WatMed Media
The name is Watford and medicine: I am from Watford, and I love medicine. WatMed Media is the social media health broadcaster I founded in 2015 and continue to run as a media consultancy, built on a simple idea: do not wait to be invited onto the airwaves to talk to the public about their health, broadcast to them directly, on the platforms they are already on.
It became the springboard. Speaking to the public in my own voice, on my own channel, is what led to the mainstream airwaves, as a health contributor for Sky News, the BBC and LBC. The archive lives on YouTube, and every broadcast dossier on this site is my own upload from it.
Where it started
Before WatMed Media existed, there was a live studio grilling on the junior doctors' contract dispute that showed me exactly how transient a single broadcast is, and how social media broadcasting was the future.
-
The junior doctors' dispute, on BBC with Peter Levy
On BBC News as the junior doctors' contract dispute escalated, defending them on pay, safety and the strikes to come: the segment that convinced me broadcast alone was not enough.
In WatMed's own voice
Once I had a channel of my own, I could try formats no news desk would ever commission: comedy, campaigns, whatever it took to make a complex NHS story travel.
-
Junior Jedi, WatMed Media's own campaign film
A Star Wars pastiche made with PREPARE4FY1 to explain the junior doctors' contract dispute to a wider audience: WatMed Media's own experiment in making a complex NHS story simple and shareable.
-
#QuestToSaveNHS, the teaser
A documentary-style trailer for a WatMed Media campaign, opening with a callback to Junior Jedi, closing on Nye Bevan and a question: a fight worth having, or a futile quest?
-
#QuestToSaveNHS, the documentary's opening ten minutes
The opening ten minutes of the documentary the teaser trailed, from the WatMed Media archive.
Local radio, with Phil Hammond
A standing invitation from Phil Hammond, the GP who has broadcast about the NHS from inside it for decades, on his BBC Radio Bristol breakfast show: two mornings running, on my own terms.
-
Morale among medics, with Phil Hammond on BBC Radio Bristol
Talking with GP-turned-broadcaster Phil Hammond about morale in the NHS: the kind of conversation a three-minute news slot never has room for.
-
On the NHS documentary I was making, with Phil Hammond on BBC Radio Bristol
Interviewed by Phil Hammond on his BBC Radio Bristol Breakfast show about an NHS documentary I was making with my childhood friend Jack: why we made it, and what we found.
