Digital and making the invisible visible

Digital and making the invisible visible

by | Jan 9, 2015 | Digital, NHS stuff | 2 comments

This week I was invited to speak at a Ministerial event in Leeds which showcased the growing community of data, digital and health in our city. The opportunity to share the mHealthHabitat programme with an audience was great, but that’s not what I want to talk about here. Instead, I want to reflect on who gets to be in the conversation and who doesn’t. My post is offered in a spirit of enquiry and in making visible what can easily be rendered invisible. It was visible to me that I was the only woman on the invite list (as it turned out there were two other women present in the audience). All the speakers, apart from me, were men. Once I had noticed gender it was only a small leap to notice that everyone was white, almost everyone was wearing a suit, and everyone was of a certain age. There was no one there bringing patient perspectives to the conversation. There are two things I am not doing in this post –  firstly, I am not taking the moral high ground, if it had been an event full of white women I may well have not noticed if there were no black women there. I noticed because I was in a minority myself.  Secondly, I am not criticising this particular event – it’s an example of what seems to be business as usual most places you go when it comes to digital. The event was successful in rendering visible to myself, and no doubt other participants, that there really is a growing community of people in the digital and...
#AboutMeLeeds – join the conversation 21-27 Oct 2013

#AboutMeLeeds – join the conversation 21-27 Oct 2013

by | Oct 20, 2013 | #AboutMeLeeds, NHS stuff, social media | 0 comments

How much have you thought about what data you share online? Do you know who has access to it and what they can do with it? What if health and social care organisations could do a better job by sharing the information they have about you with each other? Just imagine if you could update your own health record; opt for the council to text you reminders to put out your bins; download an app which pushes relevant information to you about health, wellbeing and leisure in your city – a sublime vision of the future or one which leaves you cold and indifferent? As part of the Leeds Digital Festival, local NHS organisations and the council, supported by NHS Employers, NHS Confederation and NHS England, will be deliberating with the citizens of Leeds (and beyond) about all of these questions and many more from 21-27 October. We are partnering with Leeds Data Thing to test out a social conversation which will help shape the use of data in our city. To kick start the conversation we will be uploading blog posts every day which will shed light on the topic from a different angle – kindly written for us by people who use local services, council officers,  clinicians, councillors and chief executives. Everyone has a view, an opinion, a fresh perspective – something we hope will engage you, interest you, and spark a conversation. Here are snippets from just a few of the many posts we’ll be sharing: @PositivitySmile uses Twitter as a source of support for their mental health problems and is startlingly frank about their worries...