guideline-version3-finalcomments49corrected.docx.lol

Modern collaboration with version control

Teddy Tun Win HLA

tunwin.hla@nhs.net

GSTT Hospital

Ed Palmer

edward.palmer@nhs.net

Whittington Hospital

2025-03-07

This is a talk about version control

General outline: 1. Introduce the problem. Make it familiar and relatable. - Documentation focused collaboration in the NHS is fragmented and broken 2. Demonstrate a solution by using: Plain text (Markdown), git and github. 3. Tackle obvious criticisms: - We already have version control/track changes in word. Yes, but you haven’t solved the emailing files issue - So use google docs. This isn’t a realistic solution and many trusts will not accept working closely with google as a company. 4. Show the benefits beyond simple “track changes”. - Multi-institute collaborations - Enhanced productivity - Re-visiting old branches/toughts - Total audit trail of peer review 5. Practical steps (How to get started? Where to go?) - Learn the tools: Markdown (already know some of this from whatsapp etc.), Git (this is a little code orientated, but there is software to help), Github. - Read the Turing Way - Speak to your IT department. Run a pilot 6. Contribute back - If you get this working write a chapter for healthcare collaboration in the turing way.

This is a talk about version control collaboration

The Problem

• Document collaboration in the NHS is broken.
• Lowest common demonimator; MS Word and email.
• guideline-version3-finalcomments49corrected.docx.lol is a symptom.

Frustrating Examples

• Colleague returns tracked changes on version 3. We’re now on version 5.
• Trust only pays for word licences on certain PCs.
• Collaborator changes all the formatting and resized the figures.

• Solutions: cloud (MS word 💰 / google 😈).
• Neither scales well.
• There are industries that have solved scalable document collaboration.

Game development: dozen or hundreds of developers often writing in different countries Ultimately these are just plane text files

Assassin’s Creed

• 34 million players by October 2023
• Ubisoft game studio
• 2000 developers

Major international research collaborations: CERN: Thousands of authors from multiple continents.

Linux: Powers the internet and the vast majority of the phones in this room Created the very tools we will discuss today to solve this issue

They can do this because they use plain text¹ Plain text can be read by any computer, running any software Plain text will continue to work while we have computers No tie into a single company. No monopolies.

Introduce the turing way. A decentralised group to bring these methods and technologies into the hands of scientists.

²

A (somewhat meta) Example

• Teddy and I are writing this presentation
• We don’t use powerpoint; plain text!

The Power of Plain Text

Writing text without any formatting = efficiency.

Collaboration

• Each collaborator / idea lives in seperate branches.
• Merged when ready.
• Version controlled: implicit to the method of collaboration.

Untapped Potential

• Imagine every NHS trust uses this approach
• we need a new hyponatraemia guidelines
• St. Elshwere; global reputation
• Find their guidelines on github: Fork

We do this already informally

Untapped Potential

• Major new RCT changes practice.
• St. Elsewhere updates their guidelines.
• We are notified.
• The change is ratified and instantly disseminated.

Advantages/Benefits

• Practical: time saved, better collaboration, transparanecy
• Future proof
• Scalable

Challenges

• Some technical knowhow necessary.
• Buy in: change in the way we work.
• Some friction now, for a massive payoff later. Start early (?undergrad ?A levels)
• Network effects are multiplicative.
• Level of trust comfort: documents in public domain.

Questions

• Why would we want to have guidelines in plain text?
• Formatting/branding? Develop trust templates.
• Webpage as output: high fidelity medium, video, audio, reactive.

join our community

Credits

Community, The Turing Way. 2021. “The Turing Way: A Handbook for Reproducible, Ethical and Collaborative Research.” Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.5671094.

Community, The Turing Way, and Scriberia. 2024. “Illustrations from The Turing Way: Shared Under CC-BY 4.0 for Reuse.” Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.3332807.

Tris. n.d. “Noboilerplate.org.”

Footnotes

1. (n.d.)

2. Community (2021), Community and Scriberia (2024)