@marcusbaw.com on Bluesky

NHS ‘General Hacktitioner’ (GP medical doctor), clinical informatician, and Ruby|Rails|Ember|JS|Python|FHIR|openEHR|Rust developer.

Discourse As A Service

I provide Discourse forums As a bespoke Service, specialising in Healthcare- and Health Tech-related forums, but I will provide forums for any community.

My Discourse Origin Story

In 2015 I was asked to look for a Social Collaboration Platform for a friend’s side-project - we chose Discourse (in Beta at the time) because it was open source and (even back then) utterly awesome. Other people got in touch and I was asked to set up other Discourses, and gradually this became a side-business. I offer bespoke Discourse setups, services, plugins, development, customisations, content and consultancy, and am happy to be contacted via PM on Meta as an initial point of contact, or via @marcusbaw.com on Bluesky.

My customers usually have specific requirements regarding server location and data sovereignty (eg UK hosting) and most of my customers are often in some way related to the Health industry, although I will consider any projects.

Current Clients

I have provided Discourse bespoke services, sysadmin work, and setup work for a wide range of clients, including: (you can click links to see the Discourses, although some are private)

• The Chief Clinical Information Officer (CCIO) Network of the UK discourse.digitalhealth.net (one of the first ever Google Group → Discourse migrations, requiring custom code)

• openEHR International discourse.openehr.org

• Open Health Hub openhealthhub.org

• Chief Clinical Information Officer Network of the Republic of Ireland forum.ehealthireland.ie

• The Epilepsy Research Institute Hub hub.epilepsy-institute.org.uk

• The Restorative Just Cultures community of Practice restorativejustculture.org/

• The International Guild of Knot Tyers discourse.igkt.net

• The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health Incubator forum forum.rcpch.tech

• The Royal College of General Practitioners Member forum forum.rcgp.org.uk

• Mind The Gap Healthcare Transition mindthegap-transition.org

• The Clinical Digital Manifesto forum.clinicaldigitalmanifesto.org

• The We All Count data equity community community.weallcount.com

Past Clients

• The doxy.me Telehealth platform discuss.doxy.me

• The Great North Care Record (forum.greatnorthcarerecord.org.uk)

• The Primary Health Care Specialist Group of the British Computer Society (BCS PHCSG)

• Open Data Kit (help with their Google Group → Discourse migration)

• Valentina (Google Group → Discourse migration)