Mace & Menter wins NHS research projects in the South West
Mace & Menter has won a competitive tender to work with the NHS on a series of projects to adapt and innovate health services in the South West. The service design specialists will support Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group with designing more effective and inclusive services.
As the Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) for its local area, the Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire Clinical Commissioning Group works to shape healthcare policy for the community, while ensuring locals are supported to stay healthy. Faced with an unprecedented healthcare crisis in the shape of the pandemic, the organisation determined the need for a partner with deep experience in service design and user research to help improve streamline and strengthen its services.
Following a competitive tender process to find such a partner, Mace & Menter has been enlisted as the right fit to help understand how the CCG can adapt its own operations, while boosting the wider health and care system.
As well as benchmarking the CCG’s skills and upskilling its team, Mace & Menter will initially run research and digital concepting work for the CCG, and North Somerset Council to help them improve the Local Offer website for parents and carers with children with special or additional needs and disabilities.
Ben Carlson-Davies, Insights and Engagement Manager, Bristol, North Somerset & South Gloucestershire CCG, commented, “Mace & Menter stood out as the strongest candidate with lots of experience in working with public sector teams. They also really took the time to understand the business needs, and actively challenged us about our own capabilities and where we want to be in the future.”
The first phase will help increase communication, awareness and information available to parents and carers in North Somerset. Working in partnership with the CCG, North Somerset Council and North Somerset Parent Carers Working Together, Mace & Menter’s research will aim to better understand the current needs of parents and carers when using the Local Offer website. Alongside the research, Mace & Menter will be showing ways the service could be improved through concepts, storyboards and prototypes.
Sam Menter, Co-founder and Managing Director of Mace & Menter, remarked, “Our research project will ultimately feed into a business case for development and improvements to the existing services across the South West region… We have extensive experience running public sector service design projects, upskilling internal teams and embedding a people-centred mindset. Our combined experience of design for services, design and the built environment make us a great fit for the NHS and local government.”
