WHIG Launch a Success

The WHIG site was launched on the 16th November, 2004 with an all round successful event. Guests heard speeches from Simon Pickvance, Dr. Kit Harling and Hugh Robertson. Rowan Merewood gave a demonstration of the WHIG and guests had the opportunity to sign up and try the site for themselves.

Just under 80 guests attended the launch of the WHIG web site. Speaking at the event were Simon Pickvance (Senior Occupational Health Adviser, SOHAS), Dr. Kit Harling (Director, NHS Plus), Hugh Robertson (Senior Health and Safety Officer, TUC) and Rowan Merewood (WHIG Co-ordinator and Developer, SOHAS). Guests also had the chance to sign up for an account and learn how to start contributing their own content.

Guests came from a wide variety of organisations including unions, voluntary sector groups, library services, local councils with other government and commerical bodies represented. The range of interest in the WHIG will hopefully reflect a similar range of contributions from different viewpoints, proving plenty of opportunity for active discussions.

Simon Pickvance opening the event

Simon Pickvance started off the event with an introduction to the Sheffield Occupational Health Advisory Service and the changing role it has played over its 24 year life. He explained that with SOHAS seeing over 1000 patients a year in GP surgeries, the organisation needed other ways to distribute information.

The original pilot project, "1st Stop" was a project that looked at providing access to information via a route of choosing jobs and health problems. To take advantage of the interactive opportunities presented by the Internet, SOHAS looked at finding a way of providing this same information in a more open way. The concept behind it was to make it simple for SOHAS's advisers to quickly add useful resources into the database for future reference. When the organisation saw the kind of material that patients would bring with them, it was decided that WHIG should also give them a way of contributing.

Kit Harling

Next, Dr. Kit Harling spoke about the way that finding health information has changed as the Internet has become a more popular tool. Finding information through a search engine presents something of a problem due to the sheer volume of resources returned and the difficult of verifying their credibility. He explained that by providing a kind of filtered editorial of that content, SOHAS can use the trust they have built up over the years to assure that the resources WHIG presents are both relevant and accurate.

To put into perspective the value of users' contributions, Kit talked about his own experience as a pit doctor in the coal mines where he saw many occupational health problems first hand. The observation he made was that it is the people on the "front-line" who gain a valuable first insight into these problems, how to treat them and, more importantly, how to avoid them in the future. WHIG provides a forum for them to present the information they have and then discuss and develop it further.

Hugh Robertson

Hugh Robertson spoke on his background in the Unison and then the TUC, explaining how the forum on their site has become a vital resource for safety representatives both for asking questions and publicising news of their own successes. He stressed the importance of involving users in the process of communication and information sharing. He also presented some of the different ways that users can access the WHIG, ranging from safe,anonymous access to delicate information all the way up to becoming an active contributor and editor of the site.

In the later questions, Hugh also mentioned the possibility of mutual links between organisations such as the TUC and WHIG. Interlinked relationships between sites would prove to be a boost in profile and presence for all involved.

Rowan Merewood

To whet the guests' appetites for a go on the WHIG, Rowan Merewood took them through a demonstration of the capabilities the site offers (download the presentation). This covered the basics of simply searching and browsing through the site, through joining, leaving a comment or two and finally contributing content into the WHIG for other users to view and discuss. After the demonstration, guest were able to try the site during lunch. Some of the questions asked provided valuable feedback as to where the structure and the content of the WHIG should go from here. People were keen to know that the WHIG is a continuing service, not just a one-off project and that development of both the site's resources and its functionality will be ongoing. This led to discussion of some of the WHIG's upcoming features - such as automatic methods for searching and submitting of new content - plus allowing users to start rating resources were discussed.

This event was also an opportunity for several of the participants there to meet up for the first time and hopefully find ways of exhanging valuable information through the site in the future. By the end of the event, over forty users had signed up to start making active contributions and that number continues to grow.