PlaceCal has already been rolled out in Hulme and Moss Side. Now it’s being piloted in Moston.
PlaceCal is used by many different people in these communities, but a few particular individuals find parts of their jobs are transformed by using the platform.
Here are two key examples of people who are already benefiting from using PlaceCal in their role.
Alasdair is a GP at Moss Side Health Centre and he sees dozens of patients a day. We would consider him an end user of PlaceCal.
Many of Alasdair’s patients have problems with their breathing, aren’t able to exercise, or are lonely.
His lonely patients are sometimes the most difficult to help, and he’s only got 7 minutes in which to do it. For example, some patients call for more than 40 ambulances a year to take them to hospital – just to get the opportunity to see another human being.
This type of behaviour places an immense strain on the health services, and sadly it doesn’t really fix the problem.
Alasdair knew what the solution was – but he lacked the infrastructure for it.
Alasdair wanted to “socially prescribe”. This means he would refer people to services in their community instead of only offering medical solutions. The services he could refer them to might be a local group where they can do gentle exercise, or find some social support.
1 in 5 GPs already socially prescribe, and 40% would refer if they had more information about what’s available. (July 2017, GP Online Survey)
It’s was previously very difficult for Alasdair to find out more information about what’s happening in Moss Side. The issue wasn’t a lack of events going on, but the fact that there was no centralised place where he could browse events. Many community groups don’t even have a website.
Health workers have the job of maintaining sprawling spreadsheets or emailing out PDF documents periodically. Unfortunately, these documents have several drawbacks: