Hello all,

I'm an 'information consultant' with NHSScotland National Services and have been enthusiastic about web 2.0 for a couple of years at least. As such I've been (I hope) a critical friend to some of the web 2.0 things health folk have got up to recently, rather than directly involved, so...here are some of the things underway that I know of and could introduce you to if you were interested. Usual caveats apply in terms of this being a personal rather than offishul sketch.

In no particular order of priority:

NES' eLibrary have for some years been developing support for Knowledge Networks and Communities, and have recently introduced 'My Community Space'. In essence this provides the opportunity for any Athens user (and NHS Scotland makes available via Athens a wider range of publications than your average HEI, I think) to

• deploy an enhanced personal profile enabling linking across communities of interest and practice
• link and find resources and people via an in-house developed tagging tool + cloud.

This is in the context of a makeover of the eLibrary's interface, with a renewed emphasis on personalisation and access to a range of web 2.0 functionality. If you'd like to explore the mock-up of their thinking on this, click the log in link at the mid-right of the page, to explore the content of the tabs.

But it isn't all about software.

NES have also been reviewing their guidance for those interested in creating and supporting Communities of Practice, and are planning a revamp of their Communities (MKN, Shared Space) support. They are putting a good deal of effort in to the promotion of Information Literacy (how else to spread the creation of UGC?), both institutionally and via outreach - this latter particularly in the context of a number of collaborative ventures with social services colleagues (on both sides of the border).

Elsewhere in the health firmament, small stirrings can be seen. For example, the current policy emphasis on Long Term Conditions is supported (along with other perhaps more mainstream initiatives) by an open-source wiki, which among other things links neatly with a collective del.ici.ous account. Still with Long-Term Conditions, scoping work has just started on support for local resource directories to help 'self-managing' patients (who might well look for mutual assistance via gumtree or ebay, it's envisaged...).

[BTW. This in no way summarises all that's underway, other health folk will be bound to identify other initiatives.]

Finally for now though, a small tale of seeking an opportunity rather than a crisis. The NHS is moving across to its own email system - to be as sure as it can, about the security of any patient information carried via such a medium, as much as anything else. This move involves an inbox size limit of 200mb, which naturally provokes a good deal of grumbling. But quietly, our local IT colleagues have begun to use wikis, for sharing and developing knowledge, in an appreciable number of contexts where they would previously have used email as a default. The rest of us are hoping that we'll be let in on the secret...at some point before we canvas our own solutions...

Of course we could do a great deal more - it's that theory of change relativity again - if you are doing it to others, change proceeds at half the speed you want, while if it is happening to you, it seems to be moving at double the pace you're comfy with. ;-)

Look fwd to seeing you on Friday,

and would be happy to provide a quick voiceover for any of the above,

Peter Ashe