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...
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...
#NHSTalkTech – a pledge for New Year #NHSChangeDay or any other day
When James @@Psycle_Doc contacted me with an idea for an NHS Change Day pledge I jumped at the opportunity – supporting and inspiring NHS staff to talk tech has been my mission during 2013 and a big focus of my PhD research as well. I’m most definitely not a techie, but I’ve seen again and again, people using social media platforms in creative ways to share information, have conversations and support each other – both as people accessing services and as professionals (and often both). Many professionals I speak to have all sorts of worries about social networking but this is even more of a reason to talk tech – to make sense of it and understand what it means for day to day practice and for professional development. The NHS Employers #NHSEngage campaign is all about encouraging a permissive use of social media and it’s no surprise that the Health Service Journal’s 2014 list of 25 rising stars has a strong tech theme, including recognising Teresa Chinn for establishing her @WeNurses online community of nurses. People’s lives increasingly revolve around social networking platforms for conversation and mobile phone applications for the basics of day to day living – from google maps through to online banking. Why wouldn’t we expect the same to manage a health condition if it means we can take more control ourselves, improve our experience and even possibly improve our outcomes? Another reason to talk tech is to understand the barriers that some people accessing services face. A recent report found that 51% of disabled people have never used the Internet and as the Government...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
