflections on queue modelling from the last 50 years," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 83-92, May.
    2. G Royston, 2009. "One hundred years of Operational Research in Health—UK 1948–2048," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 169-179, May.
    3. Mahavarpour, Nasrin & Marvi, Reza & Foroudi, Pantea, 2023. "A Brief History of Service Innovation: The evolution of past, present, and future of service innovation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 160(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ni, Ji & Chen, Bowei & Allinson, Nigel M. & Ye, Xujiong, 2020. "A hybrid model for predicting human physical activity status from lifelogging data," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 281(3), pages 532-542.
    2. repec:cfe:wpcefa:2012_02 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Brailsford, Sally & Vissers, Jan, 2011. "OR in healthcare: A European perspective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 212(2), pages 223-234, July.
    4. Ippoliti, Roberto & Falavigna, Greta, 2012. "Efficiency of the medical care industry: Evidence from the Italian regional system," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 217(3), pages 643-652.
    5. Sommer, Kim A. & Mabin, Victoria J., 2016. "Insights into the eldercare conundrum through complementary lenses of Boardman's SSM and TOC's Evaporating Cloud," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(1), pages 286-300.
    6. G Royston, 2009. "One hundred years of Operational Research in Health—UK 1948–2048," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 60(1), pages 169-179, May.
    7. Sérgio Santos & Carla Amado & Mauro Santos, 2012. "Assessing the efficiency of mother-to-child HIV prevention in low- and middle-income countries using data envelopment analysis," Health Care Management Science, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 206-222, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jorsoc:v:54:y:2003:i:10:d:10.1057_palgrave.jors.2601617. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.