ABSTRACT
This chapter traces in more detail the development of personalisation as a guiding principle for public services in the UK. It then explores in turn each of the '4 Ps' that have identified, including: privileging the pushy; responsibilisation; policy by personal anecdote; and bracketing out the political. The chapter offers some reflections on the concept of personalisation and its use in public services, seeking to delineate more clearly the boundaries within which it might offer something valuable for those responsible for service design and provision in the NHS. In the NHS, the personalisation agenda initially focused upon choice, with a number of reforms introduced to enable patients to exercise greater choice over their care. As the rhetoric of personalisation has taken hold across UK policy, there has been a parallel rise in the use of personal stories to justify policy decisions. Ferguson provides a possible explanation for the rather puzzling observation that personalisation finds champions from across the political spectrum.
