Bringing professional services to the community
Spreadable Ideas Inc is developing ROOM — an open-source project designed to improve access to professional services, particularly for people living in rural, regional and remote communities.
The idea is simple:
Instead of requiring people to travel to the professional, bring the professional to the community.
The problem
Technology has made remote professional consultations possible, but access to a video call is not the same thing as access to a professional service.
A person consulting a lawyer, medical specialist, psychologist, accountant, mediator or other professional may need privacy, reliable communications, documents printed or scanned, identification checked, signatures witnessed, information exchanged securely, or simply assistance using the technology.
For many people — particularly older people and those who are not confident using computers — being told to join an online meeting and upload documents can itself become a barrier to obtaining the service.
Distance adds another barrier.
In smaller communities, obtaining professional assistance may involve travelling considerable distances for an appointment that could otherwise be conducted remotely.
The ROOM concept
ROOM proposes a network of Community Professional Rooms: private, accessible and professionally equipped spaces through which people can meet remotely with the professional they need.
A room could be located in a library, neighbourhood house, community centre, council facility or other trusted community location.
It could also be established as a dedicated modular facility or, ultimately, as a mobile service capable of travelling between smaller communities.
The person attending should need to operate little or no technology.
The professional, or a remote support service, can manage the consultation technology, cameras, documents, printing and scanning from elsewhere.
One room — many professional services
ROOM is deliberately profession-neutral.
The same community infrastructure could provide access to:
lawyers and mediators • medical and allied-health professionals • psychologists and counsellors • accountants and financial advisers • government and community services • NDIS and disability services • migration and other specialist advisers
The room becomes a common professional-services endpoint for the community rather than infrastructure dedicated to one provider.
Open source by design
An important principle of the project is that the underlying Community Professional Room should not have to be purchased as a proprietary product.
Spreadable Ideas proposes to develop and publish an open Community Professional Room standard, including reference designs, equipment specifications and open-source software.
A technically capable council, community organisation or other not-for-profit should be able to use those resources to build its own room.
For organisations that do not want to install and manage the technology themselves, supported and managed implementations can also be developed.
This creates a social-enterprise model in which the idea and core technology can spread freely, while sustainable services can be provided around implementation, hosting, support and operation.
Starting with a real prototype
We are beginning by building and testing a working room.
The prototype will explore professional-quality video consultation, multiple camera views, remote camera operation, secure document exchange, printing and scanning, document signing and witnessing, network resilience and, most importantly, whether the system can be made genuinely simple for the person attending the room.
The initial legal-services use case deliberately presents some of the more demanding requirements for remote professional work. The underlying infrastructure, however, is being designed from the outset for use across many professions.
Why Spreadable Ideas?
Spreadable Ideas Inc was established around a simple philosophy: ideas worth spreading.
Its purposes include promoting knowledge, education and community cohesion and supporting science and education.
ROOM represents a natural development of that philosophy.
It is an idea that should not be confined to one business, one profession or one community.
If it works, we want it to spread.
The next stage
During the initial development stage, Spreadable Ideas will be seeking participation from community organisations, councils, professional service providers, technology contributors and potential pilot communities.
The project will progressively move to its own home at:
room.org.au
with dedicated resources for communities, professionals, developers and project partners.
ROOM