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...
What are mental health practitioner attitudes towards digital?

What are mental health practitioner attitudes towards digital?

by | Oct 2, 2016 | mental health | 0 comments

The use of digital technologies such as Internet sites and mobile applications, have received much hype in recent years, both in mental health and the NHS more widely. Opinions on these technologies vary; and those at either ends of the viewpoint spectrum see them as either a panacea to overstretched services or as undermining the primacy of the face-to-face patient/clinician relationship. A recent open access study has endeavored to dig beneath the hype by seeking to understand the opportunities and challenges posed by the use of digital technologies from the perspective of mental health providers. As someone who runs an NHS digital innovation programme I see how practitioners are often overlooked in the development process. This is a big problem because those same practitioners are often critical in influencing the take-up and use of digital technologies by patients. So understanding digital technologies from a practitioner perspective is a welcome addition to research in this field. I’ve written a review of this study which you can read in full on The Mental Elf site here.  The Mental Elf aims to help practitioners find what they need to keep up-to-date with all of the important and reliable mental health research and guidance.  They have a team of mental health experts who post blogs every week day with short and snappy summaries that highlight evidence-based publications relevant to mental health practice in the UK and further afield. You can find out more about The Mental Elf...
The next Uber for healthcare

The next Uber for healthcare

by | Jun 12, 2016 | Digital, NHS stuff | 4 comments

‘This app is basically the next Uber for healthcare’ A web search for the phrase uber for healthcare yields around 11,100,000 hits along with a plethora of suggested related searches. Uber has become shorthand for customer convenience and the disruption of established markets. It seems many people are looking for the lucrative uber for healthcare model and it’s a phrase with currency at many digital health events and in numerous articles. This recent Kevin.MD blog post argues that an uber for healthcare will be ‘super convenient, quick and easy, and inexpensive’. A recent commissioned article in the weighty British Medical Journal, entitled Uber for Healthcare asks:   Is it time to reinvent the home visit? … app happy entrepreneurs backed by venture capitalists believe that they can turn back the clock (Hawkes, N. 12 February, 2016).   The idea of a quick and convenient healthcare system that we can access with a swipe of our app while we go about our busy lives is seductive. But should we be questioning more deeply whether we want app happy entrepreneurs backed by venture capitalists disrupting the NHS with uber-style models of healthcare? Relationships or transactions An uberised model of healthcare prioritises transactions over relationships – it elevates convenience, efficiency and accessibility. But arguably healthcare is much more complex than an A to B taxi journey for all but the most simple of ailments. What happens to an uberised model when referrals along a multi-provider care pathway are required or ongoing support to help someone manage multiple long term health conditions? An uber style healthcare model may benefit the generally fit and...
From online social networks to codesign in digital health

From online social networks to codesign in digital health

by | May 29, 2016 | Digital, mental health, PhD, social media | 2 comments

I set this blog up just over four years ago in January 2012 both to record my online ethnographic PhD research and with the hope of having conversations that would help inform my thinking and enable me to share my learning along the way. After four years of working full time, compressing five days into four and doing research on the extra day I’d squeezed out of the week, I finally had my viva on Friday. I passed the assessors’ grilling with four minor corrections and am basking in a profound sense of relief and delight in equal measure. My research was about online social networks and mental health with a heavy focus on the now departed The World of Mentalists blog and ecosystem around it. I have many people to be grateful to for in helping me think about this topic over the last four years. In particular I’d like to thank all my interviewees for sharing their time and expertise (you know who you are) and to everyone who welcomed me into the madosphere. I’d also like to thank Phil, Mark, Sue, James and Kat for many a Skype, phone call, meet up and often conference podium where we shared our thinking about mental health and online social networks with various audiences. During those four years  my interests have developed beyond online social networks to digital technologies in health, with a particular focus on co-design and ethics. I’ve clocked up 133 posts on this blog and recently changed its title  to reflect those broader interests. A few years ago I set up mHabitat which comprises an ever...
What does new power mean for the NHS?

What does new power mean for the NHS?

by | Feb 7, 2016 | activism, Digital, NHS stuff, social media | 0 comments

What do shifting societal trends towards a sharing economy mean for the NHS? Understanding New Power (Heimans & Timms, December 2014) sets out a framework to conceptualise shifts in power which are enabled by digital technologies in contemporary society: Old power works like a currency. It is held by few. Once gained, it is jealously guarded, and the powerful have a substantial store of it to spend. It is closed, inaccessible, and leader-driven. It downloads, and it captures. New power operates differently, like a current. It is made by many. It is open, participatory, and peer-driven. It uploads, and it distributes. Like water or electricity, it’s most forceful when it surges. The goal with new power is not to hoard it but to channel it.   The authors conceptualise a participation scale from consumption to co-owning, from old power models exemplified by Britannica to new power models such as Wikipedia. You can find out more about their framework in a fascinating Ted Talk given by Heiman here: Despite this being a contemporary framework, informed and enabled by digital technologies, it resonates with Shirley Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation which was published all the way back in 1969 and remains common currency in the field of NHS patient participation. Arnstein conceptualised an eight rung ladder of participation in decision making from manipulation and tokenism at the bottom to citizen control at the top. Heiman and Timm’s framework is like Arstein’s ladder, with the rocket fuel of technology as an enabler of new power possibilities for those of us who have access to the digital tools and literacy to take advantage of them.  ...