This month I co-founded HANDI, a new not-for-profit venture. - The Healthcare App Network for Development and Innovation with a few others in the healthcare sector.
We are a group of clinicians, developers, health informaticians and others who believe that lightweight healthcare apps for patients, carers and health and care professionals provide the key to enabling IT to transform of health and care.
We believe that the app paradigm (which enables rapid development and deployment) is applicable on all devices and is not just about mobile.
We want to encourage and support app developers. We know from our own experience that creating an app and getting it widely used can be a painful experience and have decided to establish HANDI as a new organisation to provide mutual support for developers of health and care apps and others interested in this area and want to invite you to join us.
HANDI is as a Community Interest Company so that any income we may eventually generate can only be used for community benefit.
We want to be an open and inclusive organisation that supports all developers of healthcare apps in the public private and third sectors whether you are a gifted amateur, professional developer, innovative start-up or established company if you’re developing health and care apps or just have a good idea for one we want to work with you for our mutual benefit. We are neutral with regard to platforms and business models so if you’re looking to produce a free open source app on android or a proprietary iPhone app to make you filthy rich (or any of the myriad of other possibilities), we want you to join us.
HANDI has a UK focus and plans physical as well a virtual activities with well advanced plans for London, Warwick and Newcastle and less well developed plans for Wales and Scotland, all built round existing innovation centres. However, we want to create international links building on those that many of our promoters already have with both the developed and developing world.