I will present the approach we use in designing and planning population based systems of care in ten short blogs.

Here are the ten steps:

• Define the scope of the system.
• Define the population to be served.
• Reach agreement on the aim and objectives of the service.
• For each objective find one or more criteria.
• For each of the criteria identify levels of performance that can be used as quality standards.
• Identify all the resources used in the system, thus creating a system budget.
• Define all the partners so that they need to be engaged in a clinical network.
• Produce a system specification.
• Prepare a plan to build the system.

Muir Gray is visiting professor of knowledge management, Nuffield Department of Surgery, University of Oxford.