This article absolutely nails the realities of what is needed to make an online community (like the eHealth Forum) work:
Much of the work is hidden, and often not appreciated by those in governance roles. It is also very difficult to get the staff of an organisation to do this kind of work, unless it is clearly directed from the top - and of course appreciated and remunerated.
This has been the dynamic with HiNZ and the eHealth Forum for many years, but it isn’t unique to us. Rather, it is the challenge to be managed / overcome for us to be successful as an online digital health community.
As we look toward formally moving the eHealth Forum into HiNZ’s new platform over the coming months, this will be a key part of how things shape up going forward.
Thank you Olivia; it is super nice to get some genuine encouragement!
Going forwards we really are going to need some keen people to help us settle into the (up and coming) new HiNZ website. The @STAHDigital and @NMI committees have kindly offered to get in early and push it around; and we’d love some more volunteers to help us craft it into a really great asset for our NZ digital health community.
As always, Nathan, you’re doing an amazing job. Not sure what I can offer in terms of support but you know how I can help, so call out when you need to.
We are getting very close to testing the new site; just waiting for the first iteration of the design to be dropped into the site so that it will look and feel a lot more like it will end up (currently it is more a functional skeleton).
Thank you all - I’m just waiting on something to be re-activated on the new site so I can let you in to take a look at the imported eHealth Forum content (hopefully later today).
Next week (if all going well) we should be able to take a wider look at the whole site
