The eHealth Forum has now moved (as of 2023-08-28T07:00:00Z) to the tighter ehealthforum.nz.
This shouldn’t cause more than a momentary glitch in anyone’s experience, and brings some important benefits which really need to be realised.
Background
While forum.hinz.org.nz has been a great home (especially at the time of COVID uncertainty) for the last 2 years, it was always intended to be a temporary refuge. The reason? Unsavoury neighbours!
During the process of moving out from the under protective wing of our UK colleagues at the Digital Health Networks, it became apparent that a large Facebook group dedicated to an ‘alternative’ narrative on vaccines was just about to implement their website at thehealthforum.nz (they have subsequently done this at thehealthforum.co.nz). This was an unacceptable risk for our health-centred discussion forum - which is based upon openness, collaboration, and honesty.
As the political sting has faded somewhat, and their website has had little activity for the past year, the time seems right to complete the move.
Reasons for this move
There are several reasons for making this switch
Our current “forum.hinz.org.nz” doesn’t roll off the tongue
It just isn’t that easy to convey quickly to other people. Three ‘dots’ just seems a dot too many for folk to remember easily. And it doesn’t stick in people’s minds.
Search Engine Optimisation
Currently, websites that link to this Forum get lost in the hinz.org.nz domain. Also, any changes to the link severely impact the effectiveness.
Another thing we are going to do is open up a bit; some of our content will become public, allowing for direct linking and search engine crawlers to access it. This is a key part of ensuring that the Forum is appropriately accessible. More on this to come.
For both of these things, we need a simple, stable URL which is easy to link to - and which has intrinsic meaning.
The App experience
Whenever I speak with people about using the eHealth Forum, they often bring up their perception that an app doesn’t exist for it as being a major problem.
The thing is - it does! As a PWA (as opposed to a conventional Appstore app), however, it is vulnerable to a URL change. Basically, when we change the URL it will break. This is the reason that it hasn’t been widely promoted as yet.
Settling on a new, permanent, URL will enable us to get moving with this.
Lack of HiNZ integrations
We don’t have any meaningful integrations with the HiNZ website or other assets. With HiNZ’s current website and digital assets, integration is not easy nor cheap. The one functioning integration is the eHealth Forum automatically hosting comments on the eHealth News articles.
While this situation isn’t great, it does mean that there is little advantage in remaining within the hinz.org.nz domain. Also, at the moment a change of URL won’t break anything. It seems wise to lock in a new stable URL now, so that future integrations will be robust.
What Next?
This move is unfunded - therefore it relies upon the unpredictable availability of volunteer time and energy (mostly mine).
One day, the URL will suddenly change. This will break a few things (especially reply by email) briefly, as well as shortcuts that folk might have on their devices. However, a solid redirect will be in place so hopefully this will be minimised.
This will be well communicated via several channels, and it would be great if you can help your colleagues to find our wonderful online digital meeting space once the move has occurred.
Any Questions or Problems?
Please pop them here as a reply to this post!
) - hopefully you’ll be even more impressed then!