Richard Smith’s HealthCamp for innovators
24 Jun, 09 | by BMJ Group
I associate camps with wood smoke, burnt sausages, and filled latrines marked with crosses, but HealthCamp is different. It’s about innovation, and I attended my first one last week—at the soulless Excel Centre in Docklands, LondonHeathCamp begins with lightning talks. In under two minutes participants must pose one problem they’d like to discuss. We had 21 people—many of them doctors, most of them young, and all of them entrepreneurs—pose problems.
How might we do better at sharing failures? How could online patient feedback be developed in Italy? How could the NHS cut its carbon footprint by 80%? How could patient inserts be improved? How could the undoubted skills of people with autistic disorders be better employed for society’s benefit?
Entrepreneurs, I noticed, are interested in how questions. I thought back to Bill Clinton saying that it is how questions that are important and that he’d spent too much of his political life answering what and why questions.
After the lightning talks we voted on the top nine that we wanted to discuss. I was thrilled that 10 people voted for my question—”How can we get ordinary doctors to publish lots of ordinary case reports?”—and it made it into the top nine. But the question that came top was “How to get people currently running on machines in gyms to do use their energy to do something socially useful?”
The audience split three times into three groups, and we spent 90 minutes on each question. My first session was exploring two questions “How could British health entrepreneurs help the developing world and how can we in Britain benefit from the furious pace of innovation in emerging economies?”
Entrepreneurs are, I discovered, like doctors in that they can be hard to keep on the subject. Their minds love to roam. The message that emerged most strongly for me was that it’s very hard to innovate in the NHS—bureaucracy, attitudes, and treacle get in the way. Ironically, Ara Darzi was in another part of the building pleading for innovation.
In the next group we discussed getting people out of “bad gyms” into “good gyms,” and a social entrepreneur called Ivo told us of his scheme to get people who want to exercise to run to the homes of isolated elderly people, deliver something (a newspaper or piece of fruit), and check on them. Everybody loved the simplicity of his idea, and he already has funding and help to develop a website. His scheme might soon be sweeping the country.
For my question I had three doctors, open access publishers, software innovators, and marketing experts—all I could hope for, and all for free. They gave me 18 ideas for getting doctors to publish more case reports, and we discussed how to make three happen—linking publishing to continuing professional education and appraisal, using video more than words, and exploring patients rather than doctors being the main drivers.
If you are young and entrepreneurial or even like me “an aged man…a tattered coat upon a stick” then try visiting a HealthCamp to get your creative juices flowing. You can learn more about HealthCamps at http://www.healthca.mp, watch the videos that were made of the problems and reports on discussions at http://healthcamp.patientsknowbest.com/, and read the Twitter stream of comments during the day at http://search.twitter.com/search?q=+%23hcuk09.
Competing interest: HealthCamps have been introduced to Britain by Mohammad Al-Ubaydli, a friend of mine and the chief executive of a start up called Patients Know Best. I’m the chairman of Patients Know Best and could get rich if it becomes the next Google or lose the small amount I’m investing in the company. I’m also the editor of Cases Journal, which explains my question.
For those interested in the how do we learn from failure of healthcare innovation in an open source way, the focus group notes and lightning talk will be posted on http://www.e-publichealth.com in a few hours.
I would also like to thank Mohammad Al-Ubaydli for organizing a fantastic event!
Cisco (twitter @ciscogiii)
Francisco J Grajales III
June 24th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
[...] 24, 2009 by Mohammad Al-Ubaydli Dr Richard Smith, our Chairman, attended HealthCamp UK 2009 and wrote about it in the British Medical Journal: How might we do better at sharing failures? How could online patient [...]
HealthCamp UK 2009 in the British Medical Journal « Patients Know Best
June 24th, 2009 at 11:04 pm
I attended the event through Twitter, so thanks a lot to twitter esp @prasoonk @markhawker @troublebrother @ciscogii @goldenskye @psweetman @Ammonyte @amcunningham. What is the lacuna with open-source? What is the future of tele-medicine? All these were answered during the camp.
Prasoon Kumar
June 25th, 2009 at 6:48 am
Thank you Richard and for all the other participants who attended. The message I took away was that the NHS is full of innovators, all of whom want to improve patient care.
A video of Richard’s pitch, which earned him 10 votes, is here:
http://healthcamp.patientsknowbest.com/Health-Camp-UK-2009/how-do-we-get-ordinary-doctors-to-publish-their-cases
Dr Mohammad Al-Ubaydli
June 25th, 2009 at 7:03 am
[...] E qui un bell’editoriale sulla manifestazione di Richard Smith, former editor del British Medical Journal. Entrepreneurs, I noticed, are interested in how questions. I thought back to Bill Clinton saying that it is how questions that are important and that he’d spent too much of his political life answering what and why questions. [...]
HealthCamp London 2009 « Linnea
June 25th, 2009 at 8:26 am
Thank you Richard and Mohammad for a very interesting day. I learnt so many things that I did not know about with regard to health and the NHS. My favourite topic was however about how the NHS and other health organisations could sell their surplus stock to underdeveloped countries - ethically and in a commercially sustainable way and although it transpired that there were similar charity models I think that there might be room for such an idea.
Barbara Liddell
June 25th, 2009 at 9:06 am
What an interesting day Healthcamp was.
The main personal message that I took from participation was that connecting to the communities we (don’t) talk about - the end users of healthcare is something that is increasingly coming back into focus. The realisation that systems have overtaken the fundamental needs and wants of the end user and our own place in those systems.
that shift is very welcome to me as a community development approach is my specialism within the mental health voluntary sector.
Many thanks for the invite and for the genuinely useful thinking.
@dysconnection
Kate Brown
June 25th, 2009 at 10:21 am
I’ve nothing against giving people who enjoy road-running opportunities to do something socially useful, but could you please drop the ill-informed derogatory stuff about “bad gyms”.
I love the gym because I DON’T have to think about where I’m going, break my pace to turn sharp corners (which is quite hard on the knees) or avoid cars, dogs (or what they leave behind) or children, carry anything at all, care about the sweat pouring down my face and arms, worry about how I look, protection from sun, heat, cold, wind, rain or pollen, or indeed anything at all. It’s a controlled environment where I can free my mind to do other things while my body is exercising intensively, aided by machines with separate controls for pace and/or incline/resistance.
It seems to me that your 21 people did not include any gym enthusiasts. I reckon you’ll be a heck of a lot more successful promoting to the “want to exercise but think the gym is pointless” brigade than to the people who’re actually in the gym because they like it.
Hilary
June 25th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
I like the idea of Cases Journal, but in answer to your question of how to get ordinary doctors to publish lots of ordinary case reports, would charging less than £199 for the privilege be a start? ( http://casesjournal.com/casesjournal/about/submissions#authorFees )
Brett
June 26th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
The nice aspect to the good gym is that it works well for all parties. The runner gets fit but is incentivised by responsibility for someone else rather then themselves. Employers have more alert and active employees and are contributing towards something socially beneficial. And of course the isolated person gets company and a confidant.
I had a great day at HealthCamp. Well done to Mohammad for organising it.
Jamie Wilson
June 29th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
Hello Richard
Great to meet you at Healthcamp. I was so inspired that I started a new blog:
http://www.healthhighways.wordpress.com
I still think that the piece you wrote in 1996 in the BMJ about the clinical information needs of doctors is the best summary. How can so many of the issues you raised not have been addressed yet?
There is still a lot of room for innovation!
Thanks
Anne Marie
Anne Marie Cunningham
July 7th, 2009 at 2:32 am
[...] Smith, former editor del British Medical Journal ha scritto qui un bell’editoriale sulla manifestazione. Posted by deart on domenica, agosto 23, 2009, at [...]
HealthCamp London 2009 | DEART - Web Agency Torino
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:05 am