FCI (Faculty of Clinical Informatics) described as a 'Greek Tragedy'

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If anyone has been on the digitalhealth.net site recently, they would know that the UK’s Faculty of Clinical Informatics has been in big trouble:

Basically: following on from making a statement that was unpopular with the UK government, their central funding was cut (the two are not necessarily linked). This has resulted in the FCI having to shed all of their staff; they are currently CEO-only, and he is just working out his notice. Added to this has been internal conflict and significant churn in those holding honorary positions.

It is now (hopefully) in the process of being reborn as an entirely volunteer organisation with diversified incomings (i.e. a bit like @CiLN). Hopefully it can make it through and continue to be a force for good in the world’s digital health ecosystem.

We would be wise to take note of this and ensure that we don’t make the same mistakes here in NZ.

Some interesting further discussions about this are on discourse.digitalhealth.net/tag/fci

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Well, I’m delighted to report that the FCI hasn’t completely imploded. Things are not happy, with zero staff, a CEO working out his notice period, and a membership seeking to have the chair of the board sacked. But it looks like it might survive, albeit in a much leaner form.

Some background

The Faculty of Clinical Informatics was set up to support medical informaticians in their need to remain credentialled as clinicians whilst performing less clinical work than their colleagues within the (rather hostile) UK environment. We have that need to some degree here in NZ too.

It rapidly evolved to become much more inclusive of other clinical informaticians (e.g. nurse & midwife and allied health professionals), and had been rapidly expanding and solidifying into a positive force in the sector, with some significant central government support.

However, that support was abruptly cut due to the restructure and austerity measures currently being experienced in NHS England. As their other revenue streams were limited, this has been an absolute disaster.

The role of the Online Forum

This has been most interesting (at least to me).

The Digital Health Networks (where the eHealth Forum / CiLN began) hosts the FCI’s discussion space, which was partially utilised, with approx 20% of the FCI members signed up. While doing okay, it was hamstrung by little engagement with the FCI staff, zero promotion, and a lacklustre community strategy.

Once the membership became interested and ‘fired up’, this rapidly evolved into an effective way for the membership to communicate. The numbers swelled to >60% of the membership rapidly, and they have used it to collaborate towards calling for an extraordinary general meeting. It basically gave them power, at a time when the organisation was not interested in them having any power at all (and jealously guarded their email list, etc).

May we never have to do likewise here in NZ.

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A further (unhappy) update on this:

It has struggled with the transition back to being a fully volunteer organisation, which isn’t surprising at all.

I guess we wait and see what happens next in this space, and try to avoid a similar fate with our organisations here in Aotearoa.

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