Everyone, including patients, doctors, nurses and other health professionals and app developers, is invited to submit new ideas of health apps and online maps they think would be useful.

For the next six weeks, people can visit maps and apps and suggest favourite apps, ideas for apps or health maps they would like to see, as well as vote for their favourite ideas submitted by others.

In the video below Dr Shaibal Roy explains more about apps and how you can get involved.

The call for ideas, suggestions and votes for apps or health maps come under one of these five themes:

• Personalisation and choice of care and support: for example, an app that allows a user to search for health information online
• Better health and care outcomes: for example, an app that allows a patient to manage their health condition
• Autonomy and accountability: for example, an app that allows patients to publicly rate and review their local health services
• Improving public health: for example, an app that tracks an individual’s levels of exercise
• Improving long-term care and support: for example, an app that helps with planning long-term care and support

Examples of existing apps that benefits patients include:

• Choosing Well app from NHS Yorkshire and Humber, gives addresses of the nearest NHS services
• Paediatric Emergency Drugs app developed by Evelina Children’s Hospital helps calculate correct medicine dosage;
• iBreastCheck, Breakthrough Breast Cancer – gives information about checking breasts for abnormalities;
• MicroGuide, NHS Southampton – gives practical support to clinicians when treating patients with infections;

So what is it?

Google Wave is a real-time communication platform that ties together the best features of existing communication and collaboration tools within a browser interface. These include email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management all in one place.

It offers users access to almost any iGoogle or OpenSocial gadget.

Google Wave also provides powerful extension capabilities through the use of  Robots which modify information, interact with users and pull information from outside sources. Existing robots provide spell checking, link writing and in-line search functions.

As with many existing Google apps Google Wave offers embedding tools that enable users to integrate their waves into a third party website or blog.

Want a preview?

Watch the demo video below from Google’s IO conference, May 27 – 28 2009, San Francisco.

I have adapted Robin’s map adding in a few more tools and changing the functional grouping. You can view it in the window below.

Alternatively you can download the mindmap in a variety of formats:

• Portable document format (3.8 MB)
• PNG format (256 KB)

Patient Opinion is a not-for-profit social enterprise web site which encourages patients to share their experience of their treatment in the NHS.

According to James Munro of Patient Opinion, the resulting melange aims “To make it easier both for patients and staff to access all the feedback about their local services, and to increase the chance that public feedback will generate real improvements in services“

This work from the Patient Opinion lab follows the work of the Cabinet Office led Power of Information (POI) taskforce which is opening up more public sector information as part of its implementation of the Power of Information Review. Read more about this on the POI blog.

Here at Surepoint we are doffing our caps to the Patient Opinion team and are looking to follow in their innovative footsteps.

Watch this space for news on work underway to bring in data about local mental health services from the NHS Choices website into the Choice and medication website we have developed. Our aim is to ensure that when people using mental health services and their carers have found information about prescribed psychiatric medication on the Choice and medication website they can also find out information about local mental health services without having to look somewhere else.

Robinson, David, Yu, Harlan, Zeller, William P. and Felten, Edward W., Government Data and the Invisible Hand. Journal of Law & Technology, Vol. 11, 2008. Yale.

Available at the Social Science Research Network: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1138083

The abstract includes assertions that Government should, “reduce the federal role in presenting important government information to citizens…(and instead) focus on creating a simple, reliable and publicly accessible infrastructure that exposes the underlying data.”

This view in being championed within UK Government by the work of the Cabinet Office led Power of Information (POI) taskforce which is opening up more public sector information as part of its implementation of the Power of Information Review. Read more about this on the POI blog.

Watch this space for news on work underway to bring in data about local mental health services from the NHS Choices website into the Choice and medication website we have developed.

Google Librarian provides tips, tricks, strategies, lesson plans, tutorials, and easy to understand explanations to improve your Google experience. There is also a monthly newsletter which tries to answer some of the most frequently asked questions posed by librarians e.g. How does Google index the web, and, more importantly, how does it rank the results of the searches we regularly perform? >> Listen to this blog posting as an MP3 audio file

Skype uses a technology called Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP). This allows computer users connected to the Internet to talk each other via a headset or microphone and speakers. Find out more at www.skype.com.

Cheap calls to landlines and mobile phones are also possible. Some systems allow users to plug their traditional phones into a desktop box that allows them to make VoIP calls.

The new beta version 2.0 of the software is only available for Windows XP but a Macintosh version is expected once the company puts the finishing touches to the software. As well as adding video calling, the new version is designed to work with Microsoft Outlook, adding a toolbar to find and dial contacts.
Skype has 53 million registered users and says more than two million people are using its software at any given moment. In September it was bought by online auction giant eBay in a $2.6bn (£1.4bn) deal.

This is a highly competitive market and new features will be expected in the future. Rival internet services that also offer video phone calling features, include Microsoft’s MSN, America Online’s AIM service and Sony’s free net phone service.

We have integrated the Skype web service with the Knowledge Community user profiles. To take advantage of skype:

• Download Skype: Windows | Mac OS X | Linux | Pocket PC
• Register as a skype user
• Update your KC profile with your Skype username
• Find someone you wish to call on the KC. On their profile under External web services click ’skype me’.

The software is quick and easy to get started with. Download, register, install, plug in your headset, speakers or USB phone and start calling your friends and clleagues. Calls are highly secure with end-to-end encryption.

And it doesn’t just work on Windows. Skype is also for Mac OS X, Linux and PDAs using Pocket PC. Talking, sending instant messages or even file transfers work between different platforms.

I have started using it recently and found it provides excellent sound quality. In additions the instant messaging back channel is really handy particularly if you are making conference calls.

The providers also offer SkypeOut which lets you make calls to old-fashioned phone numbers all around the world. Landlines, mobile phones… it works with almost all of them. SkypeOut is not free but it is pretty cheap.