by | Oct 11, 2016 | #mHabitat, Digital, People Drive Digital | 0 comments

What has frugal innovation got to offer the NHS, social care and wider public sector? This is a question we will be debating at our People Drive Digital #PDDigital16 festival on the evening of 28 November at the Open Data Institute in Leeds. One of our debaters is Jaideep Prabhu who is professor of Indian Business and Enterprise at the Cambridge Judge Business School within the University of Cambridge. Jaideep has written extensively on the topic of frugal innovation both in emerging markets and in the Western world. You can watch him share his thoughts about what the West can learn from frugal innovation here: So what is frugal innovation and how is it relevant to people driving digital innovation in health and care? Nesta define frugal innovation as follows: Frugal innovation responds to limitations in resources, whether financial, material or institutional, and using a range of methods, turns these constraints into an advantage. You can read a Nesta report on frugal innovation here. The report highlights many examples of frugal innovation and I particularly liked the story of the Kerala neighbourhood network in palliative care. In contrast to a doctor led hierarchical model of care, volunteers from the local community are trained to identify problems of people who chronically ill in their area and to intervene. 70 percent of the Kerala population have access to palliative care in contrast to only 1 percent at a national level. The neighbourhood network consists of more than 4,000 volunteers, with 36 doctors and 60 nurses providing expert support and advice to enable care for 5000 patients at any one time. Frugal...
People Drive Digital #PDDigital at NHS Expo 2015

People Drive Digital #PDDigital at NHS Expo 2015

by | Sep 1, 2015 | #PDDAwards15, #PdDigital15, NHS stuff | 2 comments

People driven digital emerged out of conversations towards the end of 2014 about wanting to put people firmly at the centre of digital innovation in health and care. These conversations took us to our #PDDigital event in May, followed by the publication of the People Driven Digital White Paper which we launched at King’s Fund Digital Health and Care Congress session in June, and then the inaugural People Driven Digital unAwards in July. We took a breather, did a bit of reflecting, and are now taking our learning to share with others at this year’s Health and Care Innovation Expo on 2 and 3 September 2015, where Mark Brown, Anne Cooper and myself will be running a session at the pop-up university. Our White Paper gives some clues and some challenges as to how a collaborative approach to digital innovation, as promoted in Personalised Care 2020 can be realised. We argue that the potential for people driving digital innovation from the ground up should be recognised, understood and supported at a strategic level. Health and care need to enable this to happen but it should be led by people not by institutions. We believe that it is only by people driving digital innovation that a step change can be achieved and outcomes in health and care transformed. So what next for people driving digital innovation in health and care? If you’d like to contribute to the conversation, please come along to our session, tweet using the hashtag #PDDigital or comment on this blog – the more we have people accessing and working in health and care services involved in...
Why people-driven digital health and wellbeing? #PdDigital15

Why people-driven digital health and wellbeing? #PdDigital15

by | Mar 29, 2015 | #PdDigital15 | 1 comment

Towards the end of last year I offered to run a session on people/citizen-led digital health for the Health 2.0 Europe which took place in London. My suggestion came about because I spent much of 2014 encountering many amazing digital entrepreneurs, but when it came to conferences they were rarely to be seen on the podium or as sponsors or with stands. We know that digital tools and services have to be born out of user-centred design approaches if they’re going to stand a chance of success; but we also need people accessing services to be shaping the discussion at conferences and events too. So back to Health 2.0… it took no time at all to pull together an amazing panel of people who had all developed digital tools and services out of their personal experience. The tracker session was full to the rafters and we had a lively and stimulating discussion as well as tons of interest in what our panel had to say.  This experience gave us an idea… why not shape an event entirely around the experiences and motivations of people who have done digital innovation from the ground up. Why not ask the question ‘how can the NHS unleash people-driven digital health and wellbeing?’ and see if we can collectively find answers to help shape the strategic direction of digital in health and social care and beyond. We chose the word people because this is all about everyday people sorting out everyday problems that they have directly experienced. We chose the word driven because it is people in the driving seat and many are really...