TheHill has been hosting social mixers since its inception but this April saw the bimonthly social mixer take place in an entirely new venue: on Twitter!
As we all retool and adapt to new ways of working TheHill has been exploring digital options of connecting with our community. We scheduled two community calls via video conference in early April and shared details of recent challenges and best practice for overcoming them. For our April mixer, together with the BioEscalator, our partners for this event, we took to Twitter for an event that may have lacked the traditional canapés but had plenty of community spirit.
On the evening of 23 April, we experimented with this new format, using the hashtag #digihealthmix to thread the content together, raising questions and discussion points and posting a series of talks from our event speakers: Megan Morys-Carter (Director, TheHill), Elodie Siney (Marketing and Events Manager, The BioEscalator), Louise Puddifoot (Director, Willow and Puddifoot) and David Walliker (Chief Digital and Partnerships Officer, Oxford University Hospitals Foundation Trust.) If you missed the event you can watch any of the videos again by visiting our YouTube channel.
Our video talks may have been pre-recorded but all of our speakers were present and actively engaged in talking to the community on subjects as diverse as investment opportunities, working from home, mental health in times of crisis and the evolution of telemedicine.
Our last talk was from David Walliker on the subject of how OUH intended to approach the recovery from the pandemic and the #returntobetter concept.
“Now is the time to digitally transform and disrupt healthcare,” David told us, looking forward to a new digital future ushered in by the adaptations we have been forced to make.
Over 90 people registered for the event on EventBrite and our marketing team has some early analytics from Twitter showing the way engagement spiked on the 23 of April. We know that 44 people watched David’s video and 82 people watched the YouTube channel.
What we don’t know is how many of you were silently reading and watching, perhaps not sure how to get involved or uncertain of the technicalities of the platform. We’d love it if you could fill out our short survey on our recent digital outreach events so we know what’s working, what to repeat and what to change.
And, speaking of digital delivery, don’t forget to apply for our Market Access Accelerator (running this summer) or our Open API Bootcamp scheduled for the Autumn. Both programmes are free of charge and content ranges from regulatory advice to commercialisation. The Accelerator is planned to run digitally, and the OpenAPI Bootcamp has a digital delivery contingency plan.
We’re looking forward to connecting with you all some time soon; whether by video chat, on Twitter or LinkedIn, by phonecall or email. And when the lockdown is over we’ll look forward to seeing you all in person at a physical mixer up at TheHill.