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November 13, 2005

We've officially launched!

Patient Opinion had it's official launch on Friday, by Rosie Winterton MP - the Minister of State for Health Services, no less.

Paul, who is the driving force behind PO, said some interesting things about what Patient Opinion is about. Even though I have been involved with this project for nearly a year, I think I gained a deeper sense of its significance. The more you think about using the web for developing new kinds of relationship between public services and their users (i.e. everyone), the more you feel this just has to happen. I'm excited to be a part of it.

There was a good mix of people present, from local patients and NHS managers (we were in a health centre in Doncaster), people developing the Choose and Book programme, senior policymakers from the Department of Health, and of course the minister.

Two things came across to me:

(a) the whole event was friendly and informal, yet allowed very different perspectives to be expressed. Felt like a microcosm of how Patient Opinion should be.

(b) You could see - and hear - from the perspectives of patients, managers and policymakers, that everyone felt they could get something useful and worthwhile from a service like Patient Opinion.

In principle, PO allows information to flow in a way that everyone wants. Of course, the trick is going to be trying to make that happen in practice...

Posted by James at 9:44 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack