Show and Tell 2: Developing a multi-agency data platform for frontline care workers

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27 September 2023

We’ll be recording this session to share publicly.

Agenda

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The purpose of today’s session is to:

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1. Provide an update on where we’ve got to
2. Get your feedback / views and Q&A

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LOTI New Service Models in Social Care Innovation Fund

LOTI’s New Service Models Innovation Fund offered up to £200K to boroughs and their partners to work together to design and test initiatives that enable people with care needs live thriving lives.

Developing a data platform for frontline workers

Idea in a nutshell: To develop a prototype multi-agency data platform that equips frontline workers with better information about the residents in their care.

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Output: The project aims to develop and test a prototype digital solution that builds on a similar tool, called “Family Context” used in Children’s services.

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More information on the LOTI website: https://loti.london/projects/developing-a-data-platform-for-frontline-care-workers-project/

We have been using agile methodologies to deliver this work between April and December 2023. We have worked to two weekly ‘sprints’, with sixteen sprints split across four distinct phases

April – June 2023:

Project set up, agree ways of working and gather existing knowledge and research.

June – August 2023:

Interview frontline practitioners to understand user needs and work with Hounslow and Brent technical leads to ascertain technical viability.  

August – November 2023: Secure access to datasets identified in discovery and develop a prototype tool to test within Brent and Hounslow ASC teams

November – December 2023:

Refine the tool based on feedback from frontline users and produce a product roadmap to take the product beyond prototype.

Phases and progress

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Family Context

User groups interviewed

Social Finance

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1. Practitioners worry that they are carrying out work that has been done by someone else in the system 
2. Time is wasted chasing down information that should be more readily available 
3. Fears around patient confidentiality can hamper information sharing once involved services are identified
4. More information would be beneficials to support with assessments and decision making 
5. A Family Context style tool would be useful in some cases, but not in every case 

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What they told us

Social Finance

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6. There were some fears that the tool could alter decision making leading to patients ‘falling through the net’
7. Within the front door, the tool was thought to be especially helpful for cases where the LA has had no prior involvement
8. Hospital staff have limited access to technology and space to do administrative tasks
9. The use case among hospital staff was felt to be lower than that of the front door or hospital social work team

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What they told us (cont.)

Social Finance

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Highly desired datasets

Social Finance

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www.hounslow.gov.uk hounslow.digital

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The Hounslow Experience

Official

www.hounslow.gov.uk hounslow.digital

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Business Intelligence and Data Strategy Ambitions

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Will provide the roadmap that enables LBH to truly listen to customers, measure performance and improve services. An increasing demand for integrated data to better understand services and user journeys will be a large part of achieving positive community and place outcomes

• A commitment to data which empowers the council to realise the art of the possible
• Community involvement to engage partners and public
• Develop data architecture practices  
• Unify data specialists in a place-focused Community of Practice  
• Strengthen data quality use existing programmes Continue work with programmes such as JSNA / BBP (ICP)/ WSIC  
• Predictive data modelling in Children's Services  
• Integration of data sets  
• Use of open place data  
• Strengthen working with wider public sector, health partners, and industry  

Official

www.hounslow.gov.uk hounslow.digital

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Technical Considerations

Building a data repository

• Understand business and security requirements
• Understand technical resource requirements
• Develop a technical specification detailing the data schemas 
• Need to identify what platform can be used and its capabilities
• Setup Technical and Data Working Groups to lead on the build phase
• Agree and approve infrastructure design and build 
• Learning from this exercise will inform wider Business Intelligence workstreams

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Official

www.hounslow.gov.uk hounslow.digital

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IG and data considerations

• Identify the services (with whom residents had some involvement) which practitioners want to know about.
• Be clear about what data you want to collect and process and why you need it
• Data requests need to be broad but proportionally balanced to suit needs and requirements
• Data security to be ironed out at early stage
• Reach agreement and buy-in from data controllers
• Identify and understand the multi-agency governance processes
• Identify common Unique Identifiers o enable datasets to be linked
• Establishing data relationships with other organisations

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Official

Brent’s data lake

• Currently use our data lake for dashboards:
• Financial Inclusion
• Children’s services
• Early stage of our journey with many use cases for expansion over the next year
• Vulnerability data
• Ward level breakdown for customer services
• Customer 360 insight
• Primary focus currently is user adoption and training

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Brent’s data journey

• The ability to integrate with the council’s existing data lake
• Enables ability to make use of existing council data
• Opportunity to test our data lake’s ability to integrate with a new system and external data
• Infrastructure conversations were required for it to sit on an Azure platform
• Discussions on the use of data and hosting it in a part of data lake so it doesn’t integrate with unrelated items of data
• Experienced the same challenges of engaging with internal and external stakeholders for additional data

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Brent’s data ethics board

• Independent advisory board made up external data experts
• Questions arose regarding
• consent, data quality, data governance and compliance, decision-making, training, capacity to manage product, data security and engagement

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• Particular areas of interest were around mental health data and the importance of engaging with next of kin for residents with dementia
• The overall feedback was that they could see the purpose and need of the product and the benefits it would produce to residents, however once completed further engagement should be done with impacted residents

LOTI project

• Digitally enabled care

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• Virtual ward programme

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• Community engagement

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• Partnership

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1. Secure data transfer of as many high priority datasets as time allows
2. Deploy prototype solutions within Hounslow and Brent
3. Test solutions with frontline practitioners
4. Produce product roadmap to take the tool beyond prototype
5. Produce toolkit for other LA’s looking to replicate

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Coming up next

Key contacts:

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LOTI: genta.hajri@loti.london

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Hounslow: mark.edmunds@hounslow.gov.uk

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Social Finance: harry.angus@socialfinance.org.uk

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Q&A

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Thank you for joining us.

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The recording and slides will be available on LOTI’s website shortly.

LOTI_LDN

www.loti.london

#LOTI

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Show & Tell

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