More good news on the trustee front

Dear all.

We are able to introduce two more trustees, Mr Richard Shaffer has agreed to join us and become our second radiation therapy expert and trustee; and Mr Dominic Furniss has become a trustee, his help will be invaluable as he is not only a Dupuytren's surgeon but he is principal investigator of the BSSH genetics of Dupuytren's disease consortium.

We are very lucky and extremely honoured to have the trustees we have, not just our two newest but all of them are very clever and dedicated people.

The next step is building up our patient member base, we need people with web skills, fundraising skills, designer skills, patient support skills, any skill or just good intention to help us support patients all over the country, and sometimes even further away.

Don't forget the focus group meeting in London at the end of this month (see our previous blog or our website or facebook page).

Finally the Oxford team is running another study, DISCO (don't start singing it!), for which they want people to fill in a questionnaire and send them a picture of their hands, to find out how Dupuytren's disease affects the community and the individual people. DISCO people!

Progress this week

I feel that this week has been productive as I feel like I have done lots of little things that are helping us to tick along, clearly there was the YouTube Video that I mentioned earlier in the week, hopefully more of them to come with a bit of time and some quiet to record in. 

We have also contacted someone who looks like they might do some very interesting research and it will be interesting to see how thing go with them, see here for details. Certainly with my background in Molecular Genetics it is something I am excited to look into. 

I have also submitted the application for us to be included on the Give as You live / Every Click sites but more on those in a later post and hopefully this is where you guys reading this will be able  to help but without having to donate any money. I hope you will help. Though they have asked for more information so hopefully we will get approved soon. 

I have also updated the website with a few little bits and bob and the odd link to make sure that it is kept up to date, this is important not only to make sure that patients stay up to date but it is also helpful for Google ranking, in order for us to get seen by British patients we probably want to rank as highly as possible when a search for Dupuytren's is performed and this is helped by regular updating. The links include BOFAS and a hand clinic - see here. 

We are also looking into introducing membership packages, these will be announced fully once we have a method to introduce them and a finalised plan. Hopefully it won't take long though I am quite busy in December. We think we have found a way to take payment for this so it is a case of setting that up, for which I have submitted an application to said the place and we have started to outline possible benefits and things that we can give to members and what the thresholds might be.

So hopefully lots will happen in the coming weeks.