From the consulting room

Dr Neil Paul

I’m involved with an NHS North West-originated project called the Web 2.0 Accelerator Programme with a company called Health2Works.

The idea is to generate great ideas in which IT might help to deliver better healthcare and rapidly develop them to the point where it’s possible to work out if they are viable or not. This might mean doing some mock-ups to show functionality, producing a working demo, or just honing an idea by facilitating some user research.

Health2Works started with a series of events in different settings – secondary care, primary care, and so on – at which ideas were brainstormed. Hundreds of ideas were generated and some have been picked to accelerate.

I was particularly interested to get involved as this project as it mirrors a lot of my personal IT interests at the moment. I’ve launched several iPhone and iPad apps, mainly in collaboration with others – my most recent being iTennisElbow – and in doing that I’ve made all sorts of interesting contacts.

I recently heard back from one called Shawn Larson, who contacted me over a year ago. He has just launched his fluoroscopy simulator – the iVCL – free on the app store. Check it out – it is great and he is interested in feedback.

I’ve also spoken to lots of other people and passed on some of my acquired knowledge when I’ve been able to (if you want to chat, get in touch on neil.paul@nhs.net).

However, I’ve realised that lots of people have great ideas for delivering education or healthcare services in a new way but don’t know how to work up their idea or find out whether it’s really worthwhile or economically sound.

I heard that Mike Farrar, chief executive of NHS North West, ran a Dragon’s Den-style IT innovations day to address this issue, which sounded good.

Sadly I wasn’t invited, but feedback was that there was an obvious disconnect between the IT people and the clinicians at the event, and that more communication was needed between the two.

Accelerated learning

This brings me back to the accelerator project and my involvement. I originally got roped in to give a clinician’s view, but am now helping out with a project whose idea is to take GP websites to the next level.

This has become topical following a recent Department of Health report that became news because it said that most NHS websites are rubbish.

GPs haven’t really had any incentive to have a good website. However, in the brave new world of the coalition we might be competing for patients alongside private providers.

So having a shiny new website is good marketing. I signed up to help in return for my surgery site getting an upgrade. See www.sandbachgps.co.uk for a very early released version – a newer one is in development.

The project has of course expanded and evolved – I believe it’s called Agile methodology! – but the current plan is to provide a head website for a GP commissioning consortium, with sub-sites for all its constituent practices.

They will have a similar look and feel to the head site, with the ability to vary colours, pictures, and similar details. They will all have a range of web 2.0 features, including blogs, forums and links to social networking sites. The idea is to build loyalty and get real patient involvement.

The sites are easy to manage and edit by a practice, but the key idea is that news and information about the consortium will appear on the practice sites automatically. Patients will be able to leave comments and so on, which might be a way of getting practice-based feedback about consortium ideas.

To make it even more attractive, the site has back office functionality for staff. They can log-in and use it to store consortia documents (with version control and discussion), manage shared calendars and ‘to do’ lists, and do general project management. This is accessible from anywhere.

The site is up and running in prototype and Health2Works is now looking for interested consortia to help develop the idea at cost, as strategic health authority monies are drying up. Get in touch with me and I can pass on details – or contact them via their website.

Down with IE6!

The biggest problem we have had so far is browser incompatibility and the fact that most NHS desktops still seem to be using Internet Explorer 6. I’m increasingly hearing from my colleagues that loads of legitimate sites don’t work properly on IE6.

It is time to stop letting the tail wag the dog. Competition is good. Let me choose a modern browser so I can access modern websites.

About the author: Dr Neil Paul is a full time GP working at the Ashfields primary care centre in Sandbach. He sits on his primary care trust’s professional executive committee and has a lead role for IM&T and Payment by Results.