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May 4, 2007

Making sure we have a choice about voice

NHS Choices, the new DH-owned, Dr Foster-led wunder website for the NHS is due to go live this summer. Reportedly costing between £8 -15 million we are looking forward to its launch and hope that it will provide a great new resource for patients.
Amongst other offerings NHS Choices will contain a ‘Voice’ section where patients can share the story of their care at English hospitals and rank the service they have received using Amazon-type ratings. Which looks remarkably like what we do at Patient Opinion – so if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery then we’re certainly flattered!
The great unknown is whether such feedback systems are best owned and run by government, a not-for-profit social enterprise like Patient Opinion, or a for-profit private commercial business. Given that all the data generated via NHS Choices (including email address and postcode) will be owned by the state we believe that people may be wary of a government owned platform. And since the most plausible buyers of Adwords on such a site are ambulance-chasing lawyers and purveyors of therapeutic snake oil, the usual advertising-driven business model may be problematic for feedback platforms about health.
Which is why we built Patient Opinion as a not-for-profit subscription-based business in the first place. Having a viable business model based on a distributed income stream derived 30+ organisations guarantees our financial independence. We can moderate and publish postings without spin and have us a market incentive to make sure that patient feedback is actually valued by Strategic Health Authorities, Scrutiny Committees, national patient groups and other subscribers.
But maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Joe Public won’t care that the state will own his or her data and ID details. So it’s great that people will have a choice of feedback platform. We believe that they are more than capable of using each platform to get what they want. If they actually want tell the Secretary of State something or have a hot-line to the Chief Executive of the relevant Trust then they should use NHS Choices. If they value independence, a platform dedicated to patients and a service that strives to to turn their feedback into better services then they may be more inclined to log into Patient Opinion. And if they just want to share their comments locally they may be happy with either.
What’s more important than anything is that we have the debate and work out how best to use this new class of data – large volumes of web-mediated citizen feedback – for the good of civil society as well as state or commercial interests. So over the next few weeks we’ll be posting lots about these issues to the blog and will be really interested in your comments and thoughts.

Posted by Paul at May 4, 2007 9:13 AM