The Greater Manchester Digital Platform

Greater Manchester’s councils, NHS organisations and other public bodies are working together to invest in new technologies and to explore better ways of working to join up data from the many systems across the public sector. This will allow us to use data more effectively to enhance care, improve services and save lives.

There are many fantastic examples of digital across public services, but the reality is that in Greater Manchester, and across the UK, the complexity of our systems and lack of sharing information means we’re doing a disservice to our residents. To address this, the Greater Manchester Digital Platform has been developed, to help everyone in Greater Manchester by making sure that professionals supporting you have the right information, at the right time and in the right way.

The platform was built to ensure that professionals supporting residents have the right information, at the right time and in the right way. It provides the infrastructure that can be rapidly adopted in other priority areas to drive improvements in the health and wealth of Greater Manchester’s 2.8m citizens, whether this is in health, care or the wider public sector.  We’re already looking at how it can be applied in Victim Support, Homelessness and other important areas of health. 

The work is being led by a team sitting across Salford Royal Foundation Trust and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, linking in with individual local organisations, the Greater Manchester Health and Social Care Partnership and Health Innovation Manchester. 

“The Greater Manchester Digital Platform is a fantastic example of using digital tools to deliver benefits that help the city region’s people lead healthier, happier lives and I’m pleased to see progress being made in this space.  

The platform has been developed to help everyone in Greater Manchester, making sure that professionals supporting our people have the right information, at the right time and in the right way. The platform will be integral in driving improvements for our citizens, whether this is in health, care or the wider public sector.” Councillor Sean Fielding, GMCA Lead for Employment, Skills and Digital 

The following programmes of work currently sit on the platform:

• Digitisation of early years provisions

Covid-19 response

• Community hub volunteer app
• Situation reporting

The programme team continue to work on various other use cases for the platform, including around dementia and frailty. 

Bringing Digital Technology to Digitise Care in Early Years

One of the areas we’re looking to transform through digital technology is the assessments we undertake with our youngest citizens.

Find out how we’re using digital to give children the best start in life.

Community Hub Volunteer Application 

During Covid-19 there has been a growing number of people across Greater Manchester volunteering their time to help in response to growing humanitarian needs. This increase in volunteer numbers has brought a heightened requirement to more effectively coordinate volunteer activity across the region, understand need and demand more clearly in real time and appropriately and effectively match volunteers with Community Hub activity.  

The Community Hub Volunteer application developed by Bury Council with ANS and Microsoft with support from the GMCA was set up to solve these problems. The application provides a platform that all parties involved in logging, assigning and volunteering can access, helping to coordinate contact between centres, Hub Managers and volunteers. The application also helps to collect the required information to match appropriate support to citizen need.  

The app can be rapidly deployed to localities, can be locally branded and should be used by those receiving requests for support from vulnerable citizens in community hubs to triage need, collect relevant information and assigning tasks to Hub Managers. 

If you are interested in rapidly deploying the app in your locality please email: GMCAdigital@greatermanchester-ca.gov.uk

Situation Reporting System

The Greater Manchester Situation Reporting System, which sits on the platform, was developed to monitor PPE levels, death figures, infection rates and outbreaks during Covid-19 to identify early signs of instability in adult social care settings to ensure swift action can be taken. The reporting system allows all 10 Greater Manchester councils to share data in one place, creating a dashboard of information which shows a coherent picture of operational pressures during covid-19.