We’re always known that promoting Patient Opinion to the public has its challenges. Working with the press and journalists has been something we’ve done carefully, to ensure we protect the people who use our site, whilst spreading the message about what we do to new audiences Our press policy reflects just this.

Over the past year, we have been very pleased to work with the fantastic team at PR agency Journalista. They have perfectly understood our values, and have worked hard with us to try and make sure our press coverage is balanced, far reaching and powerful.

We are so pleased to say that this week, Journalista won a PRCA award for the Patient Opinion re-launch campaign in January this year.

The PRCA Evaluation award recognises the overall positive impact of a PR campaign.

To win, they had to show ‘that a PR team and its campaign are making a significant contribution to the organisation’. We couldn’t agree more!

It’s great that our hard work with Journalista, and the continued development of our media work is being recognised. Here’s to more excellent media coverage and many more awards!

Patient Opinion are at the annual NHS Confederation exbition in Manchester for the the next three days (6th-8th July 2011).

Come and meet the team and learn about our innovative work and hear more about our future plans. Our stand is B6 and any of our team will be delighted to see you. Our organisation is being represented by our Chief Executive Paul Hodgkin, two subscriber support officers, including our West Midlands area Officer Dani and Sarah plus one specialist in Mental Health - Amy. In the following days we also have presence from our Training & Support Officer Tim and an Engagement officer Jason.

Live comment from the event will be available on our twitter feed @patientopinion (https://twitter.com/#!/patientopinion)

We look forward to talking with you.

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?