Minervation

Evidence based healthcare consultancy

Category Archives: News

Look After Your Eyes wins award

Cool kidLook After Your Eyes, the consumer-facing website we designed and built last year for the College of Optometrists, has been named website of the year by MemCom, an industry body for membership marketing professionals.

The site was produced for members of the public who are interested in their eyes and eye health, and provides information on how the eye works, eye conditions, how to care for eyes and the role of the optometrist. The site also encourages the public to find their local optometrist using a postcode search feature.

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Evidence-based guidance for the management of acute dental problems – in your pocket!

How the MADP application looks on a smartphoneMinervation has teamed up with the Scottish Dental Clinical Effectiveness Programme to produce Management of Acute Dental Problems.

This evidence-based decision aid is for non-dental health professionals who are advising patients with oral health problems.

By selecting the patient’s symptoms, the system directs users towards the recommended care.

It also provides detailed background information about conditions that are the most likely causes of symptoms, along with further recommendations for management.

The application is based on relevant clinical evidence and validated clinical practice guidelines.  It has been developed in partnership with its intended users.  The full text of the guidance can be accessed directly from the SDCEP website.

In implementing the application, we aimed for a simple, HTML-based solution that would work on as many platforms as possible.  A mobile version has been provided for use with smartphones, and a response history function is available for users whose browsers support JavaScript.

We have also tested an offline version which can be downloaded and run locally.  This will be subject to further refinement focusing on version control.

André is Member of the Month on the Patient Information Forum website

(This post appeared originally on the Patient Information Forum website)

I am Managing Director of Minervation and many of you will know me through my work on the PiF website.

My interests include evidence-based health care, web design, information science, usability testing, social media and blogging.

I live in Bristol and work from home and from the Minervation office, which is based in central Oxford.

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Take the 2 minute Learning Disabilities Elf survey and enter the prize draw for £30 of Amazon vouchers

The Learning Disabilities Elf helps you keep up to date with the latest reliable research, policy and guidance: http://www.thelearningdisabilitieself.net/

The team behind the site (John Northfield and André Tomlin) are running a short survey to gather feedback about the future direction of the site.  You can find the survey here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ld-elf

Can Journalists and Health Information Professionals ever be friends?

Arm wrestle

“Journalists are all heavy drinking hacks with no idea about healthcare or scientific research. They just want to sell newspapers and further their own careers.”
- Quote from an imaginary Health Information Professional.

“Health Information Professionals are all boring, mousey nobodies who wouldn’t know a good headline if it smacked their bifocals off their face. They just want to push their side of the story and get more money for their organisation.”
- Quote from an imaginary Journalist.

These are clearly extreme versions of the truth, but it’s undeniable that these two professional groups haven’t always got on. Journalists and Health Information Professionals often seem to be at odds over key health issues, but surely if we can build good working relationships we can help each other and dramatically improve the quality of information that gets out to the general public?

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We are proud to be part of the Patient Information Forum @PIFonline

Proud to be a PIF memberThe Patient Information Forum (PiF) is the membership organisation for consumer health information producers and providers.

PiF’s main aims are:

  • To campaign to ensure that health information is central to high quality, patient centred care
  • To enable information producers and providers to effectively and efficiently deliver high quality information to patients and the public

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Download André’s talk on social media, Cochrane reviews and the National Elf Service

The Mental ElfAndré was invited to give a talk at the UK Cochrane Centre 17th Annual Contributors Meeting in Loughborough on 20th March 2012.

It was an interactive session that explored the accessibility and usability of Cochrane systematic reviews and considered how the findings of these reviews could be more clearly communicated to health professionals and the general public.  André introduced the workshop participants to blogging and social media and also gave a brief overview of the soon to be launched National Elf Service.

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Calling all health writers

We are looking for experienced health writers to contribute to a number of international websites that we are producing for charity, public sector and commercial clients.

We are an evidence-based healthcare consultancy, based in Oxford.  We produce a wide range of health and social care websites, many of which require health information to be updated on a regular basis.

We need people with experience of writing for the web, working with evidence, summarising clinical research, writing for lay, professional and specialist audiences.

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