About
On the name
Kairos (Καιρός), a god of Time, but not the one we usually think of. That's Chronos — the relentless mathematical clockwise march of seconds into years. Kairos is something else: son of Zeus and Tyche, the god of the opportune moment.
He is depicted as a figure in swift motion — winged at the heel, carrying scales in one hand to show that its the moment that tips the balance. His hair is odd, with a long forelock at the front, and bald at the back: catch him by it as he approaches, once he has passed there is nothing left to hold. He is Now, always somewhere between what has not yet arrived and what has already gone.
So what's the relevance? In clinical medicine, we encounter Kairos constantly. The lab result that demands action today, not next week. The consultation where a patient mentions something in passing that changes everything. The window between presentation and irreversible harm.
That is what this practice is named for.
Clinician first
I'm Jez McCole. I qualified in 1999 from Sheffield Medical School, and have been a GP since 2006. Before I think about data, software, frameworks and dashboards, I see patients. That order is not incidental. It is where everything else begins.
The clinical encounter is where I understand which tools fail, where pathways break down, and where the gap between what the system records and what the patient needs is most visible. The technical work I do exists to close that gap.
The digital work
I work primarily within the NHS's established clinical systems — EMIS Web and TPP SystmOne — with an eye on the challenger systems beginning to reshape primary care IT, Medicus among them. The tools I build are designed to fit inside the clinical workflow.
The portfolio shown here was built in close collaboration with Primary Care IT Ltd — a team I have worked alongside to design and deliver decision support tools in active daily use in primary care.
On patient data
Patient data is not a resource. It is an entrusted record of a person's life.
Data in a clinical record exists first to serve the patient it describes — to improve the quality and safety of their care, to surface risks that might otherwise be missed, to support the decisions made in the room.
Secondary use of that data — for research, population health, quality improvement — can be genuinely valuable. I support it. But the conditions are non-negotiable: consent where consent is possible; absolute integrity where it is not; and the certain understanding that an individual must never be identifiable through their data after it leaves the safe haven of their record. Re-identification is not an acceptable trade-off for any research benefit.
I arrived at these positions through practice, not through policy. They reflect what I believe the relationship between a patient and their GP requires.
Both arms
These two commitments — advancing clinical capability through data, and protecting every patient's right to privacy — can feel as though they pull in opposite directions. Sometimes they do.
Kairos Medical Informatics exists in that tension, working to serve both.
Working towards
We are working towards governance and security accreditation including Cyber Essentials and the Data Security and Protection Toolkit. These are future goals only and are not claimed today.
If this resonates with what you are trying to build, I would be glad to hear from you.
Get in touch