Our Project Lead Julia Prudhoe reflects on how the COVID-19 pandemic has changed her working life – and the positives that it is bringing!

Wait – where am I, what time is it, what day is it, what outfit should I choose today from my poorly packed suitcase?! My thoughts every day for the past week of working from home in Wylam, Northumberland, 10 miles outside of Newcastle.

My initial thoughts are always where am I?! I am usually based in the Clapham/Brixton area of south London, waking up to the child next door screaming the house down. Now I’m woken up by the sound of the birds and the beautiful countryside. I open the window and there’s my favourite part – FRESH AIR! Which as an asthma sufferer, albeit mild, is very much needed in the current Covid-19 context.

I’ve been working for Care City, a community interest company based in Barking, London for the last five months, weirdly of which almost three weeks has been spent in the middle of a pandemic, working from home, without the cushion of the team, or the biscuits corner, and no Greggs in sight!

Care City is the innovation partner to the health and care system in East London, working closely with partners including the NHS and Barking and Dagenham Council. We are focused on regeneration and healthy ageing for our local community. We are keen on driving digital technology forward and have exposure to lots of savvy apps which can do anything from monitoring your heartbeat through the microphone on your iPhone, to taking your measurements via an iPad camera. I feel privileged to work for an organisation with so much passion for making a difference to those who need it the most.

Being so new to the team and being home based in isolation is a strange experience and one I will never forget. This is my first Project Lead role too, which makes it all the stranger, as I am trying to navigate the way to managing my own projects for the first time, without being able to get up, walk across the office and bother people with questions.

Luckily for me, Care City has an amazingly supportive senior leadership team who are always making sure we are all ok and happy, given the circumstances. We have ‘City Chatter’ a daily catch up call to check-in, assessing workloads and general plans in isolation (for me involving a wii mario kart championship with my boyfriend, which has resulted in an injured arm from gripping onto the steering wheel too tight…). We have our ‘Care City COBR’ on Thursdays, to review any important news from another Covid-19 week. These catch ups are great ways to stay in touch with each other, to get the human contact we all miss and feel part of a team, even from afar.

As we all work through the new normal, at Care City we are focused on supporting our NHS Partners and local community in any way we can. We are working together as a team to offer our Project Management services, to identify any gaps which need to be addressed, and to do anything we can in these uncertain times to support the NHS.

I’ve had a lot of time to reflect recently on the Covid-19 situation, more so than ever since I temporarily deleted my social media. My hopes for after all of this is over, is that the NHS will pave the way for digital health tech. Right now, the NHS is moving fast, having been given the opportunity to strip back the red tape, to make some of the biggest changes it has ever made. From working in a Quality Improvement team before Care City, I know how difficult it can be to implement change – after all – ‘it’s not the people, it’s the system’ is what we taught thousands of staff in a London trust. Staff were trying to make the changes they could – through relationships, culture, Quality Improvement methodology – and do what they could, with what they had, to make a positive change, an improvement to the service and to patient care.

Now, budgets are out the window to a certain degree, as the NHS sources crucial equipment needed to save patients.  A system which has been starved now has the gratitude, the respect and the opportunities to move forward that it always deserved. We are using innovations where possible to catapult our system into a position where we can save thousands of lives. Digital health technology is starting to become relevant, to be an answer to many problems.

I hope that we can continue to believe in tech, to think in new ways, to have more online consultations with our GPs, to use apps in hospitals to support patient care, to support our NHS and help us navigate through the aftermath of an impossible situation. In these unprecedented times (this must be the most I’ve ever heard this phrase used), I think of my friends and colleagues working on the NHS Frontline. While I get to comfortably work at home, you are there risking your lives daily, and we are all in debt to you forevermore. We will continue to stay at home for you.

And Care City are here, should anyone in East London’s NHS Systems need any support, help or advice. Let’s work together, so we can all go back to our own normal, whatever that might be.