The power of Thinking Digital

After discovering the greatness of Thinking Digital for the first time in 2010, I was eager to come back for more this year. Although I only got to attend the last day of this year’s conference, it again was an incredibly inspiring event; an eclectic mix of compelling stories and larger than life characters that couldn’t help to inspire.

And why did I only get to one day of the event? Well that has a lot to do with Thinking Digital 2010 :-)

Self-realisation

Last year’s conference had a significant impact on me. I left with phrases like ‘Data is the new oil’ and visions of Jer Thorp’s truly awesome work running through my mind. I’d been to many great conferences and events before, but nothing resonated with me more than Thinking Digital 2010. Riding a wave of confidence following the event, I immediately knew what I had to do.

Change is good

I left my regular job and went on to start an IT Consultancy with a specialism in Interaction Design. Together with a co-director, we opened up a small opportunity that allowed us to deliver our first project. That project has now turned into a fully fledged, innovative software application which is in use at 4 NHS hospitals in the North East of England. The application aids clinical teams in collecting and gaining crucial insights from stroke patient data, delivering a number of key benefits. By September 2011, we expect to have the application in a minimum of 12 hospitals in the UK.

We’re presenting the software to 4 key NHS audiences in London and Manchester through June and July and it’ll be used to showcase a new device from the Panasonic Toughbook range when that device launches later this year. We’ve built one strategic partnership after another, and my company, Digital Spark Ltd, goes from strength to strength.

The whole experience has been life changing for me, and all connected to this story. And the catalyst for sure, was Thinking Digital 2010. With what I’ve seen and experienced at Thinking Digital 2011, even just for a day, as it’s been non-stop at Digital Spark HQ, I’m more determined than ever to push us on to new heights.

Believe

Much like I did following Thinking Digital 2010, I’d urge anyone that is having similar thoughts of starting their own digital business to do so. The tide of inspiration you’re no doubt feeling from Thinking Digital 2011 will be the perfect wave to ride as you pursue this. It can help you break down barriers and heighten your confidence, giving you new found energy to pursue your dream. If you believe, stay positive and grasp the opportunity now, you can make it happen, step by step.

Next year

I’m very much looking forward to Thinking Digital 2012 and would be very willing to tell our story at the event – it’s been quite a journey!

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digitalsparkltd.com

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The Future Theme Park Experience

A recent visit to Disneyland Paris got me thinking as to how Social Media and Augmented Reality technologies could be leveraged to enhance the future theme park experience.

What struck me on my visit was that there seems huge potential to tap into ideas pioneered by now established Social Networking platforms such as foursquare and Gowalla, mixed with Augmented Reality technology (AR) to deliver a vastly enhanced experience for visitors.

Virtual rewards

For starters, why not introduce some simple competitive fun by allowing you to check in at a ride, whereby it'd be known how many times you'd being on that ride in total and over what period of time. The person that's been on the ride the most could be the ride's owner or similar, and could be rewarded with some virtual goods. Think an Alice or White Rabbit costume if you're the ‘owner’ of the Mad Hatter's Tea Cups ride, that (here comes the augmented reality mix), could be overlayed onto an individual and be visible to others browsing the park on a mobile device with the requisite augmented reality browser.

In the AR space, virtual thought bubbles could float above participating visitor’s heads detailing rides that they are the ‘owner’ of, plus a scrolling list of the individual’s total ride time, ride history and personal rating of rides versus overall rating of rides across the entire park. Ride AR could feature the ability to visit the virtual store for each ride and purchase virtual and physical goods linked to that ride’s theme. This could play on the natural human bias to collect, in this context, virtual goods, which could be a major force in driving repeat (per ride) business, increasing revenues and customer satisfaction.

Details on ride queue times could be displayed along with which of your friends were on which rides, right now. Social validation would then surely begin to play out, with people flocking intelligently to the best rides, wanting to challenge their friends and foes to become the owner of the latest and greatest attraction, which would result in a much more compelling, game-like experience. This could result in the creation of an ever-present high score table / hall of fame, where ride champs could be immortalised long after those attractions are decommissioned.

Real time insights

Real time information collected from across the park could also be displayed in a highly insightful and visual way to all visitors. Think simple data visualisation such as a Red, Amber, Green status of ride popularity. This would enable delivery of instant feedback from which crucial insights could be gained by theme park owners. E.g. They'd be able to see which rides weren't doing so well on a particular day, the demographic and preferences of current visitors, etc. and based on this, historical and projected data, be able to increase virtual incentives on less popular rides to ensure a more even ratio of visitors to rides across the entire park. This would surely result in more even queues and ultimately more satisfied visitors and again, increased revenues.

Looking at the wider theme park experience, Trip Advisor style ratings, current queue times and simple happy or sad faces could be displayed in the AR space, so you could make informed decisions on the best restaurants and stalls to visit, again reducing wasted time and increasing customer satisfaction. All feedback could be freely shared across park vendors to drive innovation and improve quality, not just in the immediate locality, but across the entire industry.

Innovation all the way

The fact that some of the above is very likely to be implemented over the coming years will in my opinion, truly take theme parks to the next level, making them a much more game like experience that is far more customer oriented and adaptive, where no two days are the same, increasing longevity of attraction lifespan, driving innovative customer experiences, better value for money and delivering valuable insights that'll ensure evolution continues apace.

Note: If you're interested in reading further on Augmented Reality, I’d highly recommend this outstanding blog post from @GaryPHayes here, http://www.personalizemedia.com/16-top-augmented-reality-business-models/

Thanks for reading and please comment so we can continue the conversation.

Social Technologies and the NHS

Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia, Digg and Second Life. Just some of the social tools and platforms that have enabled millions of individuals to collaborate on, create and share content online within the last 10 years. Tools and platforms that have radically changed the online space beyond comprehension from what went before.

Facebook and Twitter are now household names, truly global platforms, sustained by their incomprehensibly large user bases; Facebook alone currently boasting over 400 million worldwide users, 25 million of those in the UK*. * Source: Facebook

With such a large, diverse audience, that actively want to share experiences with openness online (whatever the platform), it’s no surprise that organisations across the globe have looked at, and have been able to, successfully leverage the power of social technology to meet strategic, corporate aims. Whether that be fulfillment of a desire to become more open with a customer base, to elevate customer service quality, create product evangelists, tap potential customers to grow revenues, or gain insights into what innovative new products the market truly wants; this has all been achieved by globally recognised brands from Red Cross to Dell.

I’d highly recommend reading Groundswell and Open Leadership by Charlene Li (@charleneli) if you’re interested in any way in social technology .

Not so new concepts

The interactions enabled by the current wave of Social technologies is however, nothing new at all. These online social interactions are much like the conversations that took place between vendors and customers hundreds of years ago in local marketplaces. Like those marketplaces, where word of mouth information was the most important and valuable form of knowledge, playing a major part in driving decision making, this is now true online.

I firmly believe that social technologies are a true agent of change and without doubt, will continue to transform the entire customer relationship as we know it, right across the board, whatever the interaction, with whatever company or organisation.

Social Technologies and the NHS

A recently commissioned research exercise by NHS Salford, one of the first NHS Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) to embrace social technology actively, showed that only 36% of PCTs are actively using social technologies and of those that are, their:

• Facebook commands an average of around 200 friends


• Twitter manages to attract an average of around 400 followers


• Twitter suffers less from being left inactive with 88% of accounts active


• Facebook accounts appear to be around just 60% active

* For the purposes of the report, an active account is one that has been updated within the last 6 weeks. Read the full report here: http://www.salford.nhs.uk/PRSocialMediaSurveyHighlights.aspx?section=0

Social technologies then are only partially adopted within the NHS at a PCT level; that presence becomes amplified when you consider the efforts of the NHS on a more national level; I'm thinking NHS Choices and NHS Direct, but it still isn’t anywhere near as widespread as it needs to be.

Furthermore, it doesn’t appear that a great proportion of the general public seem to be engaging with the trusts that are attempting to leverage these social channels effectively. That is, when you consider how much of the UK’s populous is active on Facebook and Twitter, NHS Trust (public) social technology adoption rates pale into insignificance.

Considering in the UK that we’re highly likely to have some sort of interaction with the NHS, at some point in our lives, surely there should be more interest?

But does it matter?

Absolutely. This is an unprecedented, missed opportunity. On one side, it may be that some NHS trusts still believe as do some large corporates, that Social Media is a fad, a governance risk, something that can’t be sanctioned. None of these points are valid.

Let’s break it down:

• Fad: Social Media is not a fad. 400 million Facebook users, 55 million tweets a day, whatever the stat from whatever the social platform - these interactions can be of significant value. This is proven.


• Governance risk: With robust social policies and procedures that empower and don’t stifle, new openness and trust can be found and governance risk alleviated. This is proven.


• Reputation Management: Likelihood is that most of your employees are already active on social platforms, so do you really think information isn’t already leaking from the organisation? Time to empower.

So what do I think wary trusts should do if they want to interact in the social space?

• Plan a social media strategy aligned to organisational objectives


• Consider the social space in all strategic thinking


• Empower trusted individuals to act as ambassadors in the social space


• Measure progress toward strategic social objectives


• Make conversions: better health outcomes, happier more openly engaged patients, whose care is in their control

The overriding message

Get Involved. Now is the time. This is a once in a generation opportunity. It’ll take effort to get there, but the benefits will be huge.

Details of other posts coming soon...

I’m hoping to speak directly to Patient Opinion (@patientopinion), an organisation independent of the NHS, whose website www.patientopinion.org.uk has the potential to enhance the quality of care delivered by the NHS by allowing website visitors to:

1. Tell people what happened
2. See what others are saying
3. Find out how patients are changing the NHS

Patient Opinion is a shining example of how patient experiences should be captured within the NHS. I think it’s great that it’s independent and that many NHS trusts are bought into this model, actively subscribing and posting follow ups to patient care episodes, good or bad.

There’s a long way to go though. Patient Opinion has over 21,000 stories logged on it at the time of writing. Compare that to the millions of episodes of care that occur annually and its clear that this is a great start, and one that has already successfully changed service provision many times, but we need more interaction in this space if we’re truly going to make a significant difference.

I'll be looking to post more detailed insights on Patient Opinion in a future post including detail on their vision, roadmap and some of the success stories so far. Thanks for reading.

The future patient journey?

In my last post, Thinking Digital - part 1, I gave some quick thoughts on the event and promised to write more. Thanks for coming back! This post is more inspired by the event than directly related to it. There are plenty of other great blog posts out there on that; so...

The focus this time (as it's been on my mind quite a bit) relates to how government provided services (specifically the NHS in the UK) could harness technology more effectively to deliver better health outcomes, whilst reducing cost. Very much a key topic right now. Let's start with...

A typical patient journey

My experiences with the NHS as a patient have been fairly middle of the road. I've been to A&E a couple of times, had some minor surgery, and picked up a couple of prescriptions. Most of these episodes were way back in time, but heading to my GP recently I was surprised at how little the process had changed.

I made an appointment by phone, waited a few days for my slot, arrived, took a seat, waited, waited some more, waited even longer, got to see the GP, was in there for 2 minutes, discharged with a slip of paper (prescription), and a goodbye. All fine. All very 1970, not that I'm that old ;-)

So what’s your point?

First off, this is pretty inconvenient to me. I'm time short (who isn't these days), yet I spent ages waiting for my appointment in the first place, then another long while at the surgery on the day of my appointment. I got checked professionally and courteously, got some aftercare advice verbally and was sent on my way. An average transaction. My point exactly.

Can you imagine however, if a company operating in the commercial space failed to change a core transaction to adapt to a changing market place? Without innovation for many, many years, it's highly likely that the competition would have a more remarkable experience to offer up and that original company would have, well, at best, lost a lot of business.

How could well implemented technology improve this interaction?

Let me monitor my health information online. Information such as blood pressure, cholestrol, qualified quantitative information that would allow warning signs to be picked up and for me to be provided with advice when I most need it.

I could also have been recording qualitative information, such as a simple, I'm good today or I don't feel so good today - it's my stomach (clicks on body part), severity 1 to 4, rated. Think ‘Like’, ‘Dislike’ from Facebook, re-purposed.

This information pumped through a CRM, linked to some key health information could result in automatic appointment offering, electronic information appearing in my own health portal advising me how to self-treat. A lot of the algorithms for diagnosing certain conditions already exist, right? Think how ‘H1N1 diagnosis’ online played out in the UK.

I could also be receiving some great data visualisations through my personalised health portal, that really help me ‘get’ the facts, causes of my condition, my current holistic health, and I could be allowed to set relevant targets to achieve in collaboration with a practitioner, that may help me alleviate any condition or at least prevent it from getting any worse. The ‘Patients Like Me’ website http://www.patientslikeme.com/ does a great job at some of this.

Of course, all of this is no substitute for seeing a GP, but shouldn't we only be using valuable GP resources when absolutely necessary?

Real benefits

Taking this a step further, think how all of this information could be used to help predict epidemics (a more insightful version of Google’s great Flu Trends app: http://www.google.org/flutrends/), resulting in more cost effective and accurate allocation of resources; insight into whether health targets were going to be hit for certain conditions way ahead of time, which could result in motivational messages or the like being delivered through a personal health portal to sufferers of certain conditions, just in time, so they could make key lifestyle changes.

Local support group information could be presented, and health consumers could even be incentivised to meet local PCT targets for any given condition, there could even be a leaderboard! Look, I’m getting healthier quicker than you! Yes, that doesn’t seem quite right, but think of the insights you’d gain from it. Why are you getting healthier quicker, what are our physiological differences, lifestyle differences and so on.

Crucially, there’d be social interaction and engagement around health issues between patients and from and to local health providers.

The results could be outstanding: Patients feeling more empowered to look after themselves, social networks of support between patients and with healthcare professionals further increasing empowerment leading to a revolution in preventative care with health professionals only seeing those most in need. The ability for health professionals to act with greater insight, intelligence, and confidence. Reduced financial costs, less strain on the system and increased, informed R&D.

This might sound like Utopia, a win win (win). It is achievable however, and certain studies in the US are already proving this. More specifics to come in a later post.

So how do we get there?

Times of change are sounding in the NHS right now. The public, health professionals and politicians are clamouring to see real benefit delivered. Visible, tangible benefit that will improve our nation’s health, whilst reducing cost at the point of care.

Of course, some of the ideas I have mentioned, have been in the pipeline before within the NHS. However, in my opinion, they’ve never gained the groundswell needed to be anything more than 0.0000001% realised.

The will exists however to make this happen and achieve the vision. The NHS has some fantastic professionals, some real visionaries working within its ranks, and access to a lot of technical know how. Some of what is needed to help moving the NHS with pace, toward a vision like I’ve described.

Of course, we need to start small, as we’re in tough financial times and therefore we need a cost effective quick win, whilst the bigger picture builds. And the NHS is ripe for change, and change looks like it's coming, real change that’ll reshape public sector services, because it has to happen.

Next post coming soon…

In my next post, I’ll be looking at how Social Media is currently used within the NHS and at some independent social channels of feedback used to improve healthcare delivery in the UK, including Patient Opinion: http://www.patientopinion.org.uk/ @patientopinion.

Until then, thanks for reading and please comment.

Thinking Digital 2010 - part 1

Attending Thinking Digital (#TDC10) for the first time, I wondered how it'd compare with other events I regularly attend and rate highly. Events such as Online Information, SharePoint Evolution and Gartner PCC. The bar was set high indeed!

I can safely say that Thinking Digital (#TDC10) is right up there with the best!

Yes, Herb Kim (@herbkim) and team have done an outstanding job, attracting some names that are very well reknowned in their respective fields. Names including Louis Von Ahn, Joichi Ito, Brian Solis, Don Levy, Robert McKee, Jer Thorp, Christian Payne, Andy Hobsbawm, Rory Sutherland and David Siegel. The list goes on and on...

Mash this up with a vibrant, energetic crowd and the overall affect was something even greater than the sum of its parts. A diverse but absolutely cohesive event.

So what did I learn and how do I think it'll help my current work within the public sector in the UK?

Let's (start) breaking it down...

Social Media Insights

Thought 1 - My current thinking around social technologies was validated by many speakers, i.e. Social Media will play a pivotal role in shaping future markets. The social space is the market, and word of mouth / human opinion a key factor to decision making, especially when purchasing. We want a personalised and intimate experience with the highest level of customer service possible. My opinion is that any organisation not currently developing a social media strategy or approach is set to fail.

I also firmly believe that we need to see significant change in the UK public sector's willingness to engage via social media channels, especially from the NHS at a more local level. There really is so much opportunity there, which if leveraged correctly, could assist in driving better health outcomes whilst also reducing cost and increasing patient satisfaction. More thoughts on this in a later blog post.

Thought 2 - People need to be educated about posting into the online social space in terms of privacy - oh yes! Some great stories were told by the event's speakers regarding what can happen if you're not careful with your online social privacy settings.

My favourite story detailed how someone posted detail of an intimate mile high encounter on Twitter. Because of supplementary information collected at the time, it was actually possible to trace which flight this occurred on, meaning privacy was blown and informed conclusions could be drawn. Be careful!

Thought 3 - The current trend and emergence of location-based social apps such as foursquare will become more prevalent; as they enrich the online social experience, making it more engaging through the addition of a fun element that plays to the human psyche. You can imagine how this type of app mixed with augmented reality features will take this another step further!

More thoughts on trends in this space in a future post!

To finish off this first part of my TDC10 blog, I think it has to be said again that this is a must attend event for the future. Also, great to see such a high profile proceeding in my home city of Newcastle upon Tyne!

I'll leave it there for now, but please follow this blog as I'll be updating it over the coming weeks with further insights from the event covering some things I’ve already mentioned, plus:

• Data Visualisation trends
• UxD and IxD thoughts
• Future online insights

Thanks for reading and please comment.