Unveiling #hcsmca’s new Vision and Mission

When I founded #hcsmca back in September 2010, I described the community as “a vibrant community of people interested in improving the patient and provider experience. We share and learn, and together we are making health care more open and connected.  In time the community will draft a tailored mission appropriate to its constituents.”

That promise has now been realized. This fall, we created a vision and mission for our now mature community in a participatory process stewarded by Shirley Williams (lead), Pat Rich and myself.

Our Vision

To drive social collaboration for better health and health care.

Our Mission

#hcsmca is an inclusive network for all Canadians passionate about health and health care. #hcsmca is a cross-disciplinary community with core values of respect, diversity and openness. Although #hcsmca’s geographical focus is Canada, the community has global reach.

As a central hub of social health information, #hcsmca connects people, facilitates communications, and supports innovative and collaborative solutions to improve health and health care.

The networked #hcsmca community researches, discusses, problem solves health and health care challenges and opportunities. With the diverse knowledge pool of its members, the community leverages social media and other digital collaborative tools in an open forum to share perspectives, best practices, new ideas and solutions.

How did we get here?

It started December 2013 with Pat Rich’s post #hcsmca: Is yesterday’s Future Ready for Tomorrow, which prompted a lively tweetchat at the beginning of this year (Jan. 8 transcript). Shirley Williams summarized the feedback in #hcsmca: Taking Stock at 4 Years. Then she created a survey that 28 volunteer #hcsmca advisory members completed (thank you 28 times).

Graphic designed by signals.ca

Shirley analyzed the responses,  identifying key themes and common threads, which Pat and I reviewed. From these responses we drafted a vision and mission statement #hcsmca: The Future Beckons. You gave us your feedback through the blog and the  November 5 chat. And today we present our new Vision and Mission that you wrote.

What now?

Next we will develop strategies and actions plans to bring the vision and mission alive! We will be working with a small core team and the community over the next two months to define that strategic plan.