Innovation in service delivery - PatchworkHQ pilot in Victoria

2013-3-19

When I joined Ripple Effect Group in 2009 (then known as Headshift), one of the company's case studies that immediately resonated with me was Patient Opinion. There was nothing like it in Australia and if you've been following me for a while, you'll know I've often featured it as a case study of what we can do when we think beyond getting government agencies on to Facebook and Twitter.

We've been involved with a number of innovative social innovation engagements, but sadly they've struggled to get funding to move to the implementation phase. To be honest I was beginning to give up hope, but then some light appeared at the end of the tunnel...

First, Patient Opinion launched in Australia last year (although only with official recognition just recently).

I've just heard that another UK import, PatchworkHQ, is being piloted in Melbourne. What does it do?

"Patchwork is a simple web application which allows users across multiple agencies to quickly and simply access the contact details of other front line staff working with their clients.

By helping practitioners communicate better across organisations, Patchwork means more effective multi-agency working. The application is accompanied by a bespoke change programme designed to support more effective multi-agency work practices."

This is significant, because the types of solutions I've seen proposed locally in the past involve complicated database-driven systems and processes. But to tackle complex scenarios like multi-agency collaboration, we need simply but scalable solutions.

I don't know if the reality is that we'll need to keep importing solutions from overseas, but I welcome the fact that we might be entering a phase of changing service delivery with Web & social technologies. I hope the PatchworkHQ pilot goes well and that we'll see more examples like this in the future.