Ray Pawson in his 2013 text on Realistic Evaluation talks about the importance of tributaries of evidence, when I was on leave over the summer in Kerry I came up with the concept of a boreen small roads which lead to bigger things . If I created a space and a small group of practitioners which could work together to support each other on specific health informatics projects the impact on patient outcome in the longer term may be more effective.  

What distinguishes this group from others such as HISINM is that it is focused on research for phd students who are registering with me as a supervisor or intend to register in the next 12 months. 

To date three of you have identified yourselves to work with me on a PhD research track. I would like to thank you for your confidence in me as a supervisor and hope that we can contribute in a meaningful way to the national eHealth agenda. 

This  informal blog and space  is the first step and is now available for us to use to ask questions , share ideas or resources which we found particularly useful to date.

First principles are as follows: 

1. As the work here relates to your individual phd tracks what happens in Boreen stays in Boreen. 

2. If you want to use each others ideas resources or material or reference work from here with a third party you must first get permission from each other to do this. 

3. Other principles will be determined by this group as it evolves when we have our first meeting.