Seven steps to mHealth shareability

Seven steps to mHealth shareability

by | Oct 17, 2014 | #mHabitat, NHS stuff, social media | 0 comments

We’re not always great at sharing stuff in the NHS. And if we do want to share stuff there can be lots of barriers that get in the way.  Of course there are all sorts of circumstances in which it’s right to not share (personal confidentiality being an obvious one) but what about when sharing is a way to improve what you do and how you do it? The idea of shareability is something we’re thinking about a lot in the mHealthHabitat programme.  Starting with a blank canvas has been an opportunity to try out new ways of doing stuff and make use of digital tools which can help us work smarter and more openly. Sharing with each other as a team (we have no office base) is critical to getting things done; sharing our learning beyond the team is an important part of enabling us achieve our purpose of creating a habitat in Leeds where mHealth can flourish. We haven’t got it quite right yet but we are busy building up the shareability factor as we go, and having a proper team now in place means we have a few more hands and heads to make this happen. Here are seven ways in which we are experimenting with being more sharey: Blogging it – we set up a blog as quickly as possible after we got off the blocks in January so that we had a web-based home for the habitat. We are not only capturing learning in bite-size blog post chunks for ourselves, but also making it available for anyone else who might be interested in what...
Co-producing social media in a learning disability service

Co-producing social media in a learning disability service

by | Jan 24, 2013 | NHS stuff | 3 comments

Recently I blogged about how we were collaborating with people with a learning disability to develop a social media presence. You can find the post here Our next step was for @digitalastair and me to spend a morning with a group of people with a learning disability, and workers, to have a shared think about how we might make this happen in practice. We found that whilst some participants had heard of Facebook, almost everyone was unfamiliar with other forms of social media, and only a few people had an active account. We had wondered whether the highly visual content of Pinterest might be appealing – and we weren’t wrong. It is no exaggeration to say that people loved it. We found out about everyone’s interests and then invariably we were able to track down a Pinterest site that matched. Everything from Freddie Star, through to Westlife, through to pubs in Leeds. The only thing which eluded us was Shakin’ Stevens – a gap in the world of Pinterest that has yet to be filled! This practical approach, directly connecting to people’s personal interests, was a great way to engage them in the possibilities of social media. The service already has a healthy eating group and participants immediately saw the advantages of keeping a photographic record of recipes as they are made and then sharing them with others through the site. People saw this as an opportunity to share their activities with friends and families. Workers saw it as a means of keeping colleagues, managers and commissioners in touch with their work. And as @Digitalastair pointed out: ‘On Facebook...