The last year for iESE, as for rest of the sector, has been an unusual one. As an organisation, we closed our offices more than 10 years ago and moved to mobile and home working. But there is a big difference between this and delivering services remotely. That being said we had been fortunate that we have been working on ways for the consultancy to be converted into tools supporting councils to undertake more of their own transformation. This proved hugely popular and for the most part successful, though for some types of activity face to face human interaction is far superior.
iESE is an organisation of three parts, of which the consultancy is only one. The best practice sharing continued to grow with online readership of Transform Magazine going from 1,000 to 2,000 readers over the year and readership around the world growing. The biggest change however has been in our digital services offer.
CareCubed, our online tool to calculate the fair price for a complex package of care at any address in the UK, has grown exponentially. With authorities making huge savings on high-cost care while at the same time delivering better service to the recipient of care, the new online community joining up commissioners of care across England, Wales and Scotland is set to take this to a new level.
The changes in ways of working across the pandemic also caused us to change the way the design team works. We now have a multinational design team with a significant task for the year ahead. As a sector we have struggled with care records management. With the onset of new developments from social prescribing or in home sensors to apps that are created by and for the users of care we are creating the next generation of care records management which puts the care recipient at the centre of the design.
We are now developing the partner programme of companies that want to integrate with care records as well as authorities that want to pioneer the human centred design of care records. If you want to join us for the year ahead then please get in touch at enquiries@iese.org.uk.
Dr Andrew Larner is chief executive of the Improvement & Efficiency Social Enterprise (iESE), which supports public sector transformation
