by Victoria | Oct 31, 2014 | #NHStalktech, activism, mental health, social media |
On the 29 October The Samaritans launched a new Twitter app called Samaritans Radar. A search on their promotional hashtag #SamaritansRadar reveals extensive conversation, much of which expresses disquiet from people with mental health difficulties, about the surveillance function of this app. A plethora of blog posts have offered varied perspectives and insights into concerns related to the app. Firstly @MarkOneinFour summarises the key issues being discussed on the PsychCentral blog and @bainesy1969 raises serious concerns over data privacy which issues he argues are being breached by the app. @BipolarBlogger raises ethical issues from a personal perspective in her post Mr Sam and his magical radar booth and @dr_know shares her thoughts as a mental health researcher on her blog. From a more technical perspective @akrasodomski questions whether algorithms can realistically turn tweets in to meaningful data about suicidal ideas and @adrianshort considers ethical issues related to data analysis. These are just a few of many blog posts and tweets that reflect expert opinion and debate on the topic. An underpinning theme is one endemic to social networking sites – context collapse an idea coined by Danah Boyd (2014) – imagined and actual audiences as well as contexts collide where meaning and intentions can be easily misunderstood. The potential for well-meaning followers to take action or say the wrong thing on the basis of a tweet found through an algorithm is significant. The potential for non-well-meaning followers to add to people’s distress has also been highlighted. I’d like to contribute to the conversation by sharing three simple reflections from a user-centred design point of view – something we are thinking about a lot...
by Victoria | Oct 17, 2014 | #mHabitat, NHS stuff, social media |
We’re not always great at sharing stuff in the NHS. And if we do want to share stuff there can be lots of barriers that get in the way. Of course there are all sorts of circumstances in which it’s right to not share (personal confidentiality being an obvious one) but what about when sharing is a way to improve what you do and how you do it? The idea of shareability is something we’re thinking about a lot in the mHealthHabitat programme. Starting with a blank canvas has been an opportunity to try out new ways of doing stuff and make use of digital tools which can help us work smarter and more openly. Sharing with each other as a team (we have no office base) is critical to getting things done; sharing our learning beyond the team is an important part of enabling us achieve our purpose of creating a habitat in Leeds where mHealth can flourish. We haven’t got it quite right yet but we are busy building up the shareability factor as we go, and having a proper team now in place means we have a few more hands and heads to make this happen. Here are seven ways in which we are experimenting with being more sharey: Blogging it – we set up a blog as quickly as possible after we got off the blocks in January so that we had a web-based home for the habitat. We are not only capturing learning in bite-size blog post chunks for ourselves, but also making it available for anyone else who might be interested in what...
