NICON 2013

This week I attended the annual conference of the Northern Ireland Confederation for Health and Social Services (NICON), which is the NI equivalent of the NHS Confederation.

The title was ‘Transforming Your Care: Transforming Our Practice’ and focused a lot on the change agenda for health and social care in NI.  It was a great opportunity to be away from the day job and to sit back and look at the big picture to see what the vision for the future looks like.  This is important for anyone who wants to play a part in delivering that future.

There was great enthusiasm and energy at the conference with an eagerness to move from vision to action.  And there was encouragement from the Health Minister, Edwin Poots,  for people to innovate and take risks.  However, there was frustration and disquiet from some at the gap between the rhetoric and reality and I really hope this gap closes.  The conference gave some great examples of what is possible, and what can be achieved, and the Minister, CMO and Permanent Secretary all warned that doing nothing is not an option.  Change must happen.

The crucial aspect going forward will be the leadership & engagement of staff, patients and service users.  They must not be allowed to forget the case for change.  And talk must become reality soon, and that reality must be visible, to avoid people losing faith that we can achieve the change we’ve talked about. 

 

Healthcare Social Media

I was delighted that @HmmMoorhead the Director of NICON asked me to help with their healthcare social media strategy for the conference this year.  We set up a hashtag – #nicon13 – which was registered with the Symplur healthcare hashtags project to promote the event and also to provide useful analytics in real time and after the event.  The hashtag was displayed on conference screens throughout the day and was also helpfully promoted by the conference Chair, Noel Thompson.

Join the discussion on Twitter #nicon13

As the event progressed, more and more people joined in the live tweet and by day two we had over 750 live tweets and #nicon13 was trending number 3 in healthcare conferences according to Symplur.

There was some great online discussion via the live tweet which allowed sharing of the key messages with a wider audience than those at the event.  It also facilitated networking, with exhibitors inviting people to visit their stands at coffee and lunch breaks, and people arranging to meet each other for further discussion.  And best of all a number of senior healthcare managers and leaders signed up for their first Twitter account!  Many decided to follow the discussion before taking the step to tweeting but it’s a step in the right direction.

The live tweet at NICON 2013 was a big step forward for healthcare social media in Northern Ireland.  I hope to see some Chief Executives tweeting soon.