At 2016's CIPR PRide Awards, Advice ASAP - co-created with NHS Gloucestershire CCG - was presented with the Gold Award in the Public Sector Campaign category. The PRide Awards recognise deliverable results for clients and employers.

"With clear objectives and a well thought out strategy, this campaign delivered tangible results and significantly changed behaviour amongst its target audience. The judges were highly impressed by this outstanding entry. A clear winner." - CIPR PRide Awards Judges

Do our citizens know where to turn?

5 January 2015 saw both Gloucestershire Royal and Cheltenham General Hospitals declare ‘major incidents’ due to high demand in their emergency departments, with 30% of people attending with non-urgent ailments. Advice ASAP was co-created with Gloucestershire CCG to combat the number of inappropriate attendances at emergency departments.

Insight was used to identify the ‘why’ – why were people who could be treated more appropriately by other health services visiting emergency departments? Parents of children aged 0 to 5, 10 to 18 and adults aged 17 to 39 were identified as the key target audiences.

With these audiences presenting with minor conditions that could be more appropriately treated in the community health access centre and community minor injury and illness units, we needed to produce a solution that would help inform citizens about where best to turn.

Development of ASAP:

The innovative app and website allows citizens to identify the most relevant health services to treat their conditions, locate the services closest to them (using geolocation functionality such as maps), and to view opening and waiting times.

Videos are used as a visual aid to advise on the roles of different services – raising education and awareness of where and when to attend, depending on the condition.

Results:

Within the first week of the campaign, the NHS Gloucestershire health community witnessed an 8% reduction in emergency department attendances and a corresponding 8% increase in attendances at the county’s community minor injury and illness units.

Testimonial:

“Our ASAP partnership project with ICE Creates has been hugely beneficial and has resulted in a striking, sustainable campaign and intuitive campaign tools co-produced with clinicians and local people.

Through genuine and meaningful insight gathered from our population and reflecting changing times and the ‘key message culture,’ ICE identified that highlighting the clear routes into assured advice on what to do if you are ill or injured was the right path to take.

As well as signposting to face-to- face and telephone advice options, ASAP offers a groundbreaking app and website that guides people through health conditions and symptoms, care advice and provides the user with specific (and appropriate) service details.

This was a challenging project, but ICE provided friendly and professional project management support throughout, highly creative campaign concepts and visuals and were patient and understanding in our shared approach to developing wireframes and the wider digital assets.

Early signs from evaluation have shown that where people have seen or have acted on the ASAP messages, there have been clear signs of intended or actual behaviour change that can only benefit the local NHS and individual patients as we look to build on the first phases of the campaign.”

Anthony Dallimore, Associate Director, Communications – NHS Gloucestershire

You can view the Advice ASAP website here: http://www.asapglos.nhs.uk/

To request a full case study or to discuss how we can co-create solutions bespoke to the needs of your citizens, contact Paul Williams on 0845 5193 423 or at paul.williams@icecreates.com