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Author: David Challinor

The ready-made website business for LOCs, founded by two optical profession stalwarts, has started to take off with a local optical groups signing up.

The company, Primary Health Net (PHN), aims to help LOCs communicate with PCTs and the wider health community by establishing electronic discussion forums, noticeboards and contact details, as well including areas for their minutes, agendas and local protocols.

PHN was set up by former College of Optometrists head of training and CPD Charles Greenwood and Bob Hutchinson, known for his many years of consultancy work in the profession. It has established websites for three LOCs this month, and expects more to join shortly.

Websites for Somerset LOC, Redbridge and Waltham Forest LOC and Cornwall & the Isles of Scilly LOC went live on the PHN portal this month, and Hutchinson said the business had created a forum for hundreds of professionals.

He said: 'Currently we are providing early adopter discounts so that we reach a critical mass of professionals interacting with each other, either confidentially within their own group or generally nationwide.  With three local communities already we see the possibility of around 400 practitioners sharing knowledge, expressing their views and helping to achieve a consensus.

'Primary Health Net has injected a large amount of capital into this venture so that each website is unique in its ability to express the needs of individual and local professionals.'

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