Social Innovation Camp have teamed up with the NECLES HIEC to put together a one-day Express Social Innovation Camp on young people and health on Saturday, 25th February, at the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green.

The problem

Social Innovation Camp have teamed up with the NECLES HIEC to put together a one-day Express Social Innovation Camp on young people and health on Saturday, 25^th February, at the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green.

Why?

Young people have particular health needs – both preventative and in dealing with the healthcare system—which aren’t well catered to – the healthcare system is designed for adults and children, and when going through the transition from one to the other, the opportunity for confusion and problems come up.

Over the past six weeks, Social Innovation Camp has run a series of workshops with groups of both healthcare professionals of young people in order to find out what both groups think is missing or important. We’ve come up with five areas that we think are ripe for new applications.

We’re going to assemble groups of 8-12 of the most interesting and clever young people, designers, developers, and healthcare experts to work on these five questions:

1)     How can we help make the transition to adulthood work more smoothly?

Moving between 16, 18, and full adulthood involves significant changes in rights, responsibilities, and legal status. Issues that have come up include: “Will my GP tell my mum that I smoke?”, “Why do I have to change my psychiatrist now that I’m 18?”, and “When does my mum’s responsibility end?”

2)     How can we help those with health and wellbeing issues avoid/reduce the impact of social isolation?

Social Isolation can be worse for physical health than both drinking and smoking.   In order to overcome unemployment, restrictions due their health or wellbeing issue, the responsibility of caring for a sick relative or any other the other causes that lead to loneliness: How can we help young people reach out to existing or new networks?

3)     How can users better use their own medical history to have a smoother health care experience?

Individuals may not remember all of their jabs/immunisations, or important bits of their medical history (particularly if they have an unusual allergy or intolerance). At the same time, ongoing health issues require coordination of different specialists and GPs. Is there a way to use our mobile phones, a website, SMS or something else to help make this situation better?

4)     How can young people make a game out of eating well and getting fit?

We all know we need to eat better and get fit – but how? When starting work, training, or school, you’re out on your own for the first time – we had so many ideas on this, that I’m just going to list a few and let your imaginations run wild:

• The Fridge of Last Resort: what can I make with what’s in my fridge?
• 5-a-day competition among your friends (twitter/facebook, or something else?)
• Some sort of short-term game that gets people moving & having fun

5)     How do I know if I need to see the doctor, and can we make it a better experience?

Sometimes, you don’t know what you need to know. You go to the doctor after 24 hours, and they tell you to wait it out for another 48, or you get told to take over-the-counter medication even if you’ve already tried that – then you feel like you’ve wasted your own time as well as the NHS’s. Can we build something that will allow a simple question and answer – i.e., is it bad enough, or how long should I wait before bothering a GP? How should it work – via text, phone, or email (or something else?

The idea

What we’re doing about it

We’re going to get some groups together to work on the questions outlined above.  The young people will lead the discussions on the day- we’ll give these young people some support from developers, designers, business people, and healthcare professionals who form part of the group.

The task, over the course of eight hours, will be to work together with existing NHS datasets and expertise in new ways to come up with a bang-up, fantastic and unusual solution to use the web, mobile or texting, or the Internet to address one of these problems. NHS London is going to put up to a maximum of £10,000 behind one of the ideas from the day. Along with this they will help with providing the right support from inside the NHS to help make the idea happen – expert help, , and the ability to talk to the right person- all that makes a difference.

What we need

We need people - developers, designers, young people, healthcare professionals, and anyone else passionate about making the health & well-being of young people better.

Excited about the possibility? Want to come along on the day? Sign up here, and let us know which issue you’d like to work on.

Have further questions? Want to support the teams in another way? Get in touch here.

Tags

young people, health, healthcare, social innovation, innovation, social innovation camp, sicamp, hackday

Social Innovation Camp Express - Young people & Health