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iESE launches community enablement health checks IESE HAS LAUNCHED A NEW SERVICE IN CONJUNCTION WITH PIVOT PROJECTS WHICH MAKES USE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) TO HELP LOCAL PUBLIC SERVICES CREATE A FUTURE WHERE COMMUNITY ENABLEMENT IS THE FOCUS. With budgets ever tighter and community need ever greater it is clear local public services cannot continue to keep meeting every need of its communities. The two new services will help local public services create a picture of what the future will look like and what future needs will be, without assuming the public service is going to be meeting all of those needs. One key aspect of this work will be involving the local communities and another element will be an AI machine which will conduct in-depth research to allow the organisation to start identifying pivot points that can help start moving it forward to its future goals.
“The starting point is engagement with the community and what the community thinks of its future and its needs and what it aspires to,” explained Dr Andrew Larner, Chief Executive at iESE. “That engagement will identify some wishes, problems, issues that people have and at that point we engage with experts in the local public service but we will also produce a map of how those issues interact supported by an artificial intelligence engine which does six years’ worth of research in about one-and-a-half minutes and gets global best practice, lessons learned about what seems to be working and what to avoid.” One major benefit of the new service is that it creates an agile plan and action points that the local public service can implement straight away rather than acting as the basis to create a long-term plan. “We know that those local services that have been the most innovative and delivered the most significant changes in the way they work have done
so in an agile way and what we mean by that is rapid. This takes the agile method into the community and attacks some of those really wicked issues,” Dr Larner added. Dr Jonathan Huish, iESE Associate, has been working with Pivot Projects to trial the AI machine at Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council in Wales. You can read more about it on pages 6 and 7. “What we are doing is bringing the best of breed together from iESE and Pivot Projects supported by an AI engine to deliver a forwardlooking service that helps build resilient vibrant communities and what that means for the role of local public services and what they should do in the future,” Dr Larner concluded. • To read how one council has used artificial intelligence to work on homelessness and to find out more about how it works, see pages 6 and 7.
Urgent announcement for commissioning authorities and care providers IESE HAS BEEN MADE AWARE THAT SOME COUNCILS AND CARE PROVIDERS ARE CONTINUING TO USE THE CARE FUNDING CALCULATOR (CFC) OR LOCALLY DEVELOPED ADAPTATIONS OF THE NOW DEFUNCT SPREADSHEET. The intellectual property rights and copyright of CFC and any adaptions are owned by iESE and the product is now unsupported and unlicensed. Any outputs should no longer be accepted in negotiations and iESE should be informed if you have received a copy of or suspect use of the CFC.
Having an accurate cost of care is more important now than ever and the CFC is now more than ten years out of date, as are the datasets that are included within it. Using the CFC (or any local iteration of it) carries a legal risk, but also could be compounding some of the issues the sector faces if pricing information is not accurate and up to date. CareCubed was released in 2019 and is the only validated, nationally recognised model that is supported and updated on an ongoing basis by iESE. This new digital tool is being used by a growing number of councils and providers as a
strategic tool to help shape markets, build better relationships between commissioners and providers and ensure the right care is being provided at a fair price for all parties. Please share this information with relevant colleagues and check that your organisation is not using the CFC or any adapted versions of the CFC Excel spreadsheet. • To read about the Care Funding Calculator on our website and to report any misuse, please go to: https://iese.org.uk/carefundingcalculator
iESE partners with PRSB to accelerate adoption of information standards for health and care records IESE HAS BECOME A PARTNER OF THE PROFESSIONAL RECORD STANDARDS BODY (PRSB) WHICH REPRESENTS THOSE WHO RECEIVE AND PROVIDE HEALTH AND SOCIAL CARE IN THE UK, AS WELL AS THOSE PROVIDING THE IT SYSTEMS THAT SUPPORT CARE, SUCH AS IESE’S CARE PRICING TOOL CARECUBED AND THE UPCOMING CASE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMS) FOR SOCIAL CARE CURRENTLY IN DEVELOPMENT. The PRSB works across the public sector and with professional bodies to define the standards needed for good care records and can assure software suppliers’ compliance with the standards. The PRSB’s Standards Partnership Scheme is designed to attract software suppliers committed to best practice. As a Partner, iESE is showing it understands the importance of meeting PRSB standards and the
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importance of the drive for standard information flows and interoperability – the ability of IT systems across health and care to be able to interact to allow health records to be accessed by the right people at the right time. Sherif Attia, Design and Research Lead at iESE, said the partnership helped demonstrate iESE’s commitment to developing digital products that adhere to national and international information standards with a goal of allowing interoperability between systems, which is a key driver behind iESE plans to provide open frameworks within its new CMS platform to enable other providers to integrate their systems with it. “We are really pleased to announce that we are now a Partner of the PRSB,” said Attia. “We are committed to bringing a product to market which addresses the issues which hamper client care, such as a lack of data sharing and interoperability between systems. We look
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forward to working with the PRSB to further assure our users about the high-quality nature of our products, which have been designed in collaboration with those most impacted by these challenges and with clients’ needs front of mind,” he added. Lorraine Foley, CEO of PRSB, said: “We are delighted to welcome iESE as an PRSB Partner, showing their commitment to user-led information standards for better and safer care. This is a significant step forward in demonstrating their intention to innovate at the forefront of driving interoperability in care. We look forward to working with iESE to assess conformance in their systems and understanding where the standards need to improve as a result.” • Find out more about iESE’s partnership with the PRSB here: https://theprsb.org/partnerscheme/ourpartners/
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