Small grants for digital healthcare inclusion projects

The Digital First Digital Skills Inclusion project has a 2-year strategy to understand the areas of highest need across the county and work alongside voluntary and community organisations to support patients to use digital healthcare tools and to learn about their functions and benefits to support self-care and manage wellbeing.

The project has set up a small grant process for organisations to apply to, to deliver support and access to digital healthcare tools to their digitally excluded client base.

The implied benefits of this project include:

• improve patient’s digital confidence to use digital health care tools & raise awareness of the benefits of these tools to access general practice and manage their own wellbeing;
• enable patients to access information about symptoms, conditions and treatments and connect to self-help options (improving patient experience, self-care, and wellbeing);
• free up time for GPs and allow them to spend more time managing complex needs
• reduce the number of unnecessary appointments and calls to reception staff as patient queries may be resolved by the patient themselves;

• digitally excluded patients will receive support to make the primary care pathways easier to access;
• GP practices will be able to signpost patients in the local area to help and support thus freeing up capacity with the practice;
• help to understand demand levels for digital support in terms of which groups, what support is required and where the need is in Sussex;
• good working relationships will be created between GP practices and voluntary and community organisations to encourage joint working;
• patients will be able to access help and support if they need it.

Amount available per organisation: Between £5,000 and £20,000. Organisations can work in partnership with others but the limit of the funding is £20,000 per project.

Application process: please email sxccg.digitalprojects@nhs.net to request an application form.

Complete the application form with detail of the project that you will implement if successful. Please be mindful that the focus of the project needs to be digital healthcare tools (NHS App, Online Consultation, NHS 111 Online) although it is understood that basic digital skills may need to be promoted and supported too. All applications will be assessed against the success criteria on the application form and to be successful you must identify how you will support digitally excluded people and what you will do to support them.  If you are not successful this time, it is hoped that the project can support further small grants later in the programme.

Timescales for applications: The grants will be advertised between Monday 13^th June and Wednesday 20^th July. Please submit your application before 5pm on Wednesday 20^th July. Applications submitted after this date cannot be considered in this round.

Timescales of project: It is intended that successful grants will be awarded at the end of July 2022 and that the projects will be live between August 2022 and March 2023. You will submit project timescales in your application to include set up, delivery and evaluation. We will expect monthly data from each organisation and an evaluation at the end of March 2023. If the project is not running as expected, please discuss this with the Digital First project manager as soon as possible.

Read More: DSI small grant supporting information

Contact to discuss project: Susie Goodbrand, Digital First project manager, Susie.Goodbrand@nhs.net

Closing date: 20 July 2022