Digital Health Conference – a few random reflections

by | Jun 29, 2012 | NHS stuff | 0 comments

So today I went to the first digital health conference, conceived and organised by @ClaireOT, in Leeds. As I sat on the bus, I mused about whether a pen and paper would be acceptable (fortunately it was) and I was pleasantly surprised that I wasn’t overwhelmed with techie stuff that I know less than nothing about (although I did see some good gadgets for presentations that I’d like to acquire). The conference was an opportunity to connect with all sorts of different people, and put faces to Twitter avatars, as well as cook up a few potential projects along the way. I was struck by the extent to which we are only taking the first digital baby steps in the NHS. I was hit by the explosive pace of change in the world of social media and apps, rubbing up against the bureaucracy of large and often risk averse organisations. There was an amount of lamenting that social media is still at the hobby stage in terms of status in many places.  I found myself wondering what a digital health conference would look like in ten years time.  I haven’t got a sufficiently wild imagination to begin to imagine. My favourite bit of the day was making connections between all sorts of disconnected things that tend to spend a lot of time flying around my head. One theme was how we can use digital storytelling to decrease stigma, increase empathy and improve the relational aspects of supporting people who use our services to achieve their goals. The second bit was about connecting a strategic approach to digital technology together...

10 lessons from live tweeting NHS style

by | Jun 5, 2012 | NHS stuff | 5 comments

So how can Twitter – a space for informal, conversational, ephemeral and highly social interaction, where everyone has access to 140 characters whatever their role or position in life or work – help a Board become more social? As anyone who’s sat through an NHS Board of Directors (BoD) meeting knows, they are a world away from the networked style of social media. Formal and structured, they have a set membership who responsible for the governance of a large organisation. Members of the public can attend and there is a designated space for them to put their questions. However, I would hazard a guess that most people, irrespective of how interested they are in their local NHS Trust, wouldn’t spend half of their day listening to lots of technical language, detailed discussions, and then be brave enough to pose a question when the moment arrives. So can Twitter offer a space to make Board meetings more social, or are they mutually incompatible? Can Twitter enable a wider group of people to engage with topics under discussion? We are experimenting at our NHS Trust and here are ten basic lessons we’ve learnt along the way: Making it social – we began by just sharing updates from the Board of Directors using the rationale that we were reaching people who couldn’t attend in person. But of course people wanted to interact. We now send out tweets a few days before asking tweeps if they’d like to put question to the Board and giving them the option to tweet them or email them to us instead.  This has definitely engaged more people...