Gladstone makes an iMPACT with outcome management software

Software supplier Gladstone has launched a groundbreaking outcome management product, which will enable organisations to measure and demonstrate the impact of sport and leisure programmes on community health.

Developed by Gladstone in partnership with community health provider Everyone Health – sister company to leisure operator Everyone Active – the solution is now available to Gladstone customers as a module called Health, and as a standalone product under the brand name iMPACT.

“A number of our customers are engaged by local authorities to deliver health intervention schemes, and to secure funding for these programmes they need to provide hard evidence of the difference they can make,” said iMPACT’s Business Development Manager, Georgia Dowdeswell.

“This is more important than ever following the release of the government’s Sporting Future strategy in December 2015, which identified physical wellbeing and mental wellbeing as two of five key outcomes that will now be used to measure the impact of sport and leisure participation at a national level, and will influence what organisations receive funding for in the future.

“This new adjacent market is a big growth area for operators, and this product has been developed in response to that.”

As well as enabling providers to demonstrate that intervention schemes are meeting objectives, the software can help managers to identify areas for improvement and allow participants to review their own progress, adds Dowdeswell.

The comprehensive solution includes planning and evaluation tools based on logic modelling, as well as management of the service delivery: the mobile-responsive software gives staff easy access to all the information they need to manage their sessions and attendance is registered at the touch of a button. Mobile devices are used to complete questionnaires, and to capture videos, pictures and comments as evidence, and to tag these to agreed contractual outcomes for the course.

Other features of the product include business-specific KPI dashboards, tailored reporting, integrated presentation tools, and secure portals which allow funders, commissioners and referrers to access and review results, statistics and outcomes at their leisure. GPs and other referrers can even directly add participants to a scheme through the portals.

Steph Shadwell, Health Data and Informatics Manager at Everyone Health, said: “Since last November, we have used iMPACT on all of our health contracts to report on KPIs from number of referrals and completers to outcome data, including change over time.

“In-depth reporting of KPIs and service outcomes is a requirement of all of our contracts and without a functional database we simply could not achieve this. iMPACT adds rigour to our data collection process and gives us confidence in our ability to report accurately back to commissioners.

“As well as keeping our commissioners up to date, the solution enables our practitioners to measure patients’ progress against set targets so they can give instant feedback to drive motivation.

“The ability to measure outcomes against logic models, and to record feedback at any point during an intervention, also makes it much easier to identify strengths and weaknesses in our programmes, allowing us to move more quickly to make informed changes that will support our continuous improvement.”

The new product will be available to view on 10-11 May at the Elevate event at ExCel London, where Dowdeswell will be giving two presentations: Using Data to Evaluate the Success of Physical Activity Programmes (10 May); and Managing Health Outcomes and Building an Evidence Base (11 May).

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Editor’s notes:

Gladstone is the leading supplier of leisure management software in the UK and Ireland and has been the chosen partner of leisure trusts, local authority sports facilities, international health club chains, universities and independent operators for 35 years. Today more than 30,000 users and two million members benefit from Gladstone products across the globe, including 55 per cent of the UK’s public sector leisure market.

Gladstone offers a single, integrated solution to manage sales and marketing, membership management, bookings and resources, payments and finance, communications, point of sale, access control and security, and management information and reports, all in one place. www.gladstonesoftware.co.uk

For further information contact:
Rhianon Howells at Big Fish Public Relations
Tel: 07967 551142
Email: rhianon@bigfishpublicrelations.co.uk