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... 
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Dare to Blow the Whistle?

Public Concern at Work –the charity that supports whistleblowers- recently used the launch of their biennal review to pose the question “ Whistleblowing – a right or a duty?”. Val Moore, our Partner on the spot, reported some disturbing contributions from people who had reported concerns... 
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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... 
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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.... 
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GP Commissioning: a US view – lots of ways to get it wrong: very few to get it right

Lots of ways to get it wrong and very few ways to get it right – worrying words from US  doctor/academic Dr Lawrence Casalino writing about GP Commissioning. The article in the Nuffield Trust Viewpoint series is mercifully free of political axe-grinding and makes some good points based on his... 
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Citizen Concerns – Health trails Economy

Just a reminder that there is a world outside health with stuff going on that worries people far more than Health Issues      Read More →

Controlling the NHS – a new prescription for A. Lansley

We think we have found a solution that will bring the NHS under control. Nature magazine has picked up some work done by people at MIT and Northeastern University which shows how to control complex networks. Their computer model can take a look at complex networks and reveal which are the critical points... 
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Walkin’ Back to Happiness

It was a hit for Helen Shapiro in 1961 and now it is back.  Happiness was relaunched yesterday by Action for Happiness. The show opened with the  exercise led by the Buddhist du jour  to become  fully present and then we were introduced to happiness, the organisation and the way it will work to... 
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2011 and 20 posts later- the Spring Newsletter

Now the news is that the public and patients were pretty satisfied with the NHS as it was. Ben Page of MORI was already making the point in July last year that the Ipsos MORI Issues Index back in 2002 showed the NHS  as the top concern of more than 70% of us with only 10% of us worried about the economy. ... 
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The Heart of the Matter

“Dismissive attitude of staff, a disregard for process and procedure and an apparent indifference of NHS staff to deplorable standards of care”" concluded England’s Health Ombudsman Ann Abraham in her Office’s February report into ten cases involving older people. The stories... 
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