Patient Opinion wins new media award

An online service that allows patients to report their experiences of NHS services has been “highly commended” in the New Statesman New Media Awards.

Patient Opinion was commended by the awards panel after being shortlisted in the category of ‘contribution to civic society’.

The website, founded by Sheffield GP Dr Paul Hodgkin, was launched nationally in January and offers patients the opportunity to report their experiences and rate the hospital where they have been treated on everything from standard of medical care and standard of nursing care to punctuality, cleanliness and parking. Feedback is then sent by electronic data feed to subscribing trusts.

After the awards Dr Hodgkin said: “"We are delighted to be recognised in this way at such a prestigious event. We know that the 'highly commended' title is not given automatically – it reflects the fact that the judges truly value what we have set out to achieve.”

The New Statesman awards aim to celebrate UK projects that benefit society, government or democracy and the theme of this years awards was “The Power of Ideas” with an emphasis on innovation, usability and efficiency.

Dr Hodgkin added: “We created Patient Opinion as a means for patients and users of the NHS to play a genuine role in developing and improving services.”We wanted to use the power of the latest technology to support our aims of enabling patients to share their experiences of health care, by doing so to help other patients, and perhaps even to change the NHS. Receiving this accolade is a real endorsement of our vision."

The winner of the ‘contribution to civic society’ category was a website called WritetoThem  which enables members of the public to contact local councillors, MPs and other politicians.

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