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Health bodies eavesdrop on online moans

People grumbling to friends about their health or waiting times at hospitals is nothing new. But as more choose to do so on internet forums and social networks such as Twitter and Facebook, they may be surprised to learn that hospitals and healthcare professionals are “listening in”.

Organisations such as the Care Quality Commission, the health and social care regulator, and several NHS hospitals are starting to trawl the web for clues about where they need to investigate low standards or direct extra resources.

Social-media monitoring is becoming common in the private sector, as companies listen out for complaints about their own services, or those of competitors, to help poach customers.

In the public sector, where the pace of technological change is often glacial, “eavesdropping” on online conversations can tap opinions from people who may not want to fill in a formal survey form.

The commission has been working with Qinetiq, the defence technology company and former government agency, to help it scan and automatically categorise internet comments. Similar technology is used by security services to look for terrorist “chatter” online.

The commission plans to pilot the service early next year, initially looking at comments on hospital websites, local news reports and health forums – all with the intention of helping its inspectors to prioritise the sites they need to investigate more closely.

The system, which builds on its existing information gathering and management technology, could then be extended to Twitter and Facebook, said Richard Hamblin, the commission’s director of intelligence.

From next spring, the commission will regulate 45,000 nursing homes, GP surgeries, dental practices and other healthcare outfits, up from 27,000 today – although it will not have new funds to increase its team of inspectors in proportion.

“We are being forced to think about how to do more with less,” said Mr Hamblin. “Even if you quadrupled [staffing], you would not get round as many as you would want to, so you need to get smarter about where the biggest risks are and concentrate resources there.”

The agency uses a team of four to categorise manually about 1,000 comments from 15 different sources every month. It is testing cutting-edge linguistic technology developed by a team at Oxford University to categorise automatically more qualitative information.

That will allow new data to be processed from a greater number of sources from around the web, and the same team can move into more sophisticated tasks, analysing the results. The project is likely to cost less than half that of processing the information manually over its first year.

Within the NHS, many hospitals – including London’s St George’s Trust, West Middlesex and Barts – and primary care trusts have created Twitter and Facebook accounts.

Although most use social networks only to share information and health tips, some are used to scan for patients tweeting about their ailments or treatment, mentioning the hospital’s name.

A group of NHS social media enthusiasts hold a virtual meeting on Twitter every Monday to discuss how best to use the new channels.

Samuel Ridge, senior communications manager for St George’s Trust, said the hospital had picked up on concerns tweeted by a kidney patient and photographs posted of damaged facilities.

“[Patients] speak openly and honestly in what is a friendly but public environment. These informal forums don’t exist within the NHS,” he said.It’s quite early days but we have quite comprehensive monitoring in place. It gives us a clear impression about what people feel about us as a hospital and the NHS.”

Mr Ridge admits that this “eavesdropping” could raise questions about patient confidentiality. His team is careful not to reveal personal information by replying to patients in public; individual follow-ups are always made by phone, e-mail or private message.

“We are not playing big brother,” Mr Ridge says. “If we can provide support to patients via that medium, it’s a brave step to make but there might be some strong patient benefits.”