Citizen as e-data owners – the power to transform the citizen/state relationship

“All hospitals used social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube” Can this be true? Well not in the UK. The figures come from research done by the US-based Society for Participatory Medicine. They took a look at 14 top-ranked US hospitals and the variety of uses is an instructive... 
[Continue reading]

Decommissioning lessons: accept the anger – and the impact

If you are sitting comfortably, then we’ll begin with the lesson on “decommissioning for GPs”.  When resources are finite –shrinking in real terms given NHS inflation – commissioning to achieve quality, innovation, productivity and prevention (QIPP) can only happen in parallel with decommissioning... 
[Continue reading]

Top Site, Top Dogs, Top of the Agenda? Everyone’s a winner.

Like most local community groups, the Clissold Park User Group (CPUG) often struggles to get people to understand its role.  As the current Chair of the group I can see that the higher our profile and the more professional we look, the less people think we are really a community group.  If you... 
[Continue reading]

Think Fig – the MAC Autumn Newsletter

There were times in the summer when we worried that Andrew Craig would go pop. Such was his despair as he watched our hopes and expectations for meaningful public engagement – beware! new acronym EwPC  (engagement with Patients/Communities)- go down the drain. We were concerned that his powerful... 
[Continue reading]

Corrupting Caroline

On Friday I shelled out £50 to a local student for looking after my daughters so I could spend the day sitting in a room full of health professionals, local authority workers and people from the salaried bit of the voluntary sector who, if not all highly paid, were certainly being paid quite a bit to... 
[Continue reading]

Request for Geek Bearing Gifts

Raw Data – Tough to Chew This is what happens when geeks start to play with data and map the blogosphere. This is just showing links and connections as well as indicating apparently how much certain topic areas are addressed. I found this on a website run by a Malcolm Hurst who works for MSN and... 
[Continue reading]

J’accuse! updated – a modern approach to accountability

Accountability is meaningless when the finger of suspicion and blame can move in a week from a single “rogue” reporter to the Chairman of News Corporation. In a situation where potentially all are held accountable in this random way, no one is accountable. Caroline Oliver a friend of MAC... 
[Continue reading]

Summer Newsletter: Citizen Result

This has been quite a summer for campaigning and the citizen voice. Most recently I got this email from Ricken Patel of Avaaz showing how a combination of persistence, skill in using modern communication networks and helped by the breaking phone hacking scandal had turned a done deal around. It’s... 
[Continue reading]

Raw Data Now! What do we want? Raw Data Now!

Partner Craig sent us an email recently where he professed himself baffled on how information on GP performance in Wandsworth got published: Strange. Somehow this got published even though it was never officially launched and was still being worked on when I was last involved with it in April this year.... 
[Continue reading]

Whose consortium is it anyway? – our take on lay involvement in authorisation

How can local lay people be engaged with the authorisation process for commissioning consortia?  The Bill is silent on this point (which speaks volumes in itself), so we thought we’d fly a kite for our thoughts  on how the National Commissioning Board (NCB) authorisation process with consortia... 
[Continue reading]

« Previous Page — Next Page »