Three salutary reflections on the #SamaritansRadar app
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...
Small steps – smoothing the way for #mHealth innovation in the NHS
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
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...
The machine that goes ping! Are apps the answer to everything?
image courtesy of histalktv.com Are apps the solution to everything? perhaps not… given my new role, directing a programme of work developing the use of digital tools such as apps in clinical services, you might guess my response would be a big definite resounding yes. However, a number of conversations I’ve had, and articles I’ve read this week, have caused me to wonder if we are in danger of naivety in we succumb to an uncritical delight in the role apps might play in relation to our health, and indeed many other aspects of our lives. The first thing which has surprised me when talking to clinical services, is that so many have an idea for an app they’d like to develop. Apps are popular – people like them, people think they can improve clinical care, and people think they can help save money in an increasingly cash strapped NHS. All of these things are likely to be correct to varying degrees, but I’m also struck by a sense that we must think critically about how much they can solve. In his recent talk to the Digital Life Design (DLD) conference, Evgeny Morozov questions what he sees as our desire to expect too much from technology at the expense of collective solutions to social problems. In the NHS we talk about empowering people to take control of their health, whereas he talks about the state delegating responsibility to the citizen and blaming them when they fail to do the ‘right thing’. To illuminate this point with a simple example – an app that supports healthy eating may be one...
#DigiHealthLab… first steps in creating an mHealth habitat
Our preparations might not have been particularly noticed by anyone else, but the #DigiHealthLab launch event last Thursday was the result of many months of planning and preparation. It’s our first tentative step in creating a self-sustaining habitat for digital innovation in Leeds. What is #DigiHealthLab? #DigiHealthLab is part of a habitat we are developing which will enable people accessing health services and practitioners to collaborate with developers, designers and entrepreneurs. It starts with a problem – a question or an idea – and ends with a digital solution that we either licence or we develop locally. I’ve previously blogged about #DigiHealthLab here. Hacking our way there Our intention is to find a way of creating the right habitat for digital solutions to flourish in the city. A participatory day with a variety of interested clinical services seemed like a good place to start. We modelled our event on a hack day and you can find a great description of a hack by @amcunningham who ran a successful one in Cardiff this weekend. Key ingredients for our day were: A lovely space (at Shine) Yummy food and refreshments An expert facilitator Dedicated people on hand to help out Six enthusiastic clinical services (people accessing the service and practitioners) Designer, developers, academics and service improvement specialists A graphic recorder to capture the day in pictures Tweeting and blogging to share the day in real time and bring other voices in to the room (you can find a storify of the tweets here) A judging panel with commercial nous and lived experience. Where did we get to? On the plus side...about.me
Victoria Betton
victoria betton
director mHabitat | NHS | social media & mental health doctorate | interested in digital inclusion | parma violets fiend | http://codesigndigitalhealth.co.uk
