Sandwell PCT

The Challenge:

The Health Service in general and PCT’s in particular find themselves under the intense glare of public scrutiny by the media and various watchdogs. In such an environment clarity of purpose and openness in the way it disseminates and shares information is vitally important. Sandwell PCT have their own challenges on top of this, not least being a diverse population with a variety of deprivations exacerbated by being an area of high unemployment. In this regard they are keen to share vital public health statistics in a meaningful way amongst health professionals and in particular their regional network of GP’s.

The key challenge here was how to achieve this with minimal change, using data they already had, whilst presenting it effectively in new ways that help get GP’s on board, stimulate debate and do it all in an unbeatably cost-effective way.

The Critical Success Factors:

Technological white elephants are not uncommon in the public sector. Some have clearly demonstrated that they can cost crippling amounts of money, consume considerable resource and have a niggling habit of missing expectations by a mile.. So it was then, with this notion in mind, that Sandwell wanted to palpably demonstrate a difference, showing that good things can and in this instance had to come in small yet perfectly formed packages - to improve the way it disseminated public health data, giving GP groups a better steer on health performance measures in and around Sandwell and to do it in an evolutionary way.

The Solution:

We had to conceive, develop and deliver a solution that was capable of providing vital data over the web to a variety of GP Groups. This had to be presented in a manner likely to encourage interrogation and once in the system should encourage the GP to drill down in order to fuel deeper analysis.

Above all the solution had to be capable of considerable evolution, ideally sing internal resource and in some instances, with limited technology skills. Richard Wilson Head of Performance Intelligence selected webSNAPS as a framework for achieving these aims and Co-op Web as the right partner to help him define the approach and launch the programme.