Lincs Inspire is a charitable trust serving the population of North East Lincolnshire and is focused on inspiring people to lead active, healthy, fulfilling lives through sporting, leisure and cultural activities and educational services.

A long-standing client of Legend Club Management Systems, in October 2018 the two organisations recognised a mutual opportunity to collaborate around a pilot scheme for Legend’s newest software module, Active Outcomes.

By replacing paper-based records and integrating with its Legend front-of-house and core member database, Active Outcomes enables Lincs Inspire to track patients referred by healthcare professionals into its Active Forever wellbeing programme and quantify the health benefits they’re achieving.

David Watson, operations manager, Lincs Inspire, explains: “With the way the referral programme worked prior to partnering with Legend, we were struggling to get the evidence base we needed to provide detailed reports back to our healthcare partners. We recognised the opportunity to work with Legend to develop software that would provide us with insights on the success of our programmes, but also lay the foundation for further improvements.”

Collaborative
Development
Active Outcomes was designed with operator input throughout the process, and now enables real-time exercise tracking, evidence-based KPI reporting, appointment setting/management, scheme/individual targeting, configurable schemes and member conversion.

Between January and March 2019, Legend and Lincs Inspire worked collaboratively on a pilot based out of Lincs Inspire’s Health and Wellbeing Centre in Grimsby. At the point of referral, patient/member information was input to Active Outcomes and activity and progress tracked throughout the 12-week Active Forever wellness programme.

During this pilot period, regular weekly sessions between Legend and Lincs Inspire helped hone the functionality within the software to meet both current and future needs, including automatic programme success reporting; real-time improvement measurement; optimisation for tablet and mobile; instant summary and trend display, as well as having deep links to the Legend core system through the ‘join’ and ‘usage’ functions.

From the initial induction provided by Lincs Inspire’s specialist wellness instructors, individuals’ data was recorded and managed through Active Outcomes – from the frequency of visits, to information on progress discussed during formal reviews at weeks 4, 8 and 12; as well as conversion to full membership at the end of the programme.

As David Watson says: “We wanted Active Outcomes to provide us both with the data we need to report back to our healthcare referral partners, but also to give us the insight to improve the programmes in line with the wider health & wellbeing agenda across the region.

“Applying for funding bids is one aspect of the investment, but actually it’s about having a technology solution that’s helping us to really put our local population at the heart of the services we provide.”

Future Outcomes
Since April, Active Outcomes has been rolled out to three other Lincs Inspire sites: Cleethorpes Leisure Centre, Immingham Swimming Pool and King George V Stadium. The trust is already seeing improved feedback from members as they progress through the referral programme.

“It’s early days still,” says Ben Frary, senior sports and development officer, Lincs Inspire. “Many members are currently going through the first set of referrals using Active Outcomes. However, we’re seeing positive feedback during the review stages in terms of improved self-confidence and self-esteem.

“We now have a single, central and real-time view of how members going through the referral programme are progressing. It’s starting to give us the insight we need to make sure that we’re moving in the right direction; that we’re using the data to evaluate our programmes.”

Future developments lie in further opportunities around integration with other third party technology and applications. Lincs Inspire is currently trialling its first BodiTrax precision body composition and cellular monitoring machine. Integration with Active Outcomes, which is currently in progress, would allow for targeted health improvements around weight reduction and muscle mass increase, for example.

“This initiative has been a really positive example of how Legend works with industry partners towards the wider goal of population health,” concludes David Watson. “Our team has certainly been inspired to know that they have been a key part of developing a software tool that can make a big difference to the lives of people with long-term conditions both in our local area, and also nationally.”