Social Media and Emergency Planning: What is your policy and procedure?

There's a good blog post by Ben Proctor on how Emergency Planning can/might/does work as part of Emergency Planning strategies. There are some good references in it to more academic reviews and publications. Lots for the NHS to learn about, I think.

Digital Engagement: DoH, NHS, England

The Dept of Health is getting up to speed with digital engagement. There's an intro available on the website, along with links to other policies and hints etc.

Worth a look if you're in the NHS and new to all this social media and digital stuff.

Digital Engagement: From participation to partnership PDF Report

Life moves on. Things change, well, mostly.  What seems not to be changing is the methods of involving, engaging and interacting with the public.  Some public sector groups are starting to grapple with how best to use technology to best effect. For instance, I learnt recently that after 6 weeks on no replies to email and 30 minutes waiting time on phone calls, that the best way to get a response from our local Council Waste and Recycling department, was to tweet. Instant response. Instant relief. Problem solved fairly quickly.

So what is healthcare doing? There's a proliferation of Twitter accounts being set up but these are mostly used as another channel for advertising with little listening going on.

Public and patient engagement is mandatory for the NHS, especially for the new CCGs (Clinical commissioning groups).  Digital engagement is more than setting up Twitter and Facebook accounts, or sending out emails asking for responses to documents.

This report from Future Digital, published in June 2012 has some excellent strategic and tactical ideas on how to get with the times and to design interventions that are appropriate for our 21st Century.