Health promotion portal launched

A primary care IT manager has set up a website to make it easier for GP practices to run health awareness campaigns.

The site, Healthcarepromotions.co.uk, provides more than 500 links to posters, leaflets and factsheets on more than 60 health areas and access to all the resources on the site is free of charge.

James Morgan, an IT manager at a GP practice in Cardiff, set up the site with his wife after discovering how time-consuming it could be for a practice to find the right resources.

He told EHI Primary Care: “I help the nurses in our practice find information for their different campaigns but found it was taking too much time using search engines like Yahoo or Google. Our database driven website now reduces the amount of time it takes to source different posters and leaflets from over an hour to a few minutes.”

Morgan said the site went live at the end of May and the different conditions covered so far include cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. All the information is from UK based sources including the patient information website Patient.co.uk, the Department of Health, NHS Choices and national charities.

The site also includes a calendar highlighting national campaigns to enable practices to tie in their own health promotion activity with national projects and the site is also linking up with charities to promote specific campaigns. Featured awareness campaigns on the site at the moment include ‘Worried about your memory?’ from the Alzheimer’s Society and the FPA’s ‘One too many – alcohol and sexual health’ campaign.

Morgan said he is now spending time promoting the site to primary care trusts, GP practices and health care professionals as well as private hospitals and secondary care clinics. The IT manager is also hoping to develop the site for schools to use for awareness campaigns on issues such as obesity.

He added: “The best thing about the site is that it’s completely free. You don’t have to sign up to anything but it just makes it easier for people to find the information they are looking for.’