A Day in the Life: Nicola Hueting & Sharon Robinson, babblevoice QMS Team

This week, I’ve been talking to our compliance dream team, Nicola Hueting and Sharon Robinson, who lead on Quality Management System (QMS) business requirements. With previous careers in physiotherapy and customer service, Nicola and Sharon have found a focus on supporting others and attention to detail to be the ideal match for championing compliance in digital healthcare.

What is QMS and what drew you to the role?

Nicola: Our role is to drive the company’s adherence to compliance, security and privacy requirements. We have a very practical hands-on approach with everyone at babblevoice. Data protection is a big part of what we do as well as NHS-specific requirements such as meeting ISO-27001 standards. We lead on maintaining legal and regulatory requirements with a focus on continued improvements through measures such as key performance indicators (KPIs).

I’ve been at babblevoice for nearly 8 years now. I was a physio before that but started to look for something different after I fell out of love with it around the time my third child was born. Initially I worked on the helpdesk, but quite quickly moved into compliance and found my niche. Improving standards really motivates me. I’m a keen runner – and I love the way the discipline of training to improve carries through into my work.

Sharon: While bringing up my four boys, I studied Maths and IT through the Open University with the intention of moving into a job in this area. But life took over and a stop-gap job at Sainsbury’s lasted 8 years when I loved the people so much I couldn’t leave!

But when I spotted the compliance role at babblevoice it really piqued my interest in numbers and technology. Attention to detail is me all over. And the icing on the cake was telephony. My Dad worked for BT for over 30 years and amassed a large collection of historical telephones which were out of bounds locked in his shed. I’ve never quite got over the joy of picking the lock and playing with all the handsets!

What’s a typical day for you?

Nicola & Sharon: We start with checking emails and working our way through our inboxes, as well as referring to our Information Security Management System (ISMS) audit plan. Twice a week, we carry out call and case audits. We select at random calls to the helpdesk to review. Our focus is on ensuring the helpdesk maintain the super high standards we set for handling surgery enquiries.

We’re also keeping an eye out for security incidents. For example, the other day Sharon identified a suspicious call that turned out to be a foreign party phishing for information under the guise of a survey. The engineer receiving the call cut off the caller to prevent any information being given away. Sharon logged it in our databreach register and flagged it to Nicola.

We work remotely from each other but we don’t go long without checking in. We never work in isolation. We lead on our compliance with the NHS Digital Data Security & Protection Toolkit (DSPT) and ISO 27001.

We keep all the staff aware of any changes via our company meeting, and we work proactively rather than waiting for an emergency. Our flat structure means Nick and Antoine, our founders and directors are quickly aware of anything new. They still have a very hands-on approach to compliance so we always feel supported. It means we can maintain that focus on continuous improvement – one of our founding principles.

What do you like best about your role?

Nicola: My nature is to be supportive so I like the focus on continual improvement. And I really enjoy the variety of the role. I never really know what each day will hold. Our work spans the highly technical, such as supporting Data Protection Impact Assessments (DPIAs), a focus on patients, such as aligning with NHS clinical safety standards, as well as policy writing and maintenance.

I also appreciate our dedicated focus on healthcare. It’s enabled us to build up real expertise and knowledge in one industry. It’s particularly rewarding to see others developing that knowledge too – I can hear in our helpdesk calls where the team have become more reflective – trying to improve their care of our surgery customers.

Sharon: Spreadsheets are my favourite! I love keeping them all up to date. And our work is interesting. People often don’t think it will be - but Nicola and I have fun!

In the 90’s I used to play a video game called The Settlers – it was all about strategy, planning and organisation – three things I love. And I get to do all these in my job at babblevoice. Compliance work can be very complex and often requires thought and planning.

I also really enjoy the people aspects of the role. Working in compliance, you can be viewed as a ‘baddie’ coming to find fault but I like to turn that on its head. It’s about finding the fabulous things too, building and maintaining relationships with people, and focusing on how we can all improve together.

How has your role changed with the growth of AI?

Nicola & Sharon: We’ve been experimenting with using AI to support our audits. It can be an efficient way of generating question sets – and sometimes suggests questions we hadn’t thought of. It’s really quite exciting to consider the way it could enhance the scope for improvement.

We’re very conscious however of treading a careful path with AI in healthcare, particularly when interacting with patients. We’ve been working closely with Dr Theresa Finn, our Clinical Safety Officer to support the trials of our AI-powered reception assistant – TriageLine AI. For example, we’ve been working on updating our DPIAs regarding triage and privacy, as well as assisting our trial surgeries with writing their own DPIAs.

AI brings tremendous opportunities for healthcare but it needs careful consideration along the way.

What do you feel excited about for the future?

Nicola: I’m looking forward to increasing my knowledge further. I like that I need to be regularly reading articles, going to data protection conferences and doing more training.

We’re always considering other standards it could be good for us to meet in the future, such as B Corp. With any verification, it’s never just a one-off. It’s a continual approach and we need to ensure we are always 100%.

Sharon: Do you mean apart from my holiday?! I’m about to start an Introduction to Networking course so I’m looking forward to gaining some more technical knowledge. Pierre, our helpdesk lead suggested it would be great if we had a better grounding in this so I’m keen to get started.

I think we both genuinely value the opportunities for continual improvement - both for ourselves as well as for the company.

Want to find out more about babblevoice telephony and our commitment to standards and compliance? Get in touch with us for a chat and a demo: info@babblevoice.com