About HEXI
The HEXI - Health Experience Insights study is run by the Medical Sociology and Health Experiences Research Group (MS & HERG) at the University of Oxford. We aim to help thousands of people each year to feel better prepared, informed and less alone in what they are going through.
The narratives, gathered by dedicated academic researchers through personal interviews, provide a unique and real perspective using people’s own words. Delve into a wealth of first-hand accounts that go beyond symptoms and treatments, offering a glimpse into the broader impact of health on every aspect of our lives.
History
The idea behind the website came from Dr Ann McPherson and Dr. Andrew Herxheimer. Ann had breast cancer and Andrew was having a knee replacement. Both were doctors but wanted to know more than just the medical facts of their conditions. They wanted to find out how their daily lives would be affected and learn from other people who had experienced the same thing.
The DIPEx project (Database of Individual Patients’ Experiences) was born round Ann’s kitchen table in 1996. The first projects were published on dipex.org in July 2001. The DIPEx charity was founded in 2001 to run the website in partnership with the Health Experiences Research Group under licence from the University of Oxford. The copyright for all the research material on the website is held by the University of Oxford. The website has had a few re-designs over the last 20 years and was previously published under Healthtalkonline.org and later Healthtalk.org by the DIPEx charity.
The HEXI - Health Experience Insights website is also run by the Medical Sociology and Health Experiences Research Group at the Nuffield Department of Primary Health Care Sciences at the University of Oxford and we have worked in collaboration with many other Universities using the same research methodology to create sections for the website.
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The name HEXI recalls the establishment, by Ann McPherson and colleagues of the Health Experiences Institute (HEXI), at Green Templeton College Oxford, which ran an active programme of events to understand experiences of health, illness and healthcare, and used that understanding to transform care through influencing policy, practice and education.
HEXI - Health Experience Insights now has sister sites using the same research methodology in more than twelve countries around the world, under the umbrella of DIPEx International.