Hive Health

I stumbled upon this gem of a programme whilst curating Patient Centricity news on Scoop it this morning.

Matt and I are heading up to Salford on the train, it’s pitch black, and dead depressing. This cheered me up somewhat and stirred a long gone memory.

I only just remember my sister being ill when I was about 6. A more distinct memory was her accompanying bear; Peri.  Peri pretty much was present all the way to health. Every now and then Peri is discovered still with his hospital wristband on and much smaller than I remember.  I now know that this little bear was named after a Heath Robinson looking yogurt pot, tube and bag gizmo that provided her with the peritoneal dialysis needed whilst her kidneys took a kicking,

This enterprising inspiring mum took her son’s similar requirement for a cancer companion to the next level. Just after his first birthday, Gabe’s mother, Lu Sipos, made the very first Chemo Duck for him. She thought he could use a companion to take to the hospital, one with whom he could share his journey back to health. Both Chemo Duck and Gabe finished treatment in November 2003 and have remained cancer free since.

Since then Lu along with a board of directors and a newly formed not for profit organisation have taken the chemo duck and made him fly. Chemo duck is now in production and the team are striving to give away 10,000 of these donated friends by Gabe’s 10 year birthday.

More than a companion chemo duck has become a vital part of ‘medical play’, a concept that allows children to communicate with parents and healthcare professionals, offering a window into their world midst the turmoil of cancer. Chemo duck is used time and time again as a powerful therapeutic and teaching tool used in medical facilities to familiarize children with cancer protocol and procedures.

Pretty cool eh?

This article was written by Max G, an account executive candidate as part of a first interview to help us see where his MA in International Relations from LSE and our world of healthcare collide. We are delighted to welcome Max to Hive in January.

This is, to quote Tim, a Darwinian moment. The cusp of a revolution and a moment for new thinking and creative minds. The patient is coming, the power structures are diversifying and it’s the job of folks like us to harness that power and use it to effective ends for our clients. Critically, this will mean truly respecting the conflicting and often contradictory wants of patients, instead of merely seeing digital and all things social as just another channel for vulgar old-ad indoctrination. More than anything else, this will mean actually listening to patients: learning from them and understanding their needs beyond the most basal of levels.

Just for the sake of thinking, it’s fun to draw parallels across disciplines. It can also be genuinely productive.

Take the body of literature surrounding U.S. Public Opinion and U.S. Presidents. At the LSE I took a course that addressed the interaction between Presidents and public opinion and I was particularly fascinated by the moment at which the existing consensus completely broke down. Critically, the power-players – i.e. the President – had absolutely no idea how to handle the new climate. It was akin to Reagan’s Secretary of State, George Shultz, visiting Gorbachev in the Kremlin in the late 1980s and telling him ‘The Information Age will destroy your economy if you don’t afford it the room to breathe’. The powers that be were the ones to lose out.

Think of the drugs companies as the President and the patients as the voters. To take the cast a step further, imagine Carter’s team of experts and his Presidential pollster Patrick Caddell – as the tired old ad man who simply clings to the methods of old.

Prior to the end of the Vietnam War and the election of Jimmy Carter in 1977, political scientists and commentators alike agreed that the ‘bully pulpit’ style of Presidential leadership dominated and that the masses had little to say or think, other than that which they’d already been told. In other words, if the President shouted loud enough, the public generally went along. The people were ignorant and malleable. This was termed the Almond-Lippmann consensus.

Similarly, for years the GP-patient relationship consisted of linear, one directional messaging where the GP told the patient what’s good for him and the patient minded his Ps and Qs. Why, as a patient in this climate, would you engage with a brand that meant nothing to you? You were simply told to take it. The brand name sounded scary and the active ingredient scarier. There was no reason to connect with a brand and more importantly, no one had ever muted it as an option. The President knew what was best for you.

Back in the world of politics, The Vietnam War changed the underlying conditions of public opinion dramatically and new scholarship by the likes of Katz and Witkopf asserted that the public was increasingly ‘activated’ on foreign policy issues. The consumer of policy had suddenly woken up. The trouble was, no one had bothered to tell Carter. Or rather, both him and his top-team wouldn’t listen. In critiquing the failures of Carter, one school of thought argues that Carter’s bold and brazen honesty and New World Agenda was simply too much for a typically Conservative American electorate to consume in one go. Honesty, it is argued, was the cause of his failure. For another school, Carter simply didn’t care about public opinion at all.

On the contrary, Carter failed not because he cared nothing for public opinion, but because he failed to appreciate the changes to the underlying landscape and continued to treat the electorate – or for the sake of this analogy his ‘customers’ – as ignorant drones ready to be led. The contradictions in their views meant nothing; little had really changed. From this rapidly expiring rationale, Carter tried to sell something like his human rights policies as ‘non-ideological’ and one-fit-for-all, as opposed to understanding the complex underlying reasons why different voters supported the very same policy, but for markedly different reasons. Far from pleasing everyone, this linear approach to strategy failed everyone.

Back in the world of health care in the 21st century, almost all major stakeholders now appreciate the degree to which the landscape is changing. They get that choice and patient empowerment is coming and that patients are broadly embracing of it. Worryingly however, many traditionalists see this new medium as broadly compatible with the tired old information dissemination of old. Bully pulpit ring a bell?

That’s where Hive and our team of smart cookies come in. We see the irony in giving a presentation on digital in a room full of stuffy insider types through the medium of an overhead projector. Instead, we actually seek to understand patients in their most complex – and thus natural of underlying forms. We tailor our clients’ products to this end and take power back through the empowerment of others. To some observers, this method might seem like pretension defined. Or to others as a serious challenge to the status quo. To us, it’s a holistic approach to the demands of an entirely new and still-emerging world. Digital isn’t just a corporate buzzword and choice means genuinely listening to and respecting the needs of patients.

The way we see it, you can either come with us for the ride or end up like another Jimmy Carter – as much as we love the old peanut farmer.

In the news today, NHS Scotland is being lobbied on the mass intake of newly qualified doctors into healthcare posts. This happens in August every year. Now the Royal College of Physicians (Edinburgh) links this practice to higher death rates and is proposing a more staggered approach of rotations.

Come back with me to February 1, 2002. The isle is burning in a cold storm. A South African disembarks in Durham City. Note the sleet melting into her clothing as she hauls 20 kg of backpack up a cobbled street. Hey Isle, it’s me! Luugging his own baggage up this hill, quite immune to my whining, is my fellow émigré Greg. Here we are in the picture on a Skype chat.

Greg was newly qualified in medicine and had secured a urology house officer post in Durham’s teaching hospital. I was a copywriter with an ancestral visa (4 years – sweet). We were best mates. We rented a stone cottage. I got a job helping farmers claim foot & mouth compensation. I also waitressed and went clubbing with my new friends. Come July, we had to get serious. I had to write, and Greg had to get on the proper rotation scheme. I was going to Ealing. He was going to Croydon for August intake. We divided our cups and spoons and we parted.

Greg is now almost in his consultant brogues and I’m doing pretty well my stuff too. I offer you this story because it frames the August system in a ten year period, a good time to assess whether it is working.

The firmament of the NHS is its focus on the patient. If the patient is dying, there is the rush of reflexive action. If the patient has died, there is, ideally, calm reflection. Studies like this one will now be pulled into many different shapes. The focus spreads to the carers and the cash. You have to keep the doctor on the most effective, least expensive training path. Staggering teaching would be difficult. If it means more red tape, the government probably doesn’t want to know right now.

You can read this training story here and do some reflection of your own. With all the cuts and punches, note that it hasn’t made the mainstream health news. Remind yourself that in 2012, training will be absorbed into the new Health Education England and NHS Trust Development Authority. And watch this space to see how our little Scottish study stands up in the storm.

Viagra burst onto an expectant  market 12 years ago on the 1^st of July. Wow, how time flies!

I was fortunate enough to have been on the UK launch team for Viagra, and we were desperate to ensure that it was promoted ethically and was given enough space to be taken seriously – as a product that met a genuine patient need. One that impacted on the lives of millions of people.

The press went mad, “sex drug” shouted from every red top. Knee jerk Health Secretary Frank Dobson’s fears about rampant demand introduced restrictions, which clamped down treatment provision resulting in only 17% of those men who would benefit getting a prescription. GPs were told to restrict their prescribing to one pill per week. All driven by fears that the NHS would be swamped by demands for the new drug.

It’s all seems ages ago and now strange to think of a Health Secretary wanting to dictate the sex lives of their citizens. ‘Once a week Dobing’ was laughed at by many, but still acceptable.

The category perceptions changed, and ED was forced into the sunlight. Now discussed and treated  in a very different world. Walking in Soho with Debbie I spied this photo, a demonstration that perceptions change, but somewhere some of your audience remains intransient.  How things have moved on!