SHAPE Community launches following application refresh

The team behind SHAPE has announced the launch of its “SHAPE Community” to exclusively review and input into feature development.

The user group will be called upon to review and test products ahead of their roll out, whilst informing new features and useful datasets required to ensure SHAPE continues to align with public service priorities.

The announcement follows a recent revamp of the platform to improve usability and navigation. Launched in April, the new features aim to support the more diverse user group and scenarios the tool is being used for.

Claire Harrison, CEO of Parallel said:

“SHAPE was originally commissioned in 2006 by the Department of Health and Social Care to support service commissioning. It was primarily used by data analysts and teams used to working with complex datasets.

“Fast forward to today and SHAPE is used by thousands of people every day, for a much wider variety of scenarios, including estates planning, vaccination planning and monitoring uptake, One Public Estate planning and collaborative projects across public sector partners.

“As a result, we’ve had a look at how the platform and our service needs to evolve.”

Some of the new features to SHAPE include a new landing page, an online resource centre including frequently asked questions and training videos to supplement the live agent support. Case studies have been developed to capture best practice and user insight and data source updates and frequency has been made much more prominent in response to user feedback.

Claire continued:

“The changes are the first step on that journey, but we’re keen to engage more closely with our everyday users to inform and test the next stage of developments and to ensure the product is the best that it can be.”