EHI Live 2013

Last week was a busy one, i was at EHI Live 2013 in Birmingham on Tuesday and Wednesday and wisely for once chose to take the rest of the week as leave to recover: i predict many of you that know me just fell off your chairs reading that last part!

I was one of the speakers at the HANDI Health App conference as part of EHI Live 2013 and it was a great experience and quite unlike most big events i’ve been too in the past.

Now this is really silly but i must confess that at first i had no idea what i was signing up for. I was approached by Ewan Davis to speak at HANDI Health about my experience of working on the WellHappy app. I’m always more than happy to talk about the app (in fact you try and stop me!) so i quickly said yes.

It was only after i said yes and got some more details that i realised i was going to be speaking at EHI, one of the biggest health/tech events in the calendar!

It was nice to know that i was going to be in good company, i found out early on that Sarah Amani who i met in person for the first time recently at the IAYMH Conference in Brighton was speaking the day after me about developing the “My Journey” Early Intervention in Psychosis app. I was also going to get the chance to meet up with an old VIK friend Mark who i don’t get to see often now that the project has ended.

The first person i ran into at the event in fact was Geraldine Strathdee, the National Clinical Director for Mental Health in the NHS & Royal College of Psychiatrist award winner. I had been so busy preparing for my part of EHI that i didn’t even realise there was also a workstream dedicated to Mental Health Informatics.

Being the massive nerd that i am i ended up attending a talk and one of the workshops on mental health informatics and in particular the Mental Health Minimum Data Set produced by the Health & Social Care Information Centre. I won’t go on about this bit as i know it’s niche but if this is your area i strongly recommend you read into the minimum data set. It’s where we get much of our mental health statistics and is only going to grow in terms of the amount of data and it’s importance.

Overall the event was very interesting, a lot more tech based than most of the events i attend so i definitely feel i learnt a lot that i probably wouldn’t have otherwise. It was also a chance to check out some really innovative things like a 3D Printer being used to make artificial limbs and a game you can play with eye movement detection-so completely hands free!

I will leave you with a slightly more off the wall note..the conference was also a good excuse for silly free things..apparently stress balls are out and odd animals are in. I’ve been picking up these oddball things for years now and these are the new additions to what i jokingly call my stress farm! I also have a telephone, sheep, cow and a stress pizza of all things knocking around somewhere..