Patient Opinion is a revolutionary new online system that lets anyone share experiences of receiving specialist treatment on the NHS. The non-profit start-up is jointly funded by the Department of Health and South Yorkshire Strategic Health Authority, and is led by experienced GP and social entrepreneur, Dr. Paul Hodgkin. Headshift designed the Patient Opinion communication model utilising a range of social software tools and techniques.
Bringing together reliable patient-generated opinions and advice
Based on Dr. Paul Hodgkin's experience, and the service improvement requirements of the NHS, two major communication gaps between carers and patients were identified in the current system:
Sharing a common ethos
Working with Dr. Hodgkin in the early stages of this project, we were struck by how closely Headshift's ethos and approach matched that of Patient Opinion. We are both passionate about empowering people to tell their stories; we both believe in technology as an enabler rather than a 'solution' in search of a problem; and we both share a genuine commitment to online community-building as well as finding alternative business and communication models.
Finding good advice where you are
The solution we built for Patient Opinion lets anyone record their experiences and find good advice in very simple ways. The main interface aggregates the latest opinions from around the country, as well as telling you what the site is about.
From here you can enter your postcode to search local services, or simply search by free text, or you can enter your story and share it with the community. Another option is to search for opinions by entering a free text search.
The site brings together such social media tools as blogs, reader commenting and feed aggregation. The challenge was to keep the focus on ease of use and maintaining an inviting interface for all kinds of web-users.
People like to give praise
For the first time the collected patient voice has become routinely audible to providers, clinicians and other patients, which means that Patient Opinion has the potential to become a major driver of quality within the NHS, whilst simultaneously helping Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities meet multiple policy targets.
Interestingly, whilst the NHS was expecting Patient Opinion to generate a large number of complaints, the majority (over 70%) of patient stories are positive and many take the time to say 'thank you' to the staff who treated or cared for them.
The lesson we have learned here is that, whilst most organisations have a complaints procedure in place, very few make it easy for their customers to also provide compliments and thanks. By making it equally easy to provide both negative and positive feedback, the patient experiences recorded by Patient Opinion provide an overall picture which is in sharp contrast to the media portrayal of the NHS as an 'institution in crisis'.
An award-winning solution
Patient Opinion has received wide and positive coverage in both mainstream and specialist media and was a 'highly commended' finalist in the New Statesman New Media Awards 2006. More recently, Patient Opinion was ranked by Metro Newspapers as one of the world's top 101 websites, it was flagged as one of Europe's top-70 internet start-ups, and was the only European among the 10 finalists in an international competition looking for Disruptive Innovations in Health Care.
Bringing together reliable patient-generated opinions and advice
Based on Dr. Paul Hodgkin's experience, and the service improvement requirements of the NHS, two major communication gaps between carers and patients were identified in the current system:
- Patients and carers are now being provided with greater choice of specialist treatment options and locations - but they have little information about which options are best for them
- The NHS has put in place lots of reporting and rating systems - but this formal 'performance' data seldom records the real experience of patients and carers.
Sharing a common ethos
Working with Dr. Hodgkin in the early stages of this project, we were struck by how closely Headshift's ethos and approach matched that of Patient Opinion. We are both passionate about empowering people to tell their stories; we both believe in technology as an enabler rather than a 'solution' in search of a problem; and we both share a genuine commitment to online community-building as well as finding alternative business and communication models.
Finding good advice where you are
The solution we built for Patient Opinion lets anyone record their experiences and find good advice in very simple ways. The main interface aggregates the latest opinions from around the country, as well as telling you what the site is about.
From here you can enter your postcode to search local services, or simply search by free text, or you can enter your story and share it with the community. Another option is to search for opinions by entering a free text search.
The site brings together such social media tools as blogs, reader commenting and feed aggregation. The challenge was to keep the focus on ease of use and maintaining an inviting interface for all kinds of web-users.
People like to give praise
For the first time the collected patient voice has become routinely audible to providers, clinicians and other patients, which means that Patient Opinion has the potential to become a major driver of quality within the NHS, whilst simultaneously helping Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities meet multiple policy targets.
Interestingly, whilst the NHS was expecting Patient Opinion to generate a large number of complaints, the majority (over 70%) of patient stories are positive and many take the time to say 'thank you' to the staff who treated or cared for them.
The lesson we have learned here is that, whilst most organisations have a complaints procedure in place, very few make it easy for their customers to also provide compliments and thanks. By making it equally easy to provide both negative and positive feedback, the patient experiences recorded by Patient Opinion provide an overall picture which is in sharp contrast to the media portrayal of the NHS as an 'institution in crisis'.
An award-winning solution
Patient Opinion has received wide and positive coverage in both mainstream and specialist media and was a 'highly commended' finalist in the New Statesman New Media Awards 2006. More recently, Patient Opinion was ranked by Metro Newspapers as one of the world's top 101 websites, it was flagged as one of Europe's top-70 internet start-ups, and was the only European among the 10 finalists in an international competition looking for Disruptive Innovations in Health Care.