Proving your health project works

This is an article about capturing social value I wrote for for the Centre for Innovation in Health Management, published in the summer. Apparently policy makers have been pretty interested in social value measures since the credit crunch - with less money around, it helps to know which projects are most likely to succeed. More relevant than ever since the spending review.

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It is all about digital technology

Blimey is it December already? I've been back at work since April, but I now have two children and there hasn't been much time for blogging. I was out for about two years thanks to morning sickness during pregnancy #2. Upon my return I noticed how digital technology has become even more deeply woven into our lives, much as you only notice a child has grown if you don't see them for a while. This is a very exciting time to be writing about technology and I'm delighted to say that is exactly what I am doing. I will let you know my grand thoughts on it when I have some - at the moment I'm still getting my head round the fact that as much as the world has changed in since the internet began, the revolution has hardly begun.

The Truth About Stanley

The Truth About Stanley is a short drama made to raise money for homelessness. My partner Tom Clark produced it and I did the PR. We managed to get it on the front page of guardian.co.uk, and covered in the news section of The Observer. It also got a five star review in the Independent on Sunday - an unprecedented achievement for a short film. Saba Salman compares Stanley to Cathy Come Home on her blog, The Social Issue. But the wonderful Cathy is in the realist tradition, the filmic equivalent of a Zola novel about coalminers. The homelessness was triggered by bad luck and a bad system - a work injury and no safety nets. Stanley is much more psychological. It looks at why people choose a life on the streets. It is a film for this age of the mind, where we have virtual lives on the internet, neuroscience is revealing the potential of our brains in old age, and charities like Kidsco reach right into the psyches of traumatised children. I believe Sta...

Mental health and technology

Recently I did some work for a fascinating organisation, Ieso Digital Health , which provides online CBT to people with common mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, OCD and phobia. The company is an example of how private companies can add value to the health system. It is doing something genuinely innovative, and meeting a pressing human need. Without Ieso, waiting lists for talking therapies would only get longer. And what about people for whom face-to-face talking therapy is unsuitable - anyone who is immobile, in full time work or just shy? They would lose the chance to benefit from the discretion and accessibility of online therapy. If Ieso did not exist, you would have to invent it. I don't want a privatised NHS, but it's difficult to argue against providers like this entering the market. For more on Ieso Digital Health's approach to healing minds, read this article by their clinical lead, Sarah Bateup, on Huffington Post.

Varya Shaw

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