How does people-driven digital square up to NHS-led digital? #PdDigital15
How does people-driven digital square up to NHS-led digital? This was a question considered by Paul Hodgkin in his final Power to the People column for E-Health Insider. You can find the full article here and below are a few snippets that illuminate some of the themes we are likely to be considering at #PdDigital15. Citizen outspend the NHS on digital We spend a lot less in the NHS on digital technology that we do as citizens: So what have I learned? One signature theme is that NHS IT years are the reverse of dog years – if each human year is equal to seven dog’s years then the stuff that happens in the world of NHS IT is about 1/7th of that achieved by the citizenry. Just look at how much the NHS spends on IT kit compared with the citizenry. During the Connecting for Health campaign, the NHS spent around £1 billion per year on IT. Meanwhile, the people – that’s you and me and pretty much everyone else – was spending a minimum of £400 per household per year on phones, broadband, tablets and PCs. With 25 million households that works out at a cool £100 billion over the same decade. NHS £1: Citizens £10. Citizens doing it for ourselves Whilst the NHS is wrestling with huge barriers and challenges to digital technologies, citizens are doing it all anyway: Information governance, systems that don’t talk to each other, cultures that clash, organisations that compete when they should collaborate – all these are the very stuff of high transaction costs; which is just a...
Digital is just a fad.
‘Digital is just a fad’ ‘Digital is just a distraction from the real problems facing healthcare’ ‘Digital is just another thing to learn and I don’t have time’ These are all challenges I’ve recently heard from healthcare professionals recently who are reticent and doubtful about the value of spending time developing their understanding of social media and digital tools/services. Everyone is busy and everyone is overstretched. So why should their attention be focused here when they are so many other more pressing priorities? Their wariness is in sharp contrast to a talk on widening digital participation by Bob Gann at a recent mHealthHabitat breakfast discussion in which he shared the following three stark facts: Low health literacy is closely linked to poor outcomes and mortality Information and services are increasingly digital – digital skills are increasingly linked to health literacy Those who are least likely to be online are those who most need health and care services. If digital skills are important for people needing health and care services then they are also important for practitioners who are delivering those services. Increasingly, practitioners need to incorporate digital mediation in to their day to day work – helping people find and make sense of the best health information and digital tools online. Digital skills aren’t just technical skills – they are skills in appraising information online, they are skills in participating in online communities to maximise their beneficial effects and minimise harm; they are skills in understanding whether a mobile app is based on evidenced clinical effectiveness and deciding if you’re ok with how it uses your data; they are...
What could Minecraft & the NHS possibly have in common?
A quick Internet search for *Minecraft* and *health* results in a plethora of sites which tell you how to restore the health of your player – health being the meter of endurance in Minecraft and represented by the number of hearts you have on your screen. What pops up next are the desperate pleas of parents wanting to know how to keep their children’s obsession with Minecraft *healthy*. What doesn’t readily appear is anything about Minecraft’s application in a health context. I’ve been fascinated by Minecraft since, like millions of others, my youngest child became obsessed by this open ended creative and imaginative game. His focused hours of application, concentrated self-directed learning and mind-blowing creations must be the stuff of dreams for many a primary school teacher wanting to motivate their pupils. And not surprisingly there is a growing industry developing around Minecraft as an educational tool. I went along to the Playful Leeds Minecraft Unplugged workshop, along with my resident 10 year old Minecraft enthusiast, in order to think about how the game might have an application in an NHS context. The session was led by Adam Clarke, who amongst other things, has created Tate Worlds and Alan Lewis who has won awards for the virtual worlds he has built in Minecraft. Although I couldn’t find any reliable figures on the web, I was surprised to learn from Adam that there are fairly equal numbers of males and females playing Minecraft. I also found out that there is a Minecraft server for children with autism and their families called AutCraft but I’m not aware of anything else out...
Will 2015 be the year of open?
Will 2015 be the year of open? For me, New Year marks the beginning of a countdown to completing my PhD research which I hope to finalise before this time next year. I began this blog in January three years ago with the intention of recording my PhD journey, and it has become more of a reflective, sharing and learning tool than I ever imagined – a journey into open. Formality versus open A common tension I’ve experienced during the course of my research is the open and informal nature of shared connections and learning on social networking sites and the relative formality and rigidity of academic learning within a University context. In the blogosphere, learning is shared peer-to-peer in the spirit of collaboration. In an academic paper or a chapter in a book there is both a formal style to comply with and access constraints in the shape of a subscription or purchase. In the blogosphere feedback is instant and ideas built upon ideas; in the formal arena writing is produced as finished and polished. I appreciate the rigour of formal research and peer review whilst I enjoy the emergent nature of learning through social networks. They are not necessarily mutually exclusive, but I do wonder if open has more transgressive possibilities. Open as a way of life I’m currently reading David Price’s Open: how we’ll work, live and learn in the future and his critique of formal learning resonates with the tensions I describe above. With audacious optimism, he argues that: “going ‘open’ is a social revolution that represents a fundamental challenge to the established order...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
