Firstly, a very happy new year to all readers of the PHE Screening blog!
The end of December is traditionally a time to reflect on the previous year and I'm sure many of you will have read many such articles and seen all sorts of lists of best films, most downloaded music tracks, most popular dancing squirrel videos on YouTube etc (I made the last one up but doing a quick internet search found that such videos do actually exist!).
We didn't quite have time to crunch the data by the end of December but at the start of the new year it still seemed worthwhile to look back to consider what people were reading during the first 6 months since this blog launched.
So (drum roll...) here are the top 10 blogs so far. I should note, of course, that blogs posted earlier in the year have had more time to be read so are at an advantage.
10. Making screening information accessible to all. A creditable 10th place, this was a handy run down of our leaflets, how to order them and the translations that are available.
9. Screening key performance indicators: getting data quality right. An overview of screening provider and Public Health England responsibilities when it comes to ensuring high quality KPI data.
8. Primary care population screening update, autumn 2015. The first of our biannual summaries of key issues for primary care. We're still working on the best way to disseminate this to every GP in England, so if you have any good ideas please let us know.
7. Can't get an accurate nuchal translucency measurement? Don't let women miss out. Advice on ensuring women don't miss out on fetal anomaly screening.
6. What’s new in the fetal anomaly screening programme? How earlier screening for Edwards' and Patau's syndromes is being incorporated into the fetal anomaly screening programme.
5. Are you coming to our first ever UK NSC conference? About 100 of you registered for the conference after reading this post and we're planning on running another event at the end of this year, so watch out for details in due course (my thoughts on the 2015 event were published in a previous blog).
4. Evidence update: new consultation on non-invasive prenatal testing and latest UK NSC recommendations. Details of recommendations made at the June 2015 UK National Screening Committee meeting.
3. New screening leaflet for babies in special care baby units. This short but very popular blog highlighted the new leaflet to give parents of babies in special care units.
2. New virtual view training for ultrasonographers. The highest of 3 entries for fetal anomaly screening, this certainly seems to be the most popular screening programme at the moment in terms of the blog. If anyone working in fetal anomaly screening would like to suggest additional blog topics for 2016 then do let us know.
1. Introducing GOV.UK for screening. In first place, and our first ever blog article, this explained how to find screening information on GOV.UK and included a handy video guide. With such a massive change to our online content, no wonder this was our most read blog post of 2015!
Blog feedback
We're about to launch an online survey to find out what our readers think of the blog and how it could be improved. So if there weren't any articles in the top 10 list from 2015 that interested you, make sure you respond to the survey and help the blog become even more relevant to you in 2016.