Have you tried Slack?

Slack is an instant messaging app that is well worth trying.  It is a useful tool for keeping small groups in touch with each other.

Many people use email for everything but some messages aren’t really suitable for email and clutter up your inbox. Also often people don’t use distribution lists properly in email and sometimes copy too many people in or forget key individuals. How many times have you been copied into messages you don’t want anything to do with!

Well, Slack has the concept of Channels which are threads associated with a project or group. You invite people into that group and this is easily manageable. You can be a member of numerous channels and you can have direct messages with an individual. It works really well. You can upload documents and there are add-ons for to-dos and the like but the basic app is just great as a comms tool in a small group.

It is cross-platform and there are apps for PCs, Macs, Smartphones etc.

Even better – the free version is probably all you need. We’ve been using it for a year and have never needed the paid package though it has some nice features. NB – I’m not suggesting this is used for patient-identifiable data – its a project management/ comms tool – there are other solutions for PID, which ill come to.