Digital care record systems have gone from a ‘nice to have’ to a ‘need to have’ in social care. Most providers have moved to a digital system or are in the process of implementing one. With widespread digital uptake the question has changed from; ‘are you using a digital system?’ to ‘are you using the right digital system for your service?’

Just under two years ago the government launched its ‘Digitising Social Care’ campaign, delivering the three year £150 million investment for digitally transforming adult social care, as was set out in the 2021 white paper, People at the Heart of Care.

This campaign built on a decade of digitisation in Social Care. Driven in part by the pandemic. That saw care providers take on a variety of different digital systems to help them deliver outstanding care.

The driving force of the ‘Digitising Social Care’ campaign has focussed on ensuring 80% of providers, and at least 80% of people in receipt of care, have a Digital Social Care Record (DSCR) that is compliant with their standards in place by March 2024. While it fell slightly shy of this target. There has still been a significant uptake in digital social care records. From the 40% of providers using them at the start of the campaign. The uptake reflects the benefits of digital systems in care, and the necessity of compliance with the established DSCR standards. These positive results have led to the government extending funding for the campaign until March 2026.

Nourish Care was the first system to join the NHS England Assured Solutions List back in 2021. Since then, the list has grown significantly, so how do you choose the right one?

Incompatibility between systems and services is a rising source of operational frustration for providers. ‘All-in-one’ systems can be limited by the applicability and lack the resources to support more complex or person-centred care, while specialised systems can be disconnected, leaving your team to fill in the gaps between them manually.

Routine system evaluations are a great way to uncover and address these frustrations. This process involves identifying the issues with the platform you are using and evaluating the impact of this issue on your organisation. It takes time and effort to establish the best criteria sets for your service. We have included a guide which you can use to help you get started.

Digitisation has impacted everyone involved in care, so it is best practice to include your entire organisation in the evaluation process. Any frustrations caused by your digital system will be felt by carers and coordinators alike.

Your organisation has multiple roles and responsibilities, and it is important to involve them in your evaluation process through interviews and surveys. An example of some common roles are:

If possible, you should also involve the people who utilise your service in this process, such as when evaluating the effectiveness of integrations with other systems like PainChek or GP Connect as well as circle of care functionality like a family portal.

The more experiences you can account for when evaluating your system, the more complete your picture of its impact will be.

Digitisation in Social Care happened at such a rapid pace since COVID that, understandably, some people have been left behind. When evaluating the impact of your system it is important to consider not just the functionality, but also the user experience.

Do your team feel confident not only with the system, but with the support they have around it? Are there resources and training available to help your team improve their understanding of the system? Is there a customer support team they can reach out to for guidance and support?

Many issues with digital systems come from their misapplication. When evaluating your current digital platform, it is vital to consider your team’s comfort with the system. It might be a matter of reviewing and reworking the way you are implementing the system, as opposed to changing your system all together.

To provide outstanding care, you must constantly be reviewing and improving upon your processes in a responsive and caring way. It is natural to expect the same of your system, as you both adapt to the always evolving reality of care provision.

Digital skills develop over time. With that time it is common to look for more ways to apply your skills to support your care. Such as through data reporting and analysis. By routinely reviewing the capabilities of yourself and your system. You can make sure you are maximising the benefits of your digitisation journey.

The new DSCR standards must be fully met by everybody on the ASL. They represent the next step of Social Care’s digitisation journey. An evolving emphasis on data, security and interoperability that reflects the success and potential of digital software in care. 

The new compliance regulations were announced last year and Nourish has been busy ensuring that it meets each of the 14 standards. This level of screening will mean that only software suppliers who meet stringent standards will be able to remain on the NHS Assured Solutions List.

With so many options available to care providers for digital systems, it is the perfect time to review the needs of your service and community. There is a wealth of suppliers eager to explain their system and its capabilities to you. By knowing what you have and what you want from a digital platform. You will be well-equipped to get what you need.

At Nourish we are well versed in helping people to transition from underperforming digital care record systems to ours. We have resources, guides and team members who would be delighted to talk to you about the process further. If you would like to learn more contact us.

Social care is in a state of change. Care providers tasked with being the steady hand through this change have consistently risen to the challenge. Despite having little control over the changes as they happen. At Nourish Care we are embracing this change by working with our users to develop a social care future we are all proud of.  With increasing standards, new regulations and extended funding availability it is clear now why so many care providers are embracing change themselves and switching to Nourish.  

Care providers have a wealth of options when choosing a digital partner. Under the original standards for the NHS Assured Solutions List (ASL) there are 24 Digital Social Care Records (DSCRs) to choose from. That’s without mentioning the systems who don’t reach these standards. The ASL is enjoying notable success so far, as it continues to work towards its target of 80% of care providers on DSCRs. Digitisation is widespread through social care now. To the point that many care providers are shopping around for a better system to match their service. 

The ASL was always intended as a starting point for the digitisation of social care. The Department of Health and Social Care has announced the second step of this journey, with the recent release of the 14 new standards for DSCRs on the ASL. We are one of the few providers to have achieved all 14 of these standards. You can read about the specifics of the standards here. 

We are the largest software supplier to have achieved the new standards. As well as being one of the first to get listed on the ASL following its initial launch. Our legacy of forward thinking and innovation consistently aligns us with the future direction of the social care sector. We are proud to be working closely with key decision makers in health and social care.  

We support care in a huge variety of settings. Including older person’s care, nursing, home care, learning disabilities, dementia, supported living, assisted living, substance abuse, mental health, children and young people and more. Each care setting is unique, and each care setting requires specific understanding to support effectively. 

Our experienced and understanding customer success and support teams will work with you to make sure our system fits your service. Whatever your needs are, and whatever they may become in the future.  

Once you switch to Nourish, we are with you every step of your journey. Should your journey lead you to new business opportunities we are the best equipped software supplier in social care to support your expansion. Whether you are focussed on a single type of care or support a range of different needs. 

You can also scale your functionality as desired, thanks to our comprehensive partnership programme. The programme unites key best-in-class innovators like Camascope for eMAR, Radar for incident management and PainChek for pain management. All while keeping a finger on the pulse for emerging technologies that will substantially impact the social care sector. 

Additionally, we offer more in-depth data packages called ‘Insights’ and ‘Analytics’. These features provide a much richer insight into the data gathered across your service. Perfect for larger care providers who collect vast swathes of information every day, but have no clear way to transform this potential into insightful, actionable information. 

The Care Quality Commission’s (CQC) rollout of their new Single Assessment Framework (SAF) is enduring some understandable teething challenges. Initialisms aside the ambition of the project remains clear. The regulator wants to streamline processes and better respond to the needs of the people who draw upon care.  

We facilitate these new developments as effectively as possible. We work with organisations like the Care Software Providers Association (CASPA) to share our voice and insights on the development of digital social care with key decision makers in local and national government. Our work on alignment with #socialcarefuture helps to guide the future of our system as much as they guide the future of the wider care communities. Socialcarefuture are the co-authors of the ‘I/We Statements’ that define the SAF scoring.  

There is always something new to be considered, a fresh function to be explored or a new piece of legislation to be adhered to.  

We cannot know the future; all we can do is prepare for it. We have read the tea leaves, built our houses from stone and made hay while the sun shone. All so we can continue to lead the way in digital social care, through innovation, understanding and collaboration. 

Social Care is in a state of change, and with that ever-present uncertainty comes a great opportunity. Switch to Nourish today and take control of your change, with your team, your service and your community.  

Digital technology is a key part of the future of social care. A future the majority of care providers have already embraced. Digital social care records are a common sight, and many users are familiar with the benefits and potential of digital technology. Benefits that vary from platform to platform. The decision is no longer about finding a digital platform, but about finding the right digital platform for your service. An increase in digital literacy and skills experienced across the social care workforce, as well as the heightened standards for membership on the Assured Solutions List, has led many providers to reconsider their care management platforms, and shop around for new options before switching digital social care records systems.  

If you are shopping around for a better platform for your service but are concerned about the process of switching to a new digital social care records system, we understand. The change from one digital platform to another is not the same as ‘going digital’ in the first place.  

We put together this blog, based on our extensive experience onboarding users to our platform, to help familiarise care providers with the realities of switching digital platform. 

As with all things in care technology, and all things in care in general, people play the defining role. Switching systems is not going to be seamless. The simple reality of the technology is there is no small combination of clicks that will move your database from one system to another. They are not built for it. That’s why people still define the experience. 

Our user support teams, from onboarding, to client success and support have years of digital care experience. As well as many of us having started our careers in care. We understand the challenges of changing on both a technical and emotional level. 

Switching digital social care records means different things for different providers. Much like when first picking a system, the process is shaped by your unique service. Our experienced teams will take the time to get to know what makes you unique, guiding you through the transition.  

Our focus is on collaboration, throughout all stages of your Nourish Care experience. We are active participants alongside you, to ensure you retain everything you need from your previous records and can apply it appropriately to the features of your new system. This collaborative process helps reduce the impact of the transition on your teams and the people utilising your service, especially for larger providers with multiple branches. 

It is vital you have the records you need, when you need them. Our focus on collaboration means you can highlight the hierarchy of information you need transferred, in a secure, and reliable way. Throughout this process it is crucial your data is kept secure.  Nourish is at the forefront of digital security standards. We were the first supplier to join the Assured Solutions List, and one of the few to meet all 14 of the compliance standards they introduced in 2024.

We work with the Professional Records Standards Body to develop standards for social care. Additionally, we are also fully ISO 27001:2022 certified in line with Local Authority commissioning guidance and Cyber Essentials Plus certified. These certifications reflect our commitment to preserving the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your system.  

Data requires storage and Nourish backs up data continuously to a cloud-based system. We do not use onsite data stores and all our cloud-provided solutions are backed up automatically and built into our disaster recovery plan and testing. This ensures the highest standard of security for the data of our users and the people they support. 

A new system is a whole new world, a new fantastic point of view. You can build upon the processes you have previously developed or create new ones. We have a deep library of resources available for all our users, backed up by our experienced and understanding support teams.  

There is no set way to apply digital systems to your service and community. It is a natural learning process discovering how to best utilise the tools at your disposal. At Nourish we have seen our users come up with creative and innovative applications, specific to the needs of the people who draw upon their support. In fact, some of these ideas have proven so effective we’ve asked to share them with other Nourish users!  

Everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler. An adage that proves truer with each new piece of digital technology released in social care. In the past five years we’ve seen simplicity give way to necessity, and now necessity turn into potential. Finding the right digital partner for your service can help unlock your potential for the future. The process can be intimidating at the start, but with the right people, and the right support, you’ll only have to change systems once. 

If you’d like to find out more about the benefits and process of switching to Nourish contact us. 

Growth requires reflection. The first step to getting what you want is knowing what you need. Our previous blog went through steps for evaluating your existing system. Once you have a clear understanding of your current processes and needs, you can start to develop your vision for how to satisfy them. As you may be aware, there are a lot of options available. Following the launch of the ‘Digitising Social Care’ campaign in April 2021 the number of social care software suppliers on the Assured Solutions List grew significantly. While the introduction of higher standards in 2024 saw some solutions removed from the list there remain several options for providers to choose from.

This is a source of great opportunity and reasonable consternation for providers. In a crowded market it can be hard to settle on the right choice for you, but with the right questions and advice you can find the right system. 

Care is a community, and it is in our communities we find the best answers. Speaking to other providers about their experiences with different technologies is a fantastic place to gain a better understanding of what is available on the market. People with first-hand experience of a system can highlight its strengths and weaknesses in the specific context of their service. While your service might not align entirely with theirs, direct experience with technology in a care setting is a valuable insight for your decision-making process. 

There are several ways to gain insights or ‘social proof’ from other care providers. The most straightforward route is asking for case studies from existing tech suppliers in care. All suppliers will have a selection ready to go, and most should be able to give you a case study that is similar to your size and structure. However, these will obviously come with a bias towards the company that wrote them.

Social media groups and online care communities are a great source of social proof. There are a number of groups on social media platforms, like Facebook and LinkedIn, which you can join. These range in size and location and are typically filled with like minded care providers looking to support each other. There are also local care associations and paid provider community networks you can join.

Once you have enough examples of the digital systems available to you, you can put together a shortlist of viable choices. Start with key necessities or ‘must haves’ and build from there such as: care type supported, customer experience reputation and interoperability capacity.  
 
This initial list might be very long, it can help to organise the information important to you in a spreadsheet to make it easier to compare your options.

After completing a self-evaluation, you should have a list of questions for potential digital care suppliers that help illustrate how they would address your service needs. These questions will form the backbone of your assessment when engaging with the short list of potential systems. 

All digital providers will be happy to give you a free demonstration of their system. These are generally whistlestop tours of the system, highlighting the strengths of the platform and how they relate to your service. Your self-evaluation will help you focus the discussion and direct the person showing you the system to the features most pertinent to you.  

In many instances, it is possible to record these demonstrations so you can share them with your service. As the new system will impact everyone in your service, it is beneficial to share your insight into the options available with your teams and gain their perspectives as well.

The digital social care record standards must be fully met by everybody on the ASL. They represent the next step of social care’s digitisation journey. An evolving emphasis on data, security and interoperability that reflects the success and potential of digital software in care. 

The new compliance regulations were announced last year and Nourish has been busy ensuring that we meet each of the 14 standards. This level of screening ensures that only software suppliers who maintain the highest standards for data security are available on the NHS Assured Solutions List.

Digital systems can be transformative, but selecting the right one can be time-consuming. It is important to understand the nature of the agreements offered as well. If you are about to enter a two-year contract, all of these evaluations and discussions with other providers will be worth it! 
 
It is also possible that through your evaluation you may conclude that there isn’t a better alternative currently available on the market. If that’s the case, then it’s a good prompt to engage more forcefully with your current provider to influence them to align with your requirements.

Find out more about the benefits of Nourish by contacting our team for a personalised demonstration of our platform.

A digital ecosystem is a community, where everything is interconnected. 

They come in many sizes, shapes and circumstances. Each one supporting life in a unique dance of differing dimensions. As technology continues to develop in health, care and support these dimensions are becoming increasingly distant. Many technology suppliers are simply recreating the physical silos of information in cyberspace. We can’t replace filling cabinets with isolated servers and expect to move forward, we certainly can’t do it and expect to improve the quality of support people receive! At Nourish we want to build ecosystems, not just platforms. Ecosystems shaped by interconnectivity across systems, and data sharing that is both straightforward and secure. That way we can ensure that providers have access to all the information they need, care and support professionals have the tools to deliver outstanding standards and crucially, everything is centred around the person utilising the service. 

From the very beginning, Nourish has been built on one simple but powerful belief: the person supported matters most. This belief is why we develop all our functionality through coproduction. Our commitment to collaboration throughout our platforms. Thanks to this approach every year our understanding of care is deeper, our experiences wider and our expertise sharper than the one before. Because we operate as a true digital partner, we continue to grow with our users throughout their journey. 

The past few years have shown us the potential for technology in social care, while Nourish users have revealed to us the best applications for our software, opening our eyes to the opportunities for supporting positive change in the wider system of care. In response, we consistently and continuously update our existing functionality, and look for spaces in the needs of our users to develop new platforms. 

This expansion of our application is rooted in keeping people at the centre of our systems. We know growth demands structure, scaling demands clarity, and crucially, care demands trust. Structure can be built, clarity provided but trust, trust must be earned.   

Nourish Care impacts 1 million people every day. A responsibility we are both very proud of and deeply committed to. 

We know no two people with support are the same. Uniqueness is the blessing, and the curse of social care. One size will very much not fit all. You need the right tools for the job, and the best people behind them to support you. 

We designed our ecosystem to start at the beginning, with the person supported. From there you can build out your functionality to fit your service, wrapping the right systems around the unique shape of your community and their needs. A successful ecosystem gives you the freedom to grow as you want, and the stability to maintain what you need. 

We can’t predict the future (yet) but with the right tools we can always prepare for it.   

Nourish Better Care is our system built for residential settings. Designed to be easy to use for carers, and straightforward to review for care managers, it comes equipped with the tools you need to capture the full picture of every life you support. 

Nourish Safety gives you a holistic, detailed tool. To manage incidents, ensure compliance, and focus on what matters most, driving lasting improvements in care quality. 

Nourish Confidence is a single place to unify audits, actions and AI‑assessed care plans to support better decision‑making across your service.

Nourish Transparency is a new way to bring clarity to your care planning and help you understand the true cost of your care. Enabling providers to take a more structured, data-informed approach to planning and resourcing care and support. 

Nourish Insights helps care providers manage, review and understand their data with our easy to read and action dashboards.

Nourish Empower offers industry leading rostering functionality. With an easy-to-use app, workforce management and accurate call monitoring giving home care providers everything you need to support your community.

Nourish Better Care at Home builds upon this base with more detailed point of care functionality. To support truly mobile first care by offering richer interactions, contextualised care plans, in app messaging and robust point of care functionality. 

Nourish eLearning is our inbuilt partnership with MyAko. A Skills for Care and CPD accredited eLearning provider, to deliver an all-in-one digital learning solution for home care agencies. 

Nourish Protect enables your team to efficiently record and access information at the point of care, whilst ensuring sensitive data remains secure and protected.  

To make it easier to find the right products for your community we created this overview of the Nourish Product Ecosystem. Each circle reflects a different focus for our products and the impact it will have on your community.   

Care Delivery – For Feeling Supported  
Technology that steps back, so care can step forward. 

Continuous Improvement – For Feeling Assured  
Because confident carers create safer, more consistent outcomes. 

Operations – For Feeling Secure  
Supporting care teams to be prepared, skilled, and sure of what comes next. 

Connectivity – For Feeling Connected  
Bringing together every piece of the care puzzle around the person. 

This approach goes beyond categorisation. It lays the foundation from which every new product, every innovation, and every solution we launch builds towards something bigger. Including the developments with our partners in the Nourish Partnership Programme. All feeding into a digital ecosystem that fits around your service, and elevates your community.

Most importantly, it ensures that as we scale, we never lose sight of what made us great. Keeping the person supported at the centre of care. 

Imagine a health and social care system where care teams feel empowered instead of overwhelmed. Where families feel reassured instead of disconnected. Where people receiving care feel safe, valued, and heard.  

That’s the world we’re building.  

And we’re not waiting.

We have coordinated internally.
So our teams live and breathe this philosophy.  

We are communicating externally.
So our customers feel the impact as soon as possible.

We will continue to co-produce.
Because technology should evolve with the people it serves. 

Connections are the core of community. Whether online or out in the world, it is our ties that bind us, and our relationships that lift us up. At Nourish we know the best results come from working together. We want to build partnerships, coproduce platforms and create a digital ecosystem that informs, invigorates and elevates everyone it impacts, every day. 

We’ve got lots of exciting plans coming soon, if you want to build the future of social care with Nourish, contact us directly today. 

This October we were very proud to introduce Nourish Safety at Care Show Birmingham 2025. Revisit our session, Incidents, Accidents and Action from the care sector’s headline event. where we explored our exciting new incident and accident management platform Nourish Safety

We discuss the challenges at hand with incident and accident management before moving on to how we are addressing them with Nourish Safety. Lyndsay Atkinson-Swales then shares how Nourish Safety is already helping them to improve lives at St Anne’s Community Services.

Mark Gray, Nourish Safety Product Lead, Nourish Care
Lyndsay Atkinson Swales, Director of Operations and Quality, St Anne’s Community Services
Carrie Taylor, Clinical Safety Lead, Nourish Care

Beyond the numbers, the impact of incidents – 0:00
How we approached the problem – 1:21
Common challenges from providers – 5:15
What we set out to build – 8:25
Solution Pillar 1, remove barriers, quick capture, configurable escalations – 10:07
Solution Pillar 2, encouraging best practise with event specific pathways – 12:10
Solutions Pillar 3, trends, dashboards and our real time event tracker – 17:30
Providers’ Story, St Anne’s Community Services’ rollout – 19:55
Positive outcomes – 22:40
Roadmap – 24:40
Q&A – 27:10

We launched three new products at this years Care Show Birmingham: Nourish Safety, Nourish Transparency and our new home care app. Additionally, we hosted a session on each new product to share our perspective, research and ambition. With Nourish Transparency we spoke about moving beyond dependency.

Our hosts were our Chief Product Officer Matthew Stewart and Data Product Manager Paul Skuse. They took us through Nourish’s collaborative approach to developing Nourish Transparency. Detailing how lived experience and operational realities informed the platform’s development.

Learn how Nourish approach the challenge of identifying the ‘true cost of care’, why we need to support growth throughout care plans and how Nourish Transparency promotes sustainable operations in social care.

(Starts at 1:18)

There is a projected funding gap of £4.4bn. However, an accurate estimate is hard to come by as current methods are cumbersome for understanding the cost of care. Our conversations with providers taught us that the bigger problem is lack of transparency.

(Starts at 3:20)

We share some of the insights from our conversations with providers. They highlighted the problem of not being able to truly know someone’s care needs as soon as you’ve met them. We explore the financial, operational and human challenges this situation creates.

(Starts at 5:30)

Paul explains how these challenges shaped Transparency. He talks through the key objectives of the design team, drawing upon the feedback from our interviews with providers.

(Starts at 7:35)

A quick tour through our assessment. It details the three key areas we assess and how Transparency simplifies workflows with configurability and an intuitive layout.

(Starts at 9:20)

How the assessments translate to Full Time Equivalents (FTEs). A key metric for understanding your true cost of care. This includes highlighting your surplus and deficits and further details.

(Starts at 11:08)

We share what our next steps are. As well as some examples of how providers are already using Transparency in their communities. We are very proud of what we’ve built, and we very excited for how we can continue to build upon it!

Find out more about Nourish Transparency and we can work with your service. Contact us directly today!

Care Show Birmingham 2025 was a highlight of this year’s social care calendar. And we had plenty to highlight at Nourish. With two floors and three new products to share we were very excited for the opening bell on Wednesday morning.  

Over two days at the NEC Birmingham, the event brought together hundreds of care professionals, thought leaders, suppliers and change-makers. The energy was electric, the conversations rich, and we captured highlights in our recap video for you. A special shout out to Heather Taylor, National Digital Projects Lead for the National Care Forum for joining us and sharing their experience! 

From sessions on workforce development to digital transformation, regulation, and assistive technology, Care Show 2025 offered a snapshot of where the sector is going. And, crucially, how we can shape it together.  

We even took to the stage ourselves! 

Our Chief Product Officer, Matthew Stewart, joined our Product Manager, Paul Skuse on stage. They 
talked us through the development and application of Nourish Transparency. Highlighting how we can utilise existing information to move beyond dependency. 

Our Home Care Product Lead, Paul Antonioni, shared how Nourish Better Care at Home’s new app is designed for the future. Paul detailed how we champion a mobile first, person led approach for care at home. 

We discussed Nourish Safety’s ability to support turning incidents into action. With Product Lead, Mark Gray, Clinical Safety Lead, Carrie Taylor. And featuring special guest Lyndsay Atkinson Swales, Director of Operations and Quality, St Anne’s Community Services. 

If you’d like to chat in person, we’d love to see you! Check out where we’ll be this November.

Care is always evolving. Over the past five years we have seen a notable increase in the demand for home care in the UK. The population is ageing, and people want to be able to live freely at home for longer. That is why care technology needs to evolve quickly as well. In today’s fast-paced world of home care delivery, frontline teams face mounting pressure to deliver high-quality, personalised support. Often with limited resources and fragmented tools. Traditional systems fall short, leaving carers without the context they need, struggling with poor connectivity, and relying on insecure communication methods.  

This blog explores how a mobile-first, context-aware care platform can reshape the way support is delivered.  

We’ll dive into how this innovative approach empowers carers, improves outcomes, and brings confidence back to every visit. 

Information is key to quality care. Carers, especially those in home care, are asked to wear a millinery’s worth of hats throughout their day. On traditional platforms, carers often lack visibility into why tasks are required. This can easily lead to disjointed care, creating gaps and inconsistencies in the application of someone’s plan. Which leads to missed opportunities for better outcomes. 

We work with our users to continually review and develop the functionality of our products. We are building out care tasks, interactions and assessments that link directly to care plans. Giving carers real-time context to deliver more informed and personalised support. 

The new Better Care at Home app connects each interaction to a section of the care plan. Crucially, including a client timeline for context, so that every interaction is connected. The app provides instant access to critical information, including emergency packs, allergies, and assessments. Ensuring your team knows everything they need for quality home care delivery. 

Of course, all the functionality in the world doesn’t matter if the app doesn’t turn on when you need it. Or, to borrow a phrase from my old football coach, ‘the best ability is availability’. He had a few ways of saying it in fairness, however this is the only one I feel comfortable repeating.    

Unreliable mobile signals and clunky interfaces slow down home care delivery. Which leads to frustration for your teams when they don’t have access to the things they need to succeed. Much like a certain unnamed football coach for Castletroy Rovers’s under-12s.  

The Better Care at Home app supports care wherever it happens. Whether in someone’s home or on the go. With offline access and intuitive tools that work in real-world conditions.  

Offline mode ensures carers can record and access key information, even in low signal areas. Storing the recorded information on the app and uploading it as soon as a connection becomes available. Ensuring no important interactions go unrecorded. Features like appointment views, body maps, and medication tools make care delivery simpler and faster in the field. 

We develop all our features with our users. Creating a continuous feedback loop throughout the development process. By co-producing our products, we can ensure that they are both fit for the role, and accessible to the user. 

Communication is key. It lies at the centre of all successful systems. In home care delivery, disjointed communication between carers and managers leads to missed updates and disparate perspectives. Which in turn can lead to a reliance on unsecure tools like WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.  

Better Care at Home enables care teams to stay connected and informed with secure in-app messaging. Keeping your communications exclusively between your team. With built-in support that is only ever a click away. As well as a Microsoft login to make accessing the platform easier for your users. Features that promote ease of access and collaboration for every interaction.  

In-app messaging supports team to team and group conversations securely. Building connections across your service, regardless of where your team are at the time. This can help bridge the distance that naturally occurs in home care delivery. Our integrated guides and user-friendly interface help your team to quickly become comfortable using our app. Allowing for their care to evolve in line with our functionality, as they unlock more time with the people they support. As well as more information about the life that person leads and the care and support they desire. Improving access, auditability, and security for your whole service. 

As the demand for home care continues to grow, so too must the tools we rely on to deliver it. The Better Care at Home app represents a meaningful step forward. Not just in technology, but in how we think about care itself. By working with Nourish users we understand some of the key challenges providers face. Including gaps in information, accessibility issues and fragmented communication. Our mobile-first, context-aware platform empowers carers to provide more informed, responsive, and compassionate support. 

With every task linked to a care plan, offline functionality that works in the real world, and secure communication built in, Better Care at Home is more than just an app update, it’s an upgrade. A partner in delivering confident, connected care. And by co-producing with the people who use it every day, we ensure it continues to evolve alongside the needs of the sector. 

It takes a lot of hard work to make something look easy. It takes hard work and coproduction to make something easy to use. At Nourish Care we pride ourselves on the intuitive structure and accessibility of our products. We put an incredible amount of time and effort into the useability of our platforms. From concept and discovery, to prototypes, iterations and testing. At every step of the way we remain engaged with our users to ensure that our users can engage with our software. Creating a continuous cycle of feedback for us and consistently evolving solutions for our users. We are currently building a new iteration of our Better Care at Home mobile app. A process deeply rooted in and shaped by the experiences of our current Better Care at Home users.  

Every new product and feature at Nourish begins the same way. With a process of discovery. Over the years at Nourish our approach to discovery has changed and expanded. However, the focus remains on gathering as much information from as many perspectives as possible. This routinely involves sending a survey out to all of the relevant Nourish users. For example, the Nourish Better Care at Home survey was focussed on home care providers and their communities.  

We then take the responses to this survey and bring them to a multi-disciplinary team (MDT) at Nourish. This team consists of engineers, designers and researchers. They work together, guided by the survey responses and other user insights, and build a prototype. From there we move to our initial stage of testing. 

The first test we conduct on this prototype is done internally. The first steps of anything are generally best done in private after all. At Nourish, we have always been informed by the rich, first hand, care experience that exists throughout our company. We ask Nourish employees with relative experience, but who aren’t on the design team, to test the prototype.  

These tests are both moderated and unmoderated. What that means is some tests are conducted in office. While others are done privately, at home and out in the community. We trust the experience of our team members to apply the prototype honestly and earnestly. We then conduct follow up interviews to review their experience and apply that into the next stage of development.  

This initial group of testers tends to be fairly small, generally between five and ten people. Our MDT for the project then iterate based on the feedback they received. This process is led by our user experience designer. Throughout this iterative process the team routinely checks in with customer facing Nourish employees for their perspective. This includes primarily our Account Managers and Customer Support Managers. The people who most routinely interact with Nourish users and best understand your day-to-day needs. Their feedback is fed into the iterative process alongside the results of our internal testing. This ensures we keep both our users and the people they support in mind while designing and sets us up with a final prototype. Once we have this ‘final prototype’ it’s time for, you guessed it, more testing! 

The key to good design is to keep the right parties engaged throughout the process. At Nourish this means consistently involving the people using our system in the design process. For the final round of testing we return to the initial one, discovery. When conducting surveys, we include an option to sign up for the usability test of the product. These sign-ups unlock an unmoderated and quantitative research base for us to utilise. Which provides a crucial contrast to our initial testing. Where once we used a small, internal team, now we want to cast as wide a net externally as possible.  

Think of it like this, a user experience designer walks into a bar. They order a beer, they order 10 beers, they order –1 beers, they order 1000 beers. Everything works fine, they leave happily. A customer walks into a bar and asks where the bathroom is. The bar explodes.  

No internal test will ever predict everything an external user base will try with a platform. Furthermore, no internal team could ever truly predict everything a user will need. In technology generally, and in social care explicitly, there is little room for error. By testing our prototype with a wide range of users we get a much more informed picture of what it’s application will look like. 

We can review engagement to learn patterns of behaviour. Highlighting which aspects of the platform get the most use or take the longest time to complete. Crucially, it also gives us a better insight into the sentiment of the users. Not just how well did it work, but how did using the platform make you feel? All of this information is invaluable for promoting useability and a testament to the power of coproduction in care technology. 

This process has revealed several points of attention and necessary tweaks in Better Care at Home. We more clearly understood the impact and benefit of our emergency admission pack button thanks to the wealth of positive feedback received for it.  

It also shows us some areas of difficulty or navigation blind spots we previously missed in the workflow. Points like a clickable button not appearing clickable leading to user confusion. Or people feeling like a particular function should be accomplishable in one click rather than multiple clicks through several pages.  

We improve useability in our products by mapping our workflows to the mental model of our users. Repeating this process and valuing the feedback of our users sincerely is what enables us to move from iteration to intuition.  

With Nourish Better Care at Home, ultimately, what we are hoping to achieve is pretty straightforward. We want to make the new mobile app easy to use on an ongoing basis. A platform that is intuitive and adaptive, so carers can spend more time well informed and with the people they support. Delivering quality care is always going to be rewarding, but hard work, the least we can do is make the technology easy. Of course, we couldn’t do it without you. 

Learn more about our new app for Better Care at Home, and how we’re building the future of care technology with our users.