Healthcare trust could stream meetings on YouTube

Scottish healthcare bosses are considering broadcasting their board meetings on YouTube in a bid to boost public interest in their work.

NHS Lothian wants to increase public involvement in its business and particularly wants to see more members of the public attending their bi-monthly meetings.

Their meetings typically involve debate and decisions involving hundreds of millions of pounds of public money – yet few members of the public are currently willing to come along to help influence how their money is being spent.

The health board has previously tried reaching out to the public via roadshows, taking its meetings around the region in order to make it easier for all local people to come to meetings. However, that strategy proved unsuccessful.

Bosses are now considering webcasting the meetings as another way to get people interested and involved.

This could have implications for web designers looking to market pharmaceutical products on behalf of pharmaceutical companies.

If NHS Lothian does go ahead with the move, it will be the first healthcare organisation in the UK to do so.

Alan Boyter, director of human resources at NHS Lothian, says: “We have been asked to consider the possibility of webcasting board meetings.

”Streaming them on the internet is one option – we don’t know of any other health board which does this.

”It would be done on a trial basis, then, after a couple of meetings, we could see how much interest there has been and present the findings.”