A new era
Some things never change.
Hello! If you’ve just come across this substack, or if you’ve met me before but completely forgotten who I am (understandable) I'm Jess Morley aka “health data nerd.” I was previously a PhD student at the University of Oxford, and the Director of policy research for the Oxford Bennett Institute for Applied Data Science which is probably best known for OpenSAFELY and the “Goldacre Review” (for which I was the lead researcher). Previously previously, I was the AI subject matter expert for what was then NHSX - so I am ex X.
At the beginning of this year, I finished my PhD “Designing an algorithmically enhanced NHS: towards a conceptual model for the successful implementation of AI into the National Health Service” (so technically I’m Dr. Jess) and decided to upend my life by moving universities, country, and continent all in one go to become a postdoctoral associate at the newly established Digital Ethics Center at Yale University. That’s where you now find me, heading up our research programme on the Future of Health which mostly involves me writing, thinking & talking about how healthcare systems (especially the NHS) can better capitalise on the opportunities presented by secondary uses of health data in a way that is technically feasible, socially acceptable, ethically justifiable, and legally compliant. This sometimes involves talking about AI, but most of the time, much less whizzy things, and very frequently niche updates to health data policy.
As you may know, academia is a fairly slooooooooow moving beast. Writing, editing, and publishing a research article rarely takes less than 6 months. It’s also a pretty exclusive club, with lots of articles locked behind paywalls or written for a a very niche audience. Health data, tech, AI etc. policy moves much faster than this (there’s almost always at least one announcement or report a week), and impacts a far broader audience. For this reason, I have decided I need an outlet for more frequent (and less perfect) commentary. I used to use my website: healthdatanerd.org, but it’s a bit clunky, hard to subscribe to, hard to discover, and the domain is expensive to own (postdocs are great for many things; large amounts of disposable income is not one of them). Hence: substack.
Hopefully, I’ll publish at least three things:
Weeknotes on Sundays: things I worked on, things I read, things I thought about, things I did
Commentary/Opinions on policy updates and ideas as and when they publish
Explainers and accessible summaries of research also as and when they publish
If you want to, you can subscribe via the button below. However, I also think email is the bane of most people’s existence, so if you’d rather just check back when you’re bored on a train (or, let’s be honest, in a meeting) - then that’s fine too.