Smart Cities can boost residents’ health and wellbeing

Moving towards becoming a ‘Smart City’ should be a goal of all local authorities, experts at low-code platform provider Netcall believe, or risk missing out on valuable data insights and opportunities to protect and improve citizen wellbeing.

While the terminology ‘Smart City’ is likely to be familiar to all local authorities, the degree to which councils are moving towards becoming a Smart City is varied. The terminology itself could be somewhat misleading. ‘Smart City’ could be used to refer to a region or a defined geographical area of any size where technology and, most importantly, the data it generates, are used across and between organisations to improve the lives of local people.

Mark Gannon, Director Client Solutions – Public Sector at Netcall, says different local authorities have different interpretations of the term Smart City, with many approaching it tactically on a project-by-project basis, rather than strategically throughout the organisation at policy level. Where the idea of a Smart City works best is where organisations in a place share and join data to discover new insights and avoid repetitive efforts. It can be successfully applied in any local authority remit, but one where it could have a powerful impact is in health and social care.

“The best initiatives are the ones that can connect the data silos in their own organisation but also across other organisations, whether that is acute trust, mental health, or universities. To be properly called a Smart City it must be working with data at scale across a place,” explained Gannon. Nigel Hall, Director Client Solutions – Health at Netcall, agrees: “It is about a joined-up approach. We are seeing examples of this starting to occur. Otherwise, with data, you end up having multiple sources of the truth. Some of this is about making sure we have a single version of the truth for each citizen that is shared appropriately and effectively where needed across the region or city.”

Health and social care is one area of local government where budgets are increasing, but as Gannon points out, this is unstainable. A goal for many local authorities is preventative healthcare because stopping people entering the health and social care pathway leads to better outcomes, both financially and for an individual’s wellbeing. “Population health management and preventative care are going to be bigger things as we look to reduce the emphasis on acute care and for it to be much more based in the community and less focused on everything being done in the hospital. What we can do to deliver that is make better use of data. It is about moving data around in the right way and analysing and interpreting it appropriately to get a set of outcomes local authorities can use to prevent health deterioration among citizens rather than be reactive to it,” said Hall.

There are many ways local authorities can start to move towards becoming a Smart City at a strategic level. One key element is ensuring that whoever is driving policy at a senior level has a good understanding of what being an effective digital organisation is and looks to make connections with other organisations. Speaking to suppliers might yield benefits too as they might be willing to invest in solutions which could also save them money or help run a pilot project to show proofs of concept, such as installing sensors in the homes of vulnerable citizens to help track their activity, for example.

At Netcall, its low-code platform Liberty Create is assisting local authorities with the challenges of joining up multiple data streams. Liberty Create is a development platform which enables users to build applications quickly and easily in a drag-and-drop environment and access ready-made applications and integrations developed by Netcall and other users. Built on open standards, the platform allows integration and collaboration with existing technology and legacy systems. For example, one Netcall customer, Cumbria County Council, has used Liberty Create to develop a solution called VIPER which takes data from a range of partner platforms – health, social care, fire and rescue and police – to help rapidly work out who they need to assist when flooding occurs.

“One challenge Smart Cities have is that every time you get a device it comes with its own dashboard for managing it. Before long, if you have lots of devices, you have hundreds of dashboards and you are just multiplying the data silos. What you really need is something that can aggregate that data. We have an IoT (Internet of Things) layer which takes information from devices irrespective of supplier and uses that aggregated data to show insights and gives actions and workflows off the back of it. That offers a way for councils to properly manage their Smart City,” said Gannon.

The Liberty Create platform can also help manage data from existing legacy applications, such as health and social care databases: “It takes what you already have, offers something much more intuitive to move the data in the right way and provides the ability to share that information with others at the right time,” added Hall.

One thing Hall and Gannon are certain of, failing to make moves towards becoming a Smart City may mean future funding streams and opportunities are not readily available. “If companies are thinking about investing in innovation they tend to go to the places where they know innovation is welcome, supported and encouraged. If you are a council which doesn’t do that you are probably going to miss out,” said Gannon. There is also a risk of not providing the best outcomes to local people to consider too: “There are risks of not sharing data appropriately across a patch to the health and long-term outcomes for the population,” Hall concludes.

• To find out more about Netcall and Liberty Create visit: www.netcall.com