LOCs join service

The new enterprise producing ready-made website solutions for LOCs, first reported in optician last month, has signed up three groups in the fortnight after it was launched.

Somerset, Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly, and Redbridge & Walthamstow have become the first LOCs to take advantage of the new website capability offered by experienced optical profession figures Bob Hutchinson and Charles Greenwood, at www.primaryhealthnet.com.

The three websites are currently being branded and established for the requirements of individual LOCs. All three have requested the 'complete' version of the service. It is hoped they will go live in early April when their members will be given a special password in order to register within the local community. Their communications and discussions will be secured and confined to the local membership. However, for topics of more widespread interest, members can open up the discussion with other registered LOCs.

Optometrist David Bull, chairman of Somerset LOC, applauded the new service. 'We need the ability to communicate quickly with our members and to encourage them to pass comment and make suggestions to guide us as a committee,' he said. 'The complexities of web development are not our concern as the content manager will be easy to use, and what we particularly like is the ability for users to select topics that interest and involve them, as opposed to being bombarded with emails as happens in standard email discussion groups.'

He added that any system that helped save time and money helped LOC members. 'who now find the work they do, often voluntarily, becoming quite a burden'.

Primary Health Net (PHN) has not mailed all Britain's LOCs as yet, but has received positive signs of interest after some LOCs viewed a presentation on the company's website. PHN is especially pleased that other small user groups in the profession have requested information. 

'The system lends itself to such groups as well as local communities in primary health,' said Charles Greenwood, director for PHN, 'and small groups can have their own web presence ring fenced from the LOC system by logging on with their own password.'

PHN is offering significant discounts to early adopters of the system in order to reach a critical mass of users as soon as possible.