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?

According to the folks from Dr Foster the PPI industry – i.e. everyone in the NHS involved in PALS, complaints and 'engaging' the public - employs a cool 34,000 people in England and costs upwards of £600 million per year. Which makes you wonder. Especially as the government seems to ramp up the importance of engagement with one hand whilst disrupting it with multiple reorganisations with the other.

And  that word 'engagement' always strikes a strange note. Do they mean as in marriage? Or  gears? Or perhaps armies in battles?

In the last 2 weeks I’ve spent 3 different days discussing all this (which has been about 2 days 6 hours too much)  but the messages have been clear:  the discussion within the NHS has little new in it. It is all talk of systems, and processes and listening and diversity of strategies. Which is all good (if old) stuff.

But what is striking is how much the NHS exists in its own self referential box. Discussion of the world of voice outside the NHS (blogs, Youtube, Facebook etc) was conspicuous by its almost complete absence.  The fact that Twitter may be toppling the Iranian government sparks wonder at the power of these new fangled gizmos to do strange things to strange people in strange lands, but not the first hint of an idea that it won’t be long before the NHS gets subject to similar firestorms.

From a purely selfish point of view this is not all bad as it leaves Patient Opinion free to beaver away at getting ‘voice outside the NHS box’ working without anyone thinking that it is too important. From another perspective it’s fairly depressing – it's as though, at the time of Caxton and the invention of the printing press, everyone was busy saying ‘Books to engage the masses? Ah, no thanks, I’m a parchment person myself. Can’t beat a good quill and a tame scribe to get the message out, and the peasants just can't seem to get enough of those illuminated surveys we’re so good at’.

Nobody would deny that we've seen enormous improvements in healthcare in the last 25 years - and not just in medical and surgical interventions, but in the organisation of care. Look at those falling waiting times!

But once in a while (or maybe a bit more often than that) we get a posting on Patient Opinion that makes us blink and rub our eyes in astonishment. Like this one, which arrived last week:

Last week I had to wait for 2 hours to see my GP, 45 minutes of which I was standing in a queue. There was a heavily pregnant woman in front of me who was obviously finding standing for so long hard, so I had to tell her I'd queue for her and let her back in at the last minute.

Sorry? Did you say standing in a queue?

That can't be right. Maybe the relevant GP surgery could get in touch and tell us why we've misunderstood.