2. Health and Social Care
Alliance Scotland
“Our vision is for a Scotland where
people of all ages who are disabled or
living with long term conditions, and
unpaid carers, have a strong voice and
enjoy their right to live well, as equal
and active citizens, free from
discrimination, with support and
services that put them at the centre.”
3. The purpose of ALISS:
“Making information
about local sources of
support more findable”
4. Origins of ALISS: Co-producing an ecosystem
2010 - Co-design Workshops
• What keeps you well?
• Barriers to accessing support?
• What do you need?
One view
More than traditional services
Search from anywhere
Help to manage information collaboratively
Blueprint for ALISS
5. Information Service & tools
Collect
A list of Information about local
assets
Manage
Tag and collectively maintain
Share
Publish through multiple information
information outlets
So … what is ALISS?
6. ALISS INDEX
1. Local Group
Added by Council on 30
October 2014
Description
Tags
Location
Report resource
2. NHS Service
Added by NHS on 12 June
2014
Description
Tags
Location
Report resource
3. Event
Added by 3RD Sector Org on 1
August 2014
Description
Tags
Location
Report resource
Council
Database /
Directory
NHS Database /
Directory
3rd Sector Org
Account in
ALISS
GP Systems , NHS 24
Libraries
Living it Up
Police Scotland
Community Pharmacy
Prisons
Public portal
Scottish Fire & Rescue
Housing Associations
Any website
3rd Sector
Database
/Directory
Volunteer
Scotland
Individual Citizen
Account in
ALISS
7. Indexing on ALISS
Bulk upload
Individual resource
Scraping
Semantic web
Using ALISS
Displaying from
ALISS
API interface
Search box
Web page template
13. NHS Tayside Knowledge into Action Demonstrator Project: Developing
the Community Health Information Navigator Role to Support People with
Multiple conditions
• Multiple partners with a core focus on community engagement and
sign-posting
• ALISS information system providing necessary mechanisms:
• A ‘place’ for partners to collectively gather together the information
about community assets / services: ALISS account / Collection
• A means of making that information findable: ALISS search function on
an information portal (web-page / ‘front end’.)
14.
15. live88% think having things to do outside
school is good for their health.
Only 25% think that there are lots of fun things
to do near where they live.
38% think that it’s easy to find out information
about things to do near where they .
Asset Mapping revealed the amount of local
things that enhance wellbeing.
17. What do we need for this lesson?
Photo Credit: Flash Drive, Todd Binger, CC BY-SA
2.0
Starter
workshee
t
Life
expectancy
statistics
Card sort
and
templates
Pitch
template
These resources are at the end of this
presentation.
18. In this session, we’re going to help people
in our area to be healthier and happier and
express our views by creating a digital map
of all your local assets.
19. • Product of a collaborative process
• Formal launch before the end of 2015
• Endorsed by the Scottish Government
and available on the ‘Knowledge Hub’
• Aligned with GIRFEC and CFE
• Wide range of applications
20. ALISS continues to be co-produced
• Continuous development / agile technology approach
• Report Function
• ALISS Innovation Group
• Working with partners and communities
21. • The ALISS programme recognises the multifaceted role which
libraries and information professionals play in supporting well-
being.
• Libraries as community ‘hubs’
• Supporting health and health literacy:
• MacMillan @ Glasgow Libraries Programme (MacMillan /
Glasgow life)
• ALISS recently contributed to the evidence gathering to inform
the ‘Developing the role of health and wellbeing in information in
public libraries’ (NES / SLIC) Project.
22. Why use ALISS?
• Promote your own services / events using ALISS
• With a free ALISS account you can add resources and build your
own collection.
• Add an ALISS powered search box on your website
Find and signpost to local assets and services
• Facilitate asset mapping and support community activity
• Gain useful analytic data.
• Collaborate and build partnerships.
The ALLIANCE is an intermediary organisation for 3rd sector organisations and individuals working in the field of Health and Social Care in Scotland. We have over 1200 members including large support providers such as ENABLE Scotland and Alzheimer Scotland and small informal groups as well as individuals who are disabled, living with long term conditions or providing unpaid care. And The ALLIANCE is also a strategic partner of The Scottish Government.
As you can see from the slide The ALLIANCE aims to ensure people are put at the centre of the supports and services they use and so much of the work we are involved in is focused around things like self-management, co-production, and working with individual and community assets.
The ALLIANCE works on a range of projects that contribute to achieving this aim and one of these is ALISS.
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ALISS is ‘A Local Information System for Scotland’
The key objective of the programme is really quite straightforward. It is to make information about local sources of support more findable. That’s the overarching goal we’re aiming to achieve.
And so we operate on the principle of open data and we use open source technology.
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In order to appreciate how and why ALISS works to make information more findable it’s important to understand a bit about the history and the origins of the programme and the system.
ALISS was developed through a process of co-design or co-production and these principles are still an important aspect of the programme today.
So, following and building on some smaller scale exercises, a series of co-design workshops were held across Scotland in 2010. The workshops included people living with disabilities and long term conditions as well as their carers, and brought them together with health and social care professionals, and IT and data professionals.
And these workshops asked 3 questions: ‘what keeps you well?’, ‘what are the barriers to accessing these things?’, and ‘what do you need to overcome these barriers?’
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So in terms of how it actually works, firstly, ALISS is an ‘index’ which points at original sources of information, drawing attention to them and making them more ‘findable’. For example, ALISS can index information from other databases and directories making all of that information available together in 1 place or 1 big list.
But it’s more than this though because it also helps people to work together to collect, manage and share information. Anyone can sign up for an ALISS account and they themselves can then add information to the ALISS index. This could be people with a connection to the resource such as someone who is involved in running or delivering a group or service or someone who has experience of attending or using the group or service or it could even be someone who is just aware of the resource but doesn’t actually have any connection to it.
So individual account holders can add information and they can also build their own collections of the resources that matter to them and help them to stay well. And they can also report and highlight other peoples resources if they are inaccurate or out of date so that the person who added them is alerted and can update or remove the entry if necessary. And all of this information is shared with others through ALISS making it available in lots of different places.
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And this slide is really just an illustration of this process.
So on the right hand side as you look at it, you have the original sources of information such as NHS, Council and Third Sector directories containing information about a whole variety of resources. And you also have individual people and organisations with ALISS accounts manually adding information about resources.
Then, in the middle, you have the ALISS system which indexes all this information in 1 big list while pointing back towards the different original sources.
And on the left hand side you have examples of the range of different outlets where this information might be displayed. This includes different websites and online sources as well as potential signposters such as GP’s, Community Pharmacists, Emergency Services and many others.
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And this slide lists the various technical ways that information can be added to the ALISS index and then surfaced through any particular outlet. I’m not going to go into these in any detail just now as it’s not necessary for most people using ALISS to understand all the technical processes in great detail but different methods will be most appropriate for different people and we can work with people to determine which options would suit them best.
And so this is ALISS.
You can search for information directly through the ALISS website if you want to and I’ll show you a quick example of this.
Example searches:
Isolation, Dundee, 1 mile – Open Twos Company Dundee Association for Mental Health (3rd entry on results returned)
However, as I mentioned earlier people might choose to look for information in lots of different places and in fact, we would actually encourage people to use alternative outlets to search for information rather than searching on the ALISS website itself. So I’ll just show you a few examples of these other outlets where people could go to search.
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So firstly, this is the ‘Living It Up’ website which is a national platform for people with long term conditions.
And all the information indexed in ALISS is also findable through this website through an API interface which pulls all the ALISS data through and displays it within the Living It Up site.
So I could do the same search for Isolation on this website as I did before on the ALISS website and I would still be able to find exactly the same list with exactly the same information. And this is linking back to what people told us about wanting 1 big list that’s available in lots of different places.
So this is just one example of how people can find resources that are indexed through ALISS in other places.
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This is another example. This is the Community Pharmacy Scotland website which has embedded search boxes that allow people to find information indexed within ALISS without actually searching through the ALISS site. So for instance, a community pharmacist looking to signpost someone to a local resource might not know about the ALISS website but hopefully they would know about the Community Pharmacy Scotland website and so they can go on here to search and get the information they need from the place they are familiar with instead of having to go looking for the information elsewhere.
Also, in addition to the search box being embedded in this website, all community pharmacies in Scotland now have ALISS accounts which allows them to add information to ALISS about the pharmacy services they offer, but also potentially about other resources that they might be aware of in their local area which could help people to live well.
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And one more example. This time of a GP Practice using a customised ALISS webpage with a link from their own Practice website. So if a GP or someone from this Practice team wants to signpost one of their patients to a local resource they can also find the information needed through their own website rather than having to look elsewhere. Or patients of this Practice could even be signposted towards this website to find the information themselves.
This GP Practice shown here was actually involved in a project called ‘Improving Links in Primary Care’ which was run in partnership between the ALLIANCE and the Royal College of GPs (RCGP) and is just one example of where ALISS has already been used within Healthcare in Scotland.
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The Improving Links in Primary Care project involved testing the use of ALISS in GP Practices across different areas of Scotland and it concluded that although challenges exist in terms of introducing new technology and having time available to update and manage information, ALISS does has a “very useful role to play in improving links between general practices and local resources” and that it can “support development of a more community facing general practice”.
Building on the learning from this, the Links Worker Programme is another current partnership project between the ALLIANCE and GPs at the Deep End which “explores how the primary care team can support people to live well in their community. This programme involves the role of the Community Links Practitioner or Links Worker who is based within the primary care team. Links Practitioners work with people on the Practice list who are experiencing complex social circumstances, to identify goals and signpost or refer them on to local community assets that can support them towards achieving these goals. Part of the Links Practitioners role is to build knowledge and awareness of community assets so that all members of the Practice Team can access this and so they are using ALISS to add information about the resources they identify within their local communities in order to make these resources more findable for themselves and others. Links Practitioners and the GP Practice teams where they are based are therefore able to use ALISS to add information and build collections as well as to search and find the information they need to signpost the people they are working with.
And as well as Primary Care, ALISS has also been used in Secondary Care through Project Inspire which is a project run by the Intensive Care department at Glasgow Royal Infirmary which offers ICU survivors and their families a five-week rehabilitation and support programme. Each session focuses on the individual participants and how they can take ownership and responsibility for their own health. It involves input from a range of health professionals and in addition, participants are also introduced to ALISS as a way of finding information about community resources in their local areas which can support their recovery and self-management during and after the programme.
And, in addition to the specific examples I’ve mentioned, more widely ALISS also fits within the House of Care model of Care and Support Planning
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So that’s how ALISS fits in with some other projects and developments in health and social care to date.
As I mentioned earlier, the whole concept and creation of ALISS was based on principles of co-production and co-design and the programme continues to develop on this basis. I think it’s probably quite important to point out that ALISS isn’t therefore a packaged product that can be presented as finished or static. Instead, it’s a tool or system that will continue to develop based on the needs and contributions of the people using it. So we’re continuing to work collaboratively with stakeholders to develop the system and to increase the content and the reach of the information indexed.
This collaboration is achieved in a number of ways, including the ability of ALISS account holders to add their own entries about things that matter to them and to report entries that require editing or updating. We also hold regular meetings of our innovation group made up of ALISS users to suggest and discuss new ideas or further developments and to highlight any issues. And finally, as a team we are involved in continuous engagement work with current and potential partners and communities more widely.
NEXT SLIDE
So that’s how ALISS fits in with some other projects and developments in health and social care to date.
As I mentioned earlier, the whole concept and creation of ALISS was based on principles of co-production and co-design and the programme continues to develop on this basis. I think it’s probably quite important to point out that ALISS isn’t therefore a packaged product that can be presented as finished or static. Instead, it’s a tool or system that will continue to develop based on the needs and contributions of the people using it. So we’re continuing to work collaboratively with stakeholders to develop the system and to increase the content and the reach of the information indexed.
This collaboration is achieved in a number of ways, including the ability of ALISS account holders to add their own entries about things that matter to them and to report entries that require editing or updating. We also hold regular meetings of our innovation group made up of ALISS users to suggest and discuss new ideas or further developments and to highlight any issues. And finally, as a team we are involved in continuous engagement work with current and potential partners and communities more widely.
NEXT SLIDE
So that’s how ALISS fits in with some other projects and developments in health and social care to date.
As I mentioned earlier, the whole concept and creation of ALISS was based on principles of co-production and co-design and the programme continues to develop on this basis. I think it’s probably quite important to point out that ALISS isn’t therefore a packaged product that can be presented as finished or static. Instead, it’s a tool or system that will continue to develop based on the needs and contributions of the people using it. So we’re continuing to work collaboratively with stakeholders to develop the system and to increase the content and the reach of the information indexed.
This collaboration is achieved in a number of ways, including the ability of ALISS account holders to add their own entries about things that matter to them and to report entries that require editing or updating. We also hold regular meetings of our innovation group made up of ALISS users to suggest and discuss new ideas or further developments and to highlight any issues. And finally, as a team we are involved in continuous engagement work with current and potential partners and communities more widely.
NEXT SLIDE
So that’s how ALISS fits in with some other projects and developments in health and social care to date.
As I mentioned earlier, the whole concept and creation of ALISS was based on principles of co-production and co-design and the programme continues to develop on this basis. I think it’s probably quite important to point out that ALISS isn’t therefore a packaged product that can be presented as finished or static. Instead, it’s a tool or system that will continue to develop based on the needs and contributions of the people using it. So we’re continuing to work collaboratively with stakeholders to develop the system and to increase the content and the reach of the information indexed.
This collaboration is achieved in a number of ways, including the ability of ALISS account holders to add their own entries about things that matter to them and to report entries that require editing or updating. We also hold regular meetings of our innovation group made up of ALISS users to suggest and discuss new ideas or further developments and to highlight any issues. And finally, as a team we are involved in continuous engagement work with current and potential partners and communities more widely.
NEXT SLIDE
So that’s ALISS. Hopefully this presentation has explained how and why ALISS functions to make information about local sources of support more findable and how it can help people looking for this sort of information for themselves as well as for those looking to signpost other people.
If you have any questions or would like further information about ALISS you can visit the ALISS website or email me or my colleagues.
Similarly, if you would like more information about any of the other ALLIANCE projects that I mentioned, you can visit the ALLIANCE website.
Thank you again.
END