Trip Database Blog

Are you in for a treat?  I’d like to think so.

I had a long but rewarding meeting with Phil (our genius techie) and Reuben (our new and wonderful design guy) to thrash out the final details of the next upgrade to TRIP.  I am so excited by the proposed developments which are:

• 3 major innovations – for me really really important developments
• A handful of significant improvements
• A load of minor improvements
• A design overhaul

I’m being deliberately vague with the details for now.  But as things develop and designs get drawn, features get available I may well share them here and on Facebook (if you didn’t know we had a Facebook page, click here).

No firm timetable but I’d like to think it’ll be ready in 3 months.

Also, I’ve started planning the next upgrade, the one after this one, but much depends on how the innovations from this one take off.  If you have any suggestions then feel free to let me know.

It’s less than a month ago when I heard the gutting news that a potential purchaser of TRIP had pulled out (with no reason) from purchasing TRIP.

But every cloud has a silver lining.  While waiting for the acquisition issue I’d not given a huge amount of thought to the next updates of TRIP, not since the survey of last year (click here for details).  But not now – WOW – it’s been a great two weeks of reflection.

I’ve met with Phil (our genius techie) to discuss the updates from last year’s survey and they seem all straightforward(ish) to implement.  We had our request for donations (click here, it’s not too late) which has generated a good amount.

I really like being open about what I’ve been thinking recently, but it’s so special (at least I think so) that I need to keep it under wraps.  It’s built on our social learning tool called TILT but goes way beyond it.  One possible offshoot of this idea is to have organisational accounts of TRIP.  This would allow organisations to upload their own documents to TRIP and then these would be searchable via TRIP.  So, the University Hospital of Bristol might create an account and upload documents (local guidelines, protocols, antibiotic resistance data, clinic opening times – whatever they wish).  A local doctor or nurse could link their profile to the University Hospital of Bristol’s profile and when they search they’d see local documents.  In addition to local documents the organisational account might add their link-resolver details – making linking to full-text documents so much easier.

The big issue for me is needing to make it as painless as possible for organisations to upload their documents.  Also, it needs to be easy for individuals to find their institution.  Both shouldn’t be too problematic

So, feel free to comment or add any feature you think would make it even more powerful.

As mentioned this is a relatively small offshoot of a bigger idea which I hope to reveal gradually over the next month or so,