Power of Voice

Organisation: Patient Opinion
Funding: £69,500

The brainchild of a GP, this project will take an existing patient feedback service, Patient Opinion, and develop the idea for the mental health sector. The current service allows patients to share the story of their care at acute hospitals, and rate the service they receive. Hospitals subscribe to the service as a means of sourcing feedback, engaging in dialogue, and driving service improvement.

Working in partnership with an NHS Trust, the new project will develop innovative web-based approaches to enable those using the mental health service to share their experiences online, and feed that back to providers and commissioners, while protecting user privacy and autonomy.

NESTA's funding will help develop a means for ongoing involvement from patients and carers, helping them to shape the services they want. The local project will be a starting point for what is envisaged ultimately to be a nationally-available service.