Impact story: Response to the pandemic

> Empowering over 150 communities to collaborate virtually, share knowledge, and drive agile solutions during the pandemic and recovery

Purpose

There was a need for people working in different parts of the NHS to collaborate virtually to rapidly address the challenges of the pandemic and recovery. A rapid acceleration in effective use of virtual collaboration to support change and improvement was needed.

The response and benefits

Over 150 communities were created or re-purposed to support the pandemic response on the Futures.

Futures quickly scaled its service to support rapid uptake, including: 

Enabling self-registration for NHS staff and and gov.uk email addresses 
Rapid workspace approval and build for Covid-19 work (within 1 day of request)
Faster turnaround for support – average less than 1 hour response time
Master classes on communities of practice and knowledge sharing
Publishing a Covid-19 workspace directory page to support the discovery of other key resources and networks

Therefore, Futures offered not only free access to a platform that allowed collaboration across organisations but crucially support from the team i.e. training, a dedicated support desk, good practice resources and additional advice and support from the expert team on community building and online collaboration. The team reached out to the new Covid-19 communities and supported them to develop and grow. 

They also played a role in matching and connecting similar communities, reducing duplication and fostering links across the system.

The communities used virtual collaboration to support their agile response to the pandemic and recovery.

Example: remote consultation workspaces

A national workspace to support rapid roll out of remote consultation and linked regional workspaces for East of England, the North West and North East, the Midlands, London and the South West regions.

Example: The homelessness and inclusion health workspace

 Stacey Buccilli, explained the purpose of on the Homelessness and Inclusion Health workspace:

“During the COVID-19 outbreak a decision was made to get homeless people off the street. An integrated approach was needed, involving a range of public and voluntary sector organisations working together. NHS England and NHS Improvement worked closely with colleagues in PHE and brought together a group of professionals to tackle this issue and enable the sharing of updates and good practice.

In the first instance, this was done through online meetings, but it was soon apparent that an online system was needed to enable people to share resources, knowledge and issues. FutureNHS enabled them to share their thoughts online and engage with others grappling with similar problems.

Stakeholders have also been able to learn from emerging good practice and prevent duplication. For example, they have shared practical resources such as risk assessments, clinical resources and reporting tools. Going forwards this workspace will continue to be a useful resource to share and learn from good practice. It is also a network we can develop and work with as part our growing agenda on tackling health inequalities.” 