Hive Health

I noticed this article on the BBC website this morning.

In summary, the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) is offering women free emergency contraception due to the number of unwanted pregnancies resulting from Christmas frivolities. Women can order ‘the pill’ in advance over the phone, after a chat with a nurse.

Initial reaction: hilarity.

Further cogitation led to incredulity.

I wonder what other sexual health charities are thinking about this? It feels slightly irresponsible to be pushing a contraceptive that doesn’t protect against sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)… Or are they also offering the opportunity to book GUM clinic appointments in advance too?

Isn’t prophylaxis always better than reactionary?

So I ask where are the condoms and education on STD transmission?

I’d be lying (a lot) if I said I understood or followed politics. I definitely used to feel a little bit guilty whenever I saw that politics TV campaign a couple years ago (2 guys chatting in a pub. one says he’s not interested in politics and then his chum doesn’t let him talk about anything because politics affects pretty much everything).

However, occasionally something in the political world makes my ears prick up. Certainly, the live pre-election TV debate was an entertaining spectacle and more recently this NICE kerfuffle seems intriguing.

NICE is to lose its power to decide which drugs are available on the NHS, its opinion being downgraded to a mere advisory status. The power is to be dissipated to local GP consortia.

It’s a move I’m not sure I get. Granted this may be due to the aforementioned level of my political understanding, but there’s a couple of things that niggle…

Has NICE been doing a bad job, doesn’t it have the expertise in this area? The one criticism I’ve come across is NICE has misread the public mood. I’m not sure how I feel about this – smacks of PR a touch. I didn’t think it was NICE’s job to read the public mood, but to make an informed, evidenced based decision.

Are GPs better placed to make these decisions? Will it affect the patient/physician relationship? Will GPs have to put up with patient lobbying? A lot of the new drugs, e.g. cancer drugs, will be used in small patient populations by secondary care specialists. Does it make sense to have GPs approving these drugs?

Lastly, I just don’t get how this manoeuvre is going to work in a time of austerity. We’re supposed to be tightening the belt, but this seems to be involving more parties (and so more money?) in the decision-making process – NICE will still exist, making a recommendation, in addition to everyone else that will now be involved. But primarily, if change has been brought in to ensure drugs needed by few to improve/prolong life (no matter how short this effect lasts) are prescribed when previously rejected, how on earth is this going to save money? Or are we exacerbating the postcode lottery, where only the areas that can afford these drugs will prescribe them?

So far this week has had its fair share of highlights – last night I was told by one of our clients that I should investigate a career in phone sex (nb. pre multiple espresso Martinis!). However, the stand alone winner is Jas’ epic fail at getting through a door. The added bonus being it has created one of my new favourite photos – as Ian points out, she must have been pulling off a pretty jaunty strut to leave such a special smear pattern.

Anyway, this got me thinking. Our director fails to get through one of our internal doors – hilarious, unexpected, hopefully a bit of a one off (for Jas’ sake); but how can we expect proper new bees to get through our door if they don’t even know it exists?

I fluked upon this industry, this agency, this career. At uni, doing a science degree, I was given 2 career options: Science (of the hard-core lab variety) or the City (of the hard-core bank variety). Neither of which appealled – I’m pretty sure flourescent pink jeans are frowned upon in both settings, whereas at Hive they get called ‘bastard strides’ and prompt Tim to put on some sunnies. Despite knowing there must be something in between, it was bloody difficult to discover and relied on an awful lot of luck.

“What a ridiculous situation!” Hive cries…how can we fix this problem? How can we help young guns find out we exists? As yet we don’t know. It’s a work in progress, some serious thinking is about to be done (thinking hats on). Any thoughts/ideas give us a shout (unfortunately no ipad bribe this time). We’ll fill you in on the the thinking and if you’re really lucky maybe you’ll get an invite to the solution.

Having met Helen at a Cambridge-milk-round-thing, I got in contact and last week completed a weeks work experience. Part of the deal was that I promised to summarise my time for anyone who has the foresight to want to try this out!

As the week drew nearer and the more I thought about it, the less I realised I knew about the company, heathcare, communications and hands on science. My cluelessness was sorted in my first day after a chat with Ian – its dead easy – their world is all about conversations, stories and who’s involved.

On arrival at my desk, I was greated by my pretty full timetable for the week. To the inexperienced work experiencer this probably sounds like a bit of a nightmare. WRONG.  My week was full things to do, which was brilliant. Whatsmore, these things didn’t involve any photocopying or tea making, but casting, filming, editing, proofing and the odd lunch, amongst other stuff.

This is part of the reason my week was so good. I got a varied look at what goes on at Hive and all the different modes of communication they utilise. All the team were patient and took the time out to help me out and explain things.

It was interesting to get an insight into what I now know as strategy/marketing/branding of new and old drugs as well as looking at novel ways to converse with the end user.

To me it seems Hive likes to look for a different angle on things, which is challenging and creates a good bit of office banter.

It was good to be a part.