On Friday afternoon, I gave a presentation to the London NHS Webteam group, an informal gathering of NHS employees in the region who are involved with websites (ranging from communications officers who think about what they say to developers who work on how to make them work).

My subject was Social Networking and the NHS and the whole presentation can be followed through online. However, I thought I would also rework the content for my blog over the coming week.

Social networking, in Internet terms, is about bringing people together through technology, allowing meetings that might not otherwise have happened. My first point was that this is what the Internet has been about all along, even back in the early days of network development by DARPA and the developments that then took place across academic networks: people could work (and play games) together over vast distances.

The NHS is also about people – the NHS Identity Guidelines state:

The NHS is about people. Not only about making people well, but keeping them healthy and helping them make informed choices about their health.

Therefore, social networking and the NHS should be a perfect match! Over the next few days, I will comment more on both the social nature of the Internet and how I think that can work in an health service context.

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