We are excited to announce that we will be moving our online community to a new Aotearoa-based home. Health Forum NZ is a natural fit for us as it uses the same Discourse platform as discourse.digitalhealth.net, and is also supported by HiNZ.
Next steps for you
Check in regularly for updates as to when our CiLN content will be migrated over to Health Forum NZ, over the next few weeks. You will be informed when the CiLN space on Health Forum NZ is ready for you to log into and check out.
Please also consider joining the team of NZ-based moderators as this is an excellent way to build our CiLN community and engage with our health colleagues beyond informatics.
Background
When CiLN was forming in late 2018, our group email communication became unwieldy. After considerable debate, we elected to try the Discourse platform as it was used successfully by our UK colleagues who generously offered space on the Digital Health Networks for free. It has been great and has met our needs admirably, but as we mature as a Network our reasons for moving on have been solidifying.
Rationale for move
The move to Health Forum NZ will empower us to engage more meaningfully with the Ministry of Health, connect with health technologists who aren’t clinicians, spread our message to our less technically inclined colleagues, and allow the input of health consumers. As it is the same Discourse software platform, the move should be relatively painless.
A feed will populate the latest topics from our UK colleagues, so that those of you who have benefited from the international community can remain informed and know when checking back in with discourse.digitalhealth.net is required.
Once you’ve joined Health Forum NZ, please also look for your clinical area and check out what discussions are happening within a wide range of groups. The purpose of Health Forum NZ is to bring “together all those working towards better digital health in Aotearoa New Zealand”, hosted securely. Let your peers know about this forum! CiLN can also drive the move of national health professional discourse off commercial social media platforms and on to a more secure digital space. It’s a win-win!
I’m not a heavy user of this form (not being a clinical informatician ) but I am really excited to see the growth of the NZ-based Health Forum NZ community. It feels like the right place to keep talking about NZ digital health issues and ideas. Well done.
I was hoping to have moved us to HFNZ by now, but haven’t been able to set aside the time to do it.
Basically, it needs to be done properly. The cost to pay someone to do it for us is significant (difficult without a budget!), and it would still entail a lot of work for those of us who are keen to contribute.
At the moment I am aiming for 2021-08-05T12:00:00Z but this is subject to change depending on my availability.
I’m delighted to report that the wheels are finally moving for the move to Health Forum NZ. Due to various constraints, I’m not going to fix a date yet. Hopefully, it will be in the next two weeks. The aim is to have it as seamless as possible, but as with all change there will be some pain.
First step: Groundwork
We are now in a phase of preliminary groundwork. In particular, we’ve got to ensure that our email addresses and usernames are aligned between the two Discourse instances so that our data moves smoothly. In addition, this is an excellent opportunity to align them with HiNZ, of whom we are now officially a part.
You might find that your username changes; if you don’t like any arbitrary change I have made then please personal message me and we’ll find a good one together for both platforms.
The Tricky Bit: Emails
To be sure that we (and HiNZ) are using the best email for you, we may need to ask those of you who are both HiNZ and CiLN members to confirm it. We’ll try and do this in the least intrusive way possible.
I’m really not happy with this. Fortunately, HiNZ has provided us with some funding to pursue Plan B:
Path B: Complex merger
This involves taking a copy of the Digital Health Networks, stripping out the unwanted content, and using a rough and ready scripting tool to merge it with HFNZ.
It retains all of the lost content above
Brings along a bit of additional unwanted mess.
This has required the additional support of a Discourse migration expert. It turns out that it isn’t performed very often, so it is a learning curve for him too.
So far, two attempts at the complex merger have had to be abandoned due to technical difficulties. We’ll make another on Wed am, and I am hopeful that we’ll nail it this time.
Just posting an update on the moving of CiLN to HFNZ. HFNZ has recently become aware of a large Facebook group called The Health Forum NZ which is a site for COVID vaccine sceptics. They are about to launch their thehealthforum.nz website.
As you can see their name is very similar to HFNZ and as such there has been a sizeable increase in requests for non-healthcare professionals to access the HFNZ site believing it is thehealthforum.nz. Continuing with HFNZ means we risk getting caught up in a completely different message than the one we are looking to promote.
HFNZ has looked into alternative options but they are costly and would require resources we do not have.
@NathanK who has tirelessly done all the incredible hard work for HFNZ and is a CiLN Advisory Panel member, has worked on new plan.
The plan is to create a new Discourse instance within the HiNZ domain, and move CiLN to this new instance. This plan solidifies the great relationship between CiLN and HiNZ. Consequently a some point HFNZ will cease to be active.
This is a great opportunity. What do you think?
Let us know.
Thanks guys!!! A bit of love is always deeply appreciated!
I ended up doing this:
Path C: Rich transfer, strip out, and rebrand.
Similar to the first half of Path B, this involved moving a full snapshot of the DHN to our NZ-based server.
This was then restored into a fresh Discourse install (using a more up-to-date configuration), and all the non-NZ content was stripped out. It was then rebranded, and the configuration of all integrations rebuilt to suit the new home.
There will now be a more organisational configuration (suggestions welcome!!), the migration of some HFNZ content and users, and a whole bunch of spit and polish. This will happen over the next few months at a much more leisurely pace.
) but I am really excited to see the growth of the NZ-based