Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership had an opportunity to do things very differently - to properly understand the problem before leaping into solutions. The Pathfinder programme is adopting the Scottish Approach to Service Design to transform an important aspect of services or supports (the ‘whole system’) towards prevention in each of four pathfinder areas.

In 2015 the Innovations & Development Team at Alzheimer Scotland was approached by our Chief Executive Henry Simmons to see how we could better support missing people with dementia in Scotland. Purple alert is a free mobile app which raises an alert to the community if someone with dementia is missing in their area.

Hanover Scotland is a Housing Association providing a range of housing and services, mainly for older people. Hanover was interested in moving toward more proactive, preventative approaches to care. In early 2022, they were granted funding from the Scottish Government’s TEC Programme to discover what a proactive calling service could look like at Hanover.

In 2020 we introduced a new Customer Experience Strategy for the Clyde Valley Group. This strategy aimed to improve our services to provide an outstanding customer experience and to reduce customer effort. We needed to understand our customers, their needs and aspirations and, most importantly, their expectations of outstanding customer experience.

To ensure that the project met the ethical demands and research governance requirements for health research, the researchers undertook an ethical approval through the university. Members of the Technology Enhanced Care Team carried out a Caldicott approval process to ensure their collection, management and sharing of patient data reflected best practice.

The Aberdeen City Pathfinder project explored how Technology Enabled Care (TEC) can play a role in supporting the delivery of multi-agency services for people, aged 18+ who experience domestic abuse.

In 2020 we introduced a new Customer Experience Strategy for the Clyde Valley Group. This strategy aimed to improve our services to provide an outstanding customer experience and to reduce customer effort. We needed to understand our customers, their needs and aspirations and, most importantly, their expectations of outstanding customer experience.

One clear requirement set out by the TEC TLS Pathfinder was that the project should be run by a partnership of equals, with full involvement of statutory and third sector partners from the outset. We felt this was important for developing and designing innovative and transformative solutions, and to set the conditions for working differently.

The Partnership used a number of research methods to gather and make sense of information and knowledge to understand existing services and people’s experiences. An early part of the multi-stage research involved using observational research methods. Researchers from the DHI supported the partnership, and observed:

Our DHI partners designed a pop-up engagement as part of the user research. The plan was to pop-up in selected locations across Midlothian where there were likely to be a high number of older people, although anyone could take part.

The Midlothian Pathfinder carried out a visual, interactive service mapping with professionals from health, social care and the voluntary sector who support people living with frailty. Using a three-stage process, they mapped the flow of information and documentation across the existing systems and visually mapped the knowledge flow for a person living with severe frailty.

The East Ayrshire Health and Social Care Partnership Pathfinder project aimed to use technology enhanced care to fully transform health and social care provision for people with long term health conditions living in the Irvine Valley. Taking a design-led approach, and focusing on place, we explored ways to support residents of the Irvine Valley to access relevant TEC solutions to support them to live at home.

Midlothian Health and Social Care Partnership aimed to transform traditional models of care to enable the increasing numbers of people living with frailty to achieve their best possible quality of life. COVID19 presented a number of challenges and the team has shared their learning in getting unstuck.