Small steps – smoothing the way for #mHealth innovation in the NHS

Small steps – smoothing the way for #mHealth innovation in the NHS

by | Mar 23, 2014 | #mHabitat, #NHStalktech, mental health, NHS stuff | 2 comments

If we’re going to develop digital tools that make a proper difference to people’s lives, then we need fantastic collaboration between app developers, designers, academics, clinicians and people accessing services. This is the magic that will enable great ideas and solutions to emerge. Sound simple? Well we’ve already come unstuck a few times and we’re only at the beginning of our #mHealthHabitat journey – creating an environment in Leeds for mHealth to flourish. It’s increasingly apparent to me that NHS institutions can be daunting bodies to collaborate with for all sorts of different reasons. But we desperately need the creativity and technical know-how of digital specialists, alongside the domain expertise of people who know intimately what it is like to live with a particular diagnosis, and people with clinical knowledge, teaming up together. My aspiration is to make this as easy as possible, and one way to get there is to learn through doing. Once we’ve done it then it will be a little easier the next time. And so on. A big challenge is in understanding all the checks and balances required by the NHS to protect the safety and privacy of people accessing services. It’s a minefield of information governance, regulation and ethics – all undeniably important and all tricky to balance with agile innovation – learning fast and failing quickly. It is possible to get so lost in regulation that innovation becomes a distant dream. Last week I hooked up with MindTech, alongside a group of people bringing diverse expertise, to begin unpicking all the fundamental standards that should be considered when recommending, licencing or developing...
Digital innovation & the #mHealthHabitat – it’s the little things

Digital innovation & the #mHealthHabitat – it’s the little things

by | Mar 16, 2014 | #mHabitat, #NHStalktech, NHS stuff | 0 comments

Quite some time ago the lovely @amcunningham tweeted me a link to a post about why we are sometimes reluctant to share learning. The basic argument is that as we learn new things they become obvious to use and melt in to our background knowledge. As a result we don’t think it is special or worth sharing. It’s one of those little things that always stuck in the back of my mind. As we’ve been setting up the mHealthHabitat programme I’ve been reminded (and reminded myself) of the importance of capturing learning before we forget. Learning quickly becomes the status quo and when that happens we forget the potential power of sharing it with others. So this post captures a lovely learning point – about how innovation pops up in unexpected places and the importance of creating spaces for the unexpected to happen. It’s another way of celebrating the joy of serendipity which I’ve blogged about before. This week I hooked up with @FranBurrows for a coffee and a chat about Mindfull – ostensibly a chance to find out a bit more about what they do and add it to my list of interesting mHealth initiatives out there in  what sometimes seems to be a very crowded market. But Francis surprised me. His passion and enthusiasm compelled me. The care and cleverness of Mindfull impressed me. The user-centred design and development chimed with our values and orientiation to support the creation of a flourishing #mhealthHabitat in Leeds. And from our conversation exciting possibilities for collaboration emerged. The digital developments that Francis is curious about happen to align with those...