The LORIC Health, Wellbeing and Social Care Data Futures event, facilitated by Open Data Consultants, The Data Place, was attended by a mixture of academics and professionals involved in the Health and Social Care Sector. Due to the nature of the sector, all attendees were also service users, or had family and caring responsibilities for others who are in need of support from health and social care organisations.

The event aimed to bring together parties with an interest in the field of health and social care and explore their future visions for the sector in a creative and visual way. These visions included:

  • Joined up, seamless working by all professionals involved in an individual’s care
  • A model of care co-ordination for older people and vulnerable adults
  • People having all the information they require to make evidence based decisions around things that impact on their health
  • A future where children are able play outdoors, enjoy nature and be active.

Once visions for the future had been established, Theories of Change were used to identify different ways of getting where people wanted to go, and attendees were encouraged to think about the interventions that they could be a part of that would make steps towards their visions for the future. Following on from this, attendees were encouraged to consider the existing data available that may support their aims, and to explore ideas around other data sets and tools that would be helpful in working towards their desired outcomes. Links will be made to relevant Open Data sources on the LORIC Open Data Portal https://loric.thedata.place/.

Following an engaging discussion on the benefit of collaboration between service users, professionals, and academics, the concept of the LORIC Ideas Café was born. In an effort to encourage discussion, collaboration, and innovation between relevant stakeholders in Health & Social care related fields, these events are open to anyone with a personal or professional interest in the given subject area. Due to a high level of interest in Autism within the group, Autism and Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) has been identified as the subject matter of the first Ideas Café session. This event will be held at the LORIC building on Friday 5th April from 1pm. For information or to book a place, please click here.

As a follow up from the Data Futures event, copies of the Data Discovery report, will be made available on the LORIC Open data portal. For anyone interested in finding out more about the use of data, in particular Open Data in the Health and Social Care sector, please email LORIC at loric@bishopg.ac.uk .

A further Data Futures event is planned at LORIC on 21st March, during which, experts from The Data Place will explore the Tourism, Heritage and Culture sector. Click here for more details and bookings.