Social Enterprise Spotlight – Giraffe Healthcare

Posted: 31 March 2020, in News

Our newest Social Enterprise Spotlight is Giraffe Healthcade CIC. Giraffe Healthcare CIC is providing its online physiotherapy platform FREE to UK NHS sites, charities, hospices and third sector organisations for at least the duration of the COVID-19 outbreak. Private physiotherapy practices can receive a 30% reduction. Read and share their Q&A interview below! Get in contact with Lorna on lorna@giraffehealth.com.

What’s your social and/or environmental mission?

Giraffe Healthcare CIC (www.giraffehealth.com) provides a platform for the remote delivery of healthcare services including physiotherapy. Our mission is to improve the health and wellbeing of the population and to ensure that healthcare is available depending on need not circumstance (eg those who live remotely, don’t have transport, childcare etc).

How do you do it? (client group, practical daily work, customers etc)

We licence our online physiotherapy platform to healthcare providers eg. NHS, third sector, hospice sector, to allow their physiotherapists to prescribe personalised, online exercise programmes (based on short 1 minute videos) for their patients and to remotely review their programmes and change them as required without the need for the patient to attend face to face.

What’s your personal motivation for being a social entrepreneur?

In my academic role we had been developing the platform for a number of years with physiotherapists and patients. We had evidence that patients found the platform easy to use and really convenient so we set up the CIC to get the innovation out of academia and into the real world where it can make a difference!

What are your current projects?

We are working with third sector organisations and hospices in Scotland, one health authority in Canada and an MSc student in Perth, Australia. We also have an NHS Test for Change Project where, through the Giraffe platform, people who have had a stroke in NHS Forth Valley can exercise in the evenings, weekends and on discharge from the stroke unit.

What exciting things do you have coming up?

We are excited to be working with the Challenges group looking at potential markets in Ghana and other parts of Africa and have filmed some exercise clips with black actors for that market. We have also started to develop our second product Wee Giraffe, online continence management which is looking good!

Who do you want to work with more?

We are looking for some new board members with business, digital health, tech experience. We would like to work with care homes and any organisations delivering health and wellbeing programmes especially those working in remote and rural locations.

What’s your biggest challenge?

Our biggest challenge is that delivering healthcare in a more accessible way takes a change in mindset for some healthcare professionals. Also being a technology company allows us to reach a huge number of potential users but we need to keep on top of technological advances – a challenge and an opportunity!

What top tips would you give to other social enterprises?

It’s a complicated landscape but there is a huge amount of support out there. People who work in social enterprise are amazing people who give their time and energy to help but you also need to be patient, resilient and disciplined. If you have a good idea which has the potential to make a difference – go for it!