Having a good digital idea isn’t enough. Good ideas are all well and good but only if they solve a real problem. Knowing what problems people face in terms of their health and care can take real insight – a deep understanding of issues that are complex and very personal. It’s also true that listening alone isn’t enough.
It’s possible if we don’t change the way we create digital solutions and we continue to create an environment where we go straight to what we believe is the solution then we may miss the point. That’s where co-production could help but if we are not careful this term can become diluted and misused. I recommend reading this blog by Mark Brown to read a little bit more about what I mean. As Mark says ‘it’s really, really hard’. We talk about user research in digital but that’s just a type of listening hard and for me still doesn’t cut it.
So, what can we do to make more of a difference?
#PDDigital set out to explore this idea believing that putting people at the heart of digital would have a positive influence on the use of digital and social for good in health and care. #PDDigital stands for ‘People Drive Digital’. Drive in this context is a very important word: putting people at the centre isn’t enough. We need to really focus on the concept that people who use services have skills and insights that are unique and are assets in their own right. We need to break down the barriers between people who use services and professionals who work on solutions. It’s about partnerships and recognising where good ideas really come from and creating environments where they can thrive.
Co-production in a digital space means that we respect where these assets lie and #PDDigital has unearthed some great examples of solutions that have been developed in this way. But there is a problem still. Getting people with good ideas to the stage where their ideas can take flight and become real solutions is difficult.
This year the founders of #PPDigital, Victoria Betton, Roz Davies and myself have decided to bring #PDDigital closer to the other people that matter; the technical people who have great skills and entrepreneurs looking for fab ideas. We will be at the GIANT Health Event 2017 aiming to have new conversations with different people aiming to illuminate the importance of those ideas that arise at the heart of what really counts; the ideas and challenges faced by real people. We hope that by talking about the idea that the real insights are held by patients, carers and professionals caring directly for people, we have the best chance of making a digital difference.
Please come and join us at GIANT if you are interested in our ideas. We welcome everyone and we look forward to having some great conversations.
I suspect that part of the problem about aging is that it’s an insidious process; it’s not like you wake up one day and suddenly you are ‘old’. It’s a gradual process noticeable by a series of small incremental changes; stiffness when you get out of bed on a morning that wasn’t present before, a memory that just isn’t as good at recall as it used to be and a fondness for reminiscence. I also know that for some older member of my family time starts to get stamped by loss; funerals become less unusual and more routine, if you can ever say a funeral is routine. What I mean is they appear more frequently in your diary as you lose family and friends.
So, what did the OT assessment show us?
For me ‘frugal’ has a very personal meaning. I was brought up in a frugal household; rarely did we throw anything away. Recycling was an art; buttons cut off items of clothes that were worn out, then the cloth used for clippy rugs. Shirt collars and cuffs turned and boots and shoes re-heeled. Post war habits lived through my parents and grandparents.
I had a developer say to me recently ‘It’s OK, we do lots of user research where we test our products and how well they work!’ – he was clearly proud of his product and through this research thought they were very well connected to their users. Clearly their plan couldn’t fail? Or could it?
Having Type 1 diabetes means I understand utility very well. There are hundreds of digital tools/apps available to me, a simple search in the apple app store shows the variety; carbohydrate counters, games, coaching, glucose monitoring. But the truth is, I only use one consistently and that’s an App called 
The answer for me lies in where the ideas and solutions arise. If we look to citizens and patients who have real skin in the game they will know where technology has real utility. From this, great designers and developers can collaborate with citizens and patients to create high utility AND high usability solutions. My view is that this type of ideas generation and co-production has the potential to create innovative scalable solutions. But only if we stop thinking the system knows best and properly tap into the ideas and creative thinking that sits behind People Drive Digital. Co-production in the digital development space could have real potential to help but it requires more working together to identify areas of potential utility and then combine these with fantastic design and development. We have the skills and talent – we just need more conversations.
lushed with the success of the conference we went on to host the unawards a few months later. Stressful and challenging we managed to deliver the events with no cost to anyone at the event but where there was much networking and meeting of minds, connections and chat. The innovations we unearthed are all pretty incredible and the award winner’s worthy.
On a similar vein (I would like to think they adopted some of the things they saw at PDDAwards) attending the Academy of Fab NHS Stuff awards was pretty amazing and a highlight of the end of the year. I have never been to an event like this. It was really fabulous but was truly celebratory of many great NHS ideas and solutions. The awards were given based on public voting. I found myself sat on the same table as the fabulous 5 Boroughs Partnership street triage team who won the 5127 Award. If you haven’t read about the awards you should, they are quirky and fun. The 5127 award for example is to recognise:
Earlier in the year I was lucky to be able to work with the NHS IQ team to produce a short video about using social media. It was a personal challenge that had been set by Steve Wheeler (@timbuckteeth) when I visited him in Plymouth the year before. Although Steve’s challenge was to do a series of interviews I decided that using another media for sharing was what I wanted to do and thanks to Helen Bevan (@helenbevan) this became a reality in 2015.
anniecoops 