Exploring Online Health Communities

Join us for a day where we'll present the findings of more than six months of research into the emergence of a new phenomenon in healthcare: self-organising, online communities of patients, carers, clinicians, researchers, academics, and industry all focused on particular disease areas.

In the morning we will present our findings and then discuss, as a group, the implications that arise from them. In the afternoon we'll work in teams to explore how they may be used by practitioners working in online health communities and what the next steps for this work might be.

The day should be of interest to everyone working in, or with, online health communities. All are welcome. Please sign up on this page so we can manage numbers. And please get in touch if you have any questions or would like to discuss any aspect of the research or the event.

The day will be chaired by Paul Hodgkin and facilitated by Victoria Betton from MHabitat and Ben Metz.

About the research
Interested in this emerging field we (Paul Hodgkin and Ben Metz) secured funding from the Health Foundation and the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity to interview actors working with online health communities to map and explore this new and emerging field. The purpose of the research is to understand this new field and accelerate its successful interaction with the NHS, other key stakeholders and policy makers. You can review the findings (in beta) of the research by visiting the project website.