Community Connect Reaches Key Milestone with Regional Engagement Workshops
Thursday 14th August marked the final day of Community Connect’s Regional Engagement workshops. This milestone is significant for our colleagues who have spent the past few months collaborating and planning the future use of digital tools in the community, and we are so grateful to everyone who took part and provided invaluable feedback. What is Community Connect? Community Connect is one of the newest programmes within the HSE’s Digital for Care portfolio, and it is now in its discovery phase. The program seeks to implement a single integrated solution delivering patient administration (Service Management) and some clinical functionalities (Advanced Clinical) across Community Services in Ireland. The Regional Engagement Workshops were an integral part of the 40- week Discovery phase, which ensures that a design for the solution is clearly identified and agreed from the outset of the project.
Listening to Staff Voices
27 regional engagement workshops were held from June to August, and each one involved a representative cross-section of roles from each service in scope, clinical and non-clinical, and the relevant regional and national leadership. Over 1,000 staff across all six Health Regions were invited to take part, including frontline Medical, Nursing and Midwifery, Health and Social Care professionals and Administrative staff delivering community services.
Each workshop featured a suite of software prototypes to help staff visualise what a digital solution might look like for them. We tested their suitability, and captured any feedback, challenges and issues that need to be addressed by the final solution proposal. The insights gathered have been invaluable – shaping the first draft of the solution blueprint, identifying integration and reporting needs, and highlighting the scale of change required.
Building a Shared Solution
Through this program, every community service is expected to benefit from a core set of service management features. These will include referrals, waiting lists, appointments, documentation, discharge processes, reporting and analytics. For more specialised needs, advanced clinical functionality is being explored in areas such as Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services and Specialist Palliative Care.
Service Management Workshops were open to all Community Services, and focused on:
- referrals and waiting lists
- outpatient and MDT scheduling
- inpatient and clinical documentation. Advanced Clinical Workshops were for CAMHS and Specialist Palliative Care Staff only, and focused on:
- medication management
- orders and results
- clinical documentation and observations, clinical data capture, MDT clinical.
Get involved: Join the Change Network
The regional engagement workshops have not only introduced staff to the Community Connect programme but also gathered feedback and ideas from those who know the services best. The sessions have been successful – but there’s still more to do.
That’s where the Community Connect Change Network comes in. With 592 members already on board, the network is a growing community of staff willing to share their expertise and help improve the programme’s design. Our goal is to reach 1,000 members across all areas of the health service.
By joining, you’ll receive updates on the programme, early access to materials, and invitations to take part in surveys and feedback sessions. Most importantly, you’ll act as a sounding board – helping us finetune the functionality to make sure it works in the real world.
Your insights will directly shape the solution that will support you and your colleagues in the years ahead. Register today and help us deliver a great digital solution. Register here.
What’s next
We will host the findings playback seminar on Monday 15th September, where the themes from regional engagement and early design work will be shared. If you’d like to contribute documents, ideas, or questions ahead of time, please email communityconnect@hse.ie.