Today we officially launch our mental health platform. Of course, people have been sharing stories about mental health services for a long time following our pilot in the 5 Boroughs Partnership back in 2007.

We're hoping lots of people hear about what we're doing and share their story. Jason, who's just joined the Patient Opinion team, is an ex service user and volunteer at primary care addiction services in Sheffield and has an inspiring story to tell about how the independence and honesty of Patient Opinion was crucial in bringing about change in addiction services. Even we're impressed listening to him! We captured him on video and the Society Guardian went one better and put his face on page 3 yesterday. E-health insider ran a story this morning and we know many regional and local papers and radio stations are picking up on the launch today. Phil Hope, Care Services Minister offered his support saying "This partnership means every single Trust in the country can see what they are doing well and what needs to be improved, helping to drive up quality."

Through the course of this year, we've been travelling the length and breadth of England talking to staff and users about what this will mean, how we're doing everything we can to keep the system safe (on both sides) and how the system will lead to real service improvement. It was important to us that we equipped staff with the understanding and skill to communicate directly and honestly with service users, their families and carers through the website . Much more importantly, we wanted to be sure that they knew how to take the comments, suggestions and concerns they would hear and do something meaningful with them. After all, that's what we're all about - making people's experiences count. According to Maria, Head of Service at the 5 Boroughs Partnership during our pilot, the stories she received through Patient Opinion 'made issues real' and gave her the opportunity to 'facilitate some real reflection among staff'. And we have lots of examples, across mental health and acute care, where trusts have demonstrated through their responses on the site that they're truly listening and taking value from peoples stories.

From past experience we know just how honest, passionate and thoughtful people can be on Patient Opinion. We also know that sharing their stories on the site can lead to real improvements in services. What we don't know is what you think of your local mental health services so please share your story and make a difference.

Just a quick note to say that the intrepid Alex Stobart is holding the second ScotWeb2 event in Edinburgh on 19 June.

The last (and first) one, back in October, was a lively and informative affair with a great bunch of people. I feel we should be calling this one ScotWeb2:2.

Anyway, I'll be there talking about Patient Opinion's new programme of work with all the mental health trusts in England, which I'm extremely excited about. I do think the web offers extraordinary new opportunities to users of mental health services, and I'm hoping we can make a worthwhile contribution to the whole area.

And who knows - maybe we can work out some way of providing a similar service in Scotland? We just need to find some people who could help make it happen.

The first three years of Patient Opinion have been about trying to get a worthwhile, legal, ethical and scalable feedback service sorted out for hospital and community services.

Now that we've got that working pretty well - and right across the UK - we're ready for the next challenge. As it happens, over the coming year we expect to be doing two interesting new things, and so we're looking for two interesting new people to help us.

First, we expect to be rolling out our mental health feedback service for all mental health trusts in England. Our aim is to engage with mental health services right across England, based on our experience piloting the service in 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust. We're already getting plenty of feedback from mental health service users, but can it help change services?

Second, we're also hoping to test out the Patient Opinion model of feedback in nursing and residential care homes for older people. Social care needs user involvement and feedback just as much as health care does, though there's no doubt that some of the practical challenges of web-based feedback are greater. But we're going to give it a try!

We're looking for someone to join our core admin team to support the mental health programme, and someone to run the social care project, under the guidance of our CEO Paul Hodgkin.

If you'd like to know more about either post, you'll find further details on our jobs page.

In 2009 we expect to be working hard on bringing the magic of Patient Opinion to the world of mental health services. (Indeed, we're already getting a fair bit of feedback from mental health service users.)

So this seems like a good time to jot down my "five-a-day": five things which help keep me stay sane and grounded in my daily life (as promoted by the excellent Mindapples site).

In no particular order:

1. texting my children (and getting a reply!)
2. sitting on the sofa with my wife rewinding each of our days
3. a run with my friend Mark (but not everyday, sadly)
4. a little bit of gardening - instant calm
5. and yes, writing a bit of C# code: very relaxing!

What about you?

Last month, Patient Opinion’s own James Munro attended NESTA’s flagship conference The Innovation Edge.  NESTA supports innovation across the UK, and have generous in providing their enthusiasm, time, expertise and funding in support of Patient Opinion’s expansion to cover mental health services across England.

James was interviewed at the event, where he spoke about Patient Opinion and more specifically, the mental health pilot with the 5 Boroughs Partnership NHS Trust in Warrington. When asked about the potential difficulties which can be experienced in making changes in a monolithic bureaucracy like the NHS, James noted that sometimes improvements at ward level were easier than making wider organisational changes.  My experiences support this – the closer you get to the frontline, the more you are likely to make a difference to patient care.

The video contains some really key messages about what Patient Opinion is doing, and emphasises that improving care should start with the patients and users of the NHS