Websites, health stories and Jon Snow's tie

Stood on a top floor of the Millbank tower in Westminster, I couldn’t have had a better panoramic view of London lit up at night. On the 13^th day of this month, I was lucky enough to have an invite to the launch of new sections of the high profile website health talk online.

Three well-known guests Jonathan Miller, Philip Pullman and Jon Snow were there to launch the website with words of praise and support for the charity run website. The website allows patients to express their illness to others and to share their life experiences online.

It is known as, The Database of Individual Patient Experience with people’s stories of 50 different diseases and there are prospects to include an extra 3000.

As a student medic/journalist and the whole launch being an entirely new experience for me, I  was interested to hear what Jonathan Miller, a multi talented, neurologist, author, opera director, sculptor and television presenter, had to say of the website.

He explained that today, due to the huge advances in science and technology, perhaps the detailed history taking of patients’ that were once essential to making a diagnosis are now often neglected, and that:

“Patients may be too ashamed, too shy or think there’s not enough time to ask a question…the website gives attention to detail that doctors can seem too busy to find out."

Jon Snow, a very tall man, said that the launching of the website, “has been a very interesting period for journalism”. He ended the evening with an auction of items including a signed copy of one of Philip Pullman’s personally signed books, fetching £350.

Jon Snow’s colourful yellow, pink, black and turquoise tie worn on the TV the night the banks were nationalised, sold for £325. A lot for something he called on the night, his “old rag”.