Pharma good, social bad?

A project called myPolice won Glasgow’s Social Innovation Camp last weekend (congratulations), and was soon being described as like “Patient Opinion for the police”. Becoming a cultural reference point for siCamp felt good!

But it wasn’t long before the good old British press brought everyone down to earth, with a fairly misleading piece in the Sunday Times titled “Warning over ‘shop a cop’ website”. You get the picture.

To their credit, the team behind myPolice have busily been blogging their own point of view, and others have stepped in with incisive commentary.

There’s always a certain fascination in watching how “old media” react to new media innovation. They seem to zig-zag between wide-eyed wonder and snide dismissal, depending on the time of day.

In this instance, the piece was predictable, if a little depressing. But coming from a health research background, what struck me was how negative the press can be about not-for-profit social innovation, while endlessly carrying uncritical and hyped-up reports of “medical breakthroughs” and new “wonder drugs”, with little solid evidence and clearly commercial motivations. Pharma innovation good, social innovation bad?

Somehow, the Sunday Times even managed to misrepresent us too, describing Patient Opinion as a site “which encourages online criticism of the NHS”. I mean, how hard is it to turn up at the site and see for yourself?