A digital health check

Originally published on Adur & Worthing Councils — Our Stories, Your Councils, 11th June 2018

With the recent warmer weather, it definitely feels like a great opportunity to make some positive changes.

The start of summer is always my ‘new year resolution time’ and I’m determined to become healthier this year. I had a keen interest in running and keeping fit a couple of years ago, and that interest has slowly slipped away due to other life priorities taking the lead (and a few office cakes being eaten).

When the Adur & Worthing Wellbeing team started offering Wellbeing MOTs, I thought it was a great opportunity to ask for some advice about getting back into shape and to gauge my current situation.

They have a fantastic device that uses electrical resistance in your body to work out your composition, including your weight, body fat percentage, visceral fat (internal fat) and hydration levels.

I’m happy to say my results weren’t too scary (see below) but there is always room for improvement. The team offer these Wellbeing MOTs to anyone in the area — check them out on the Adur & Worthing Wellbeing Hub website.

Last Sunday was the Worthing 10k — a race along Worthing seafront enjoyed (or at least endured) by 2,800 runners of all ages from the local area. It was a fantastic sight to see so many people out supporting too.

With my wellbeing results in hand, I had a new found confidence and completed the race in 75 minutes — a long way short of my sub-hour time two years ago, but I was very proud to just get over that finish line this year! Next year I’m planning to sign up a small group from work for the race — look out world, the Digital team are coming!

It’s not just about physical health though, as too often emotional or mental factors play a huge part in our physical wellbeing.

That is where the work in Digital comes in — using our ‘low code’ application platform we built Going Local, a new innovative social prescribing approach to address the needs of local people and health services in Adur and Worthing.

Social prescribing aims to help people living with complex social, emotional or practical needs whose health or wellbeing could be better managed with non-medical interventions.

The aim of Going Local is to reduce repeat visits to GPs as patients are given easy access to the help they need with their underlying social issues; improving their wellbeing.

One of the Community Referrers was trained in the ‘low-code’ environment on which the platform was built, which has enabled continual improvements to be made as the needs of the service have grown and changed.

This includes improvements to the amount of information Community Referrers can send to services so they understand the help that the person needs more quickly, the ability to send SMS reminders to a person about their appointments and other features. These features benefit the current people using Going Local, but also stand to benefit more people in the near future.

Next week I’ll be talking about our Customer Centred Design approach to allow customers more ways to interact with Waste Services.