Originally published on mediablends.com April 16 2015 2015

Summary: Local councils and partnerships will this year be faced with the growing challenge of deciding what technology solutions to develop and promote for care, health and wellbeing in their community. We've put together some ideas on how to approach those issues, from our exploration into Living Well in the Digital Age. The paper is here.

Several things this week prompted me to develop a few practical suggestions drawn from our explorations.

Healthwatch and the City of London (where I live) ran a really useful briefing on the implications of the Care Act, that has just come into force. I found there's lot of requirements for provision of information, and collaboration among organisations that should involve innovative use of technology - and that's apart from ways tech could assist in health care and support. I need to explore further.

Partnerships in the Big Lottery Fund's £82 million Ageing Better programme should by now have heard that their business plans have, hopefully, been approved, and know what funds they can spend. Maybe there will be news in the online community BIG has established.

I gather some partnerships that didn't get funds are also thinking about how to proceed, and might be interested in ideas from the simulation we ran last year with LGIU to see how tech, asset mapping and frugal innovation might help.

The South East England Forum on Ageing are following up their excellent seminar on innovation, technology and later life with an action group, which I've been invited to join. So I need to organise some input.

Yesterday I found out that the Centre for Ageing Better, which has £50 million funding from BIG, has issued a consultation paper about “ its vision, mission, values, goals and role and how we wish to explore these with the public and key stakeholders”. (See update below).

There's nothing in the consultation paper about technology, which is a bit strange since the chair, Lord Silkin, hosted the SEEFA symposium. Anyway, another opportunity to make some input.

Here's key points from the paper - which you can find here:

• Think conversations, stories, networks - before technology. Technology doesn't work on its own. It's what it supports that's important.
• Avoid re-inventing the wheel - dip into the research. We have gathered a lot of resources.
• Look for shared insights and conversation starters. We provide some provocations and challenges.
• Check out these sites for practical ideas. We've listed sources of help.
• Consider three levels: policy, community and people. Joining up is needed.
• Use creative methods … and start with people. We offer some ideas on how to do that.
• Make it fun. Our colleague John Popham is good at that.
• Develop a plan - and co-design. We suggest a process, and some methods.
• Map assets and networks. Make the most of what you have.

As I said at the start, the paper is mainly a compilation of ideas gathered during the our explorations, first with Nominet Trust, and more recently with Age Action Alliance.

Does the paper help make sense of tech in relation to Ageing Better and Living Well in the Digital Age? Would it be worth crowdsourcing more ideas?

Update the Centre for Ageing Better consultation paper sparked discussion on Twitter, which I have summarised here. The original consultation paper link was incorrect, but the key issues are the same. Correct link

Links:

• Our Making Sense paper
• Explorations into Living Well and Ageing Better
• Big Lottery Fund Ageing Better programme * BIG's online community for Ageing Better
• South East England Forum on Ageing * SEEFA symposium
• Workshop simulation about frugal innovation * Centre for Ageing Better consultation paper