Take some time out to watch this video from the fabulous Health Hackday being held 18th to 20th May in Stockholm, Sweden.
Inspirational talks about how smartphones can be used to capture health goals, how game mechanics can be employed to inspire and motivate participants- and even to drive engagement with social justice!
Hope you enjoy. Do please follow the Health Hackday Bambuser feed here: http://bambuser.com/channel/healthhackday for more Talks and Interviews from the fabulous participants at this event in Sweden.
Considering the development of a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) for people within health and social care, I have noticed that some of the ideas of a Commons, a Peer-to-Peer Approach and Connectivism are not well understood, so I thought it would be timely to see if I could make some sense of them in my blog.
First, before discussing Connectivism, I’d like to talk about a Health Commons and the technique to work towards it using a Peer-to-Peer (P2P) approach.
it’s a relational dynamic in which people exchange not with each other as individuals, but with a commons
Well. That sounds great, but what does he mean?
He is defining the idea of a Commons, that is, a shared resource that is held by a group of widely distributed people. For instance, we might regard the health of the nation as a health Commons, increasing health being the “product” of this work. By re-framing it in this way, we appreciate how the promotion of population level health initiatives could enrich us all because they result in a greater number of economically active citizens, a reduction in overall health spending, and most importantly, an increased level of health and happiness in the population.
One of the principles of the Commons is that we all have a stake in the outcome. Unlike when we rely on capitalist systems (such as purely private health delivery, where benefits must be made for the shareholders) or where we have entirely publicly funded systems (as in the traditional NHS, now vulnerable to people who say current spending levels are unsustainable, and subject to accussations of vested interests by Government), in health commons, we may see a collaboration between public and private organisations, and individuals, both based internally within and external to those organisations, working together as peers.
Why would they do this, you ask? Well, we all benefit from working towards a Commons (in this case, we all want to be individually as healthy as possible, and promoting health of our fellow citizens also benefits each of us individually and as a group). This idea leads on to the notion that we are all peers in the Commons, that we exist in a dynamic that is as flat (non-hierarchical) as possible when working in this way. Public health bodies want us to take responsibility for our health- it reduces costs, and it means we may focus resources on areas where we have to use expensive drugs and equipment. Private companies may still benefit indirectly from the development of skills by staff contributing within Commons work, but they are not allowed to take a direct profit from Commons products. They are allowed to advertise their products to be used by people and organisations contributing to the Commons communities.
As we move into a time where resources will be stretched, the new way of working represented by these ideas offers an alternative to the cuts-based solution so frequently enacted by organisations attempting to survive in the new climate. Where we are seeing transformational change within health organisations, we are not yet embedding a truly transformational way to enact new ways to enrich our health Commons, which if it was the default truly would transform our public services. Here is a short video, which talks about pharmaceutical drug development as aa Health Commons, but which shares the same theories I’m talking about.
This approach has already been trialed in countries with more intractable issues in population health than our own, for example, a quick Google search led me to this study based in New Mexico.
Social activists such as Dan Mcquillan has captured how to use these principles within health and social care, and indeed more generally within the public sector.
In the presentation, Dan is arguing that the problems within the health and social sevices cannot be solved within the traditional hierarchical structures we have developed. He argues that in order to work together effectively, it has to be within new spaces where status and power are distributed equally between peers. This can be facilitated by the use of digital technology- as we may have experienced if we are users of social networks such as Twitter!
Moving back to Bauwens, he believes that
(digital) P2P technology allows for a new form of socialization that is changing how people behave towards each other
We could use non-hierarchical, peer-to-peer platforms and systems, which have developed in social movements using the net as a means to solve problems based within their communities. By using these ideas, we can respond to the crisis we face in health and social care funding, by working towards a health Commons, together.
We can do this at the event I’m planning to put into action these principles. It will be a Digital Health Conference and Hack, based in Leeds, 29th and 30th June 2012. Please use #dhc12 to tag conversations about it, and register early interest by emailing digihealthcon@gmail.com.
The MOOC , currently titled #MedEdMOOC is planned to take place from mid-May to June 2012. See here, here and here for earlier blogs about it.
The Digital Health Conference and Hack #dhc12 will happen within the last week of the MOOC, and will be live-streamed to enable online participation by people who are unable to attend. It will also be archived along with the other MOOC content for future study.
The process of developing the MOOC for HCP continues apace, but there are still issues we need to hammer out in order to see the maximum possible engagement in the event, and the greatest possible learning opportunities presented to the greatest possible number (at least, that’s where I’m coming from).
There are currently 240 000 Allied health professionals in the UK alone, and over 350 000 nurses and midwives. But the focus of the MedEdMOOC, from the naming of it onwards seems to reflect almost exclusively the narrow group that is concerned with the education of Medics. I am glad that Dean Jenkins picked up on this idea in his recent blog, and that it is reopened for discussion.
But, how did this happen? Is it that medics are ahead of other HCP groups in their use of online technology? Is it that medical educators are a particularly technologically gifted group? Is it that other HCPs dont yet have an understanding of the potential of online technology? Is it that somehow we are excluding other HCP from the development process? I’m not sure of the answers to these questions, but I think it is useful for me to frame them such that I may reflect on them throughout the process and beyond. If you have any views about this, I would love to hear them in the comments.
The topics we are planning to cover over a six week spread are based around these working titles:
Week 1. Theory- Connectivism vs constructionism
Week 2. Learning- where are we now on the social web?
Week 3. Doing- Improving healthcare delivery in a networked world
Week 4. Collaborative Models (including CPD in social spaces)
Week 5. Barriers- what are they and how can we overcome them?
Week 6. Content to be decided by participants.
Now, looking at these titles for the weeks’ content, there is nothing that is exclusive to medics- in fact, all these topics can be used by any healthcare professionals. As a MOOC is likely to contain more content than any one person wishes to engage with, it may be that there are profession specific items that appeal more to one profession than another. But it is interesting to me that event though I have been involved in the planning of the event, I am holding prejudices about the process; doubts about whether my professional skills are of value to the process; wondering why more Allied Health Professionals are not on board with the development of the MOOC.
For what it’s worth here are my thoughts.
The name MedEdMOOC is an exclusive title, implying that content to be developed must be relevant to medical practice and be concerned with the education of medical practitioners. In my view, we could re-visit this naming decision to reflect a more inclusive title.
The development team is composed largely of medics. This means every decision is taken through that filter. Decisions are unconsciously made using the frame of reference from within medicine and medical education.
I’m excited about taking advantage of the principles of the MOOC to explore connectivity, horizontal flows of information, networked learning and professional developments that include exposure to the broad range of models used in healthcare delivery. But, to do that successfully, we either need a broader range of HCP involved in the planning, or very committed participants from different disciplines, who will then generate further content.
I also believe that the event will benefit from some real life experiences that participants can choose to be a part of. Myself and two colleagues are delivering a “Social Media Surgery” at our professional conference in Glasgow during the MOOC. This will provide us with the opportunity to explore either LiveStreaming an element of the workshop, or at least utilising Skype chat facility or similar to ensure people outside the room can be included. We may also choose to deliver an additional session for the participants online (venue and organisers’ indulgence permitting!)
I am planning an event in Leeds towards the end of June. I aim to get together the community of practice surrounding the #nhssm Tweetchat and some health and social care stakeholders. I hope that this event will similarly be able to be integrated into the MOOC, perhaps as an opportunity to ask questions, perhaps to hack some solutions to challenges we have identified in the uptake of some of these technologies.
Please do engage in the debate surrounding these ideas- we know this is the first health related MOOC planned, and its success is entirely dependent on how well we can identify and meet your learning needs!
I'm an OT called Claire. I write about health, particularly mental health, and also about Social Media and Web 2.0 technology. I am particularly interested where these two fields overlap.
I believe that we all hold the potential for Recovery- let's grow together.
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