The Homecare Association (HCA) is a longstanding representative and advocate for home care providers across the UK. They are committed to working alongside home care providers to drive positive change and share understanding and best practise. Their Technology and Home Care conference is a continuation of this legacy. Bringing home care leaders, care technology innovators and people with a passion for care together for a day that reflects on how we got where we are and discusses how we move forward from here. The day featured talks from well respected names in technology and social care covering topics that ranged from apps to AI and outcomes to Outstanding. As headline sponsor of the event we were proud to share our insights and very excited to learn from everyone else. 

The morning sessions of the Technology and Home Care Conference focussed on the potential of technology and home care. Dr Townson, CEO of the HCA welcomed The King’s Fund’s Pritesh Mistry to discuss how technology solutions can help move care closer to home. The talk centred on a piece of research The King’s Fund produced with Nourish. ‘The reality of, and potential for, digitally enabled care in the community’. It is an important piece of work that set the tone for the day, which we discuss in more detail in a blog we will release later this month. Crucially, one of Pritesh’s findings, that ‘technology for the sake of technology is not progress’, reverberated through the following panel discussion. 

The panel focussed on ‘Tech solutions for improving home care operations’. A practical reflection on the impact technology has on operational practises. Abbots Care’s Camille Leavold chaired a panel featuring ME Passport’s Carly Rochester, Lifted Talent’s Rachel Crook, Roger McDermott from NHS Arden & Greater East Midlands CSU, AI Dimension’s Mark Russell-Smith and Pairly’s Will Flint. These solutions are united by their commitment to designing technology solutions for the sake of care. Their innovations focus on established challenges care providers face. Whether it is recruitment or onboarding, capacity tracking or route planning. These solutions solved operational issues at the heart of home care. Reflecting the reality of tech-driven progress in our sector, as well as the potential for its development.

Following a quick break for chats and refreshments we returned to the main hall for the late morning talks. These panels turned their attention to outcomes, and how we can improve them with tech and data. The first talk centred on outcomes, and how we as a sector can be ‘people-led and tech enabled’ to improve them. Caroline Southgate of Doris Jones led a panel featuring Bellevie’s Trudie Fell, Gillie.AI’s Samuel Kivikari, Digi Rehab’s Arend Roos and Stephen Milne from Censis.

They shared insights from their respective technological innovations in care. Crucially, without losing sight of the people who define care. Something Arend Roos quickly reminded us of when we were all asked to stand up to start the conversation. Did you know AI is used to analyse approximately one-third of all home care in Finland? Or about the potential of the Internet of Things to support public bodies to move from analogue to digital? These examples proved just how much power technology can give providers to shape their own future. A point highlighted when Trudie Fell asserted: “It is up to us, not Local Authorities, to determine what outcomes we should focus on”

Of course, focussing on outcomes requires having the information to understand them. And that brings us to one of the key questions surrounding technology and social care, data. Our Chief Marketing Officer, Lee Gilbert, led the next panel in a discussion on exactly that. ‘What can we learn from the data in digital systems?’. Lee welcomed several leaders from prominent digital care solutions to join the discussion. Including our CEO Nuno Almeida. We discuss this incisive and informed panel in more detail here.

The post lunch session is always the most sluggish at any conference. It’s only natural. Any good organiser looks to put in a shocking, or otherwise stimulating, talk to wake everyone up. At Technology and Home Care 2024 this task fell to Right at Home’s Lucy Campbell and Lund University’s Laetitia Tanqueray. They set about their task with aplomb, sharing their understanding of ‘How robots will help us in home care in the future’. While we remain some ways off robots becoming commonplace, it is always exciting to be updated on their progress! 

From there attention switched to responsible use of AI and cyber security. AI is the hot-button topic across digital development. We share our sense of curiosity, excitement and apprehension with a wide range of sectors and institutions. Muhammad Damji of Caring Crew chaired the important panel. He set the table for Dr Green, of Oxford University’s Institute of Ethics in AI, Reed Screening’s Keith Rosser and Care4ocus’s Alex Joseph. They talked about the ethical use of AI, how to provide appropriate training and the rising need to be able to detect AI-created fake documents.  

“As providers, we have to be really careful that we adopt a piece of tech like AI with the correct adjustments in place. Always double-check any information that is produced by generative AI. Ensure that appropriate training is provided and reassure your team that AI and tech are being used to complement their work, not replace them.” Muhammad Damji, Managing Director, Caring Crew. 

The final session of the day featured one last discussion and Home Instead UK’s Martin Jones’s closing remarks. 

Steve Sawyer of The Access Group chaired the final panel of the day, stepping in for the unavailable Nathan Downing of TEC Services Association, to disucss ‘How can councils support innovation in home care. Stephen Peddie, Local Government Association and Steve Taylor of PA Consulting joined him. 
 
Our Steve speakers talked about how changing commissioning practices can support in-person care with technology and home care solutions. Highlighting three key mechanisms by which technology can impact the need for home care.  

The talk touched on many interesting undertakings across care. It also called back several ideas and initiatives detailed by other speakers earlier in the day. Fundamentally, we need to work together, with both our communities, and our councils, to deliver the outcomes we all want. 

Something Martin Jones reflected on in his closing address. 

“I do believe that conferences such as this gives us an opportunity to use and embrace new technology. We are going to need to use technology to support people as they grow older and to grow through the issues we have at the moment.” 

Martin Jones ended the incredible day with a simple thought exercise. He asked everyone to close their eyes and picture where technology and home care will be in 5 years. Once we all solidified an image in our minds, he asked us to open our eyes again. 

“It’ll take two years to get to what you pictured.” 

While the distance to our digital future remains debatable, one thing remains undeniable, we’ll need to work together to get there. 

If you would like to learn more about working with Nourish, contact us here. 

The benefits of digital rostering go beyond efficiency. Optimisation is about more than driving shorter routes, it’s about driving positive outcomes as well. Staff scheduling is a complicated, and crucial part of delivering outstanding home care. It requires an in-depth understanding of your area, your community and your team. One that goes beyond simply managing spreadsheets. Truly great digital rostering software gives you the tools to bring all of your experience, data and empathy to bear on the challenge of staff scheduling in home care. 

A good start is half the battle, though in home care it can often feel like an uphill battle at the beginning. Nourish Rostering’s overview puts you in the lifeguard’s seat; with a clear view of your service and the insight to notice trouble before it brews too long. Digital rostering centralises your vital information. You can schedule your clients’ needs and your carers availability as desired, ensuring that every appointment is covered, and every individual involved is well informed.  

You can also fill your system with pertinent information about your service and the people who make it special. Clients can detail their needs, as well as their desires and ambitions. While your carers can include their skills, their interests and their passions. Separately these are useful silos of information, but together in one system they become influential drivers of positive care outcomes. These details can then be combined with geographic factors and clinical skills as you plan appointments and build runs to best match the needs and abilities of your care community. 

That is the core power of digital rostering and home care software. The ability to bring together a wealth of information and put it at your fingertips. Unlock the expertise of your organisation by moving all the vital information from the heads and filing cabinets of your coordinators, onto a digital format. Ensuring no hour, need or opportunity gets overlooked when you are planning your care. This can feel like an uphill engagement indeed at the start! But once crested it brings speed, and specification, to your rostering process.  

Of course, nothing in home care provision is ever straightforward. Which is precisely why home care software needs to be. Any care coordinator knows the unpredictability of a home care rota. Clients’ needs change over time, availability varies for all parties, and no one can ever be certain what awaits them just around the corner.  

Any good home care rostering software needs to be reactive. Our drag-and-drop functionality is exactly that. It gives a succinct, yet detailed, overview of your schedule for the day, alongside the ability to quickly adjust appointments as necessary. Each client’s appointments are clearly shown, as well as the availability of your carers. This gives you the tools to quickly adjust when the inevitable changes need to happen. Digital rostering includes the ability to convey these changes as necessary with your team, so no one misses out on an update. 

Crucially, you can make these decisions efficiently, with the weight of experience and the information of your system behind you. Our ‘Recommend’ a carer feature includes all relevant information on your calls so that you can send the right person to the right appointment every time. These factors include travel time and distance, specified to include mode of transport, familiarity with the client, experience and specific skills required and personal preferences of both the client and potential carers. Each data point further colours the picture of your care, and you can adjust the weighting of these points to match the unique needs of your community. Therefore you are not only planning efficiently, but effectively too, so you can continue to drive positive outcomes with your care. 

Taking care of your team is a crucial part of optimising your staff scheduling. With digital rostering you can empower and inform your carers. Our all-in-one-pocket solution gives your carers a tool that has all the information they need to manage their day. An up-to-date schedule which shows not only where they need to be and when, but travel times in between. Allowing them to plan their routes effectively and adapt to changes with ease and efficiency.  

Our new ‘Time Off’ feature helps you establish and manage your teams holiday accrual. Your carers can review and request time off through their app, promoting optimisation through centralisation of your processes.  Decisions that once took half an hour can now be resolved instantaneously. This frees up your time to focus on people and outcomes, rather than balancing spreadsheets and calculators.  

People are what drives care, and outcomes are how we measure our impact. Understanding that impact comes from understanding the way our care shapes lives. Staff scheduling plays a huge role in this, and call monitoring is key to ensuring your information is up to date and accurate when reviewing your home care rostering. Information like actual appointment times highlight the variety of key care indicators. Such as: consistent patterns in appointment length, travel times, travel mileage and more. You can record, review and report to best shape your appointments to the needs of your community.  

This information can then be combined with other data points to optimise your digital rostering. Do you need to reduce the length of one appointment? Increase the length of another? Adjust runs to balance travel time? Or maybe change carers to account for public transport variances? When you digitise your processes, you position yourself to benefit from all the data you naturally accrue. With the right software, you can take full advantage of this opportunity to improve care quality, care efficiency, and care outcomes.  

Digital rostering offers a range of benefits for your service. It lets you optimise the information you are already gathering and refine it to improve your outcomes as well as your efficiency. Time saving is a fantastic benefit on its own, and one that many care providers who are digitising their staff scheduling have experienced. However, there are far more benefits to unlock beyond efficiency. Benefits that involve everyone in your community collaborating effectively to change the lives of everyone in your community. 

‘Co-production’ is a long-standing practice and a newly minted hot topic in social care. It is based on our ability to involve all relevant people, or ‘stakeholders’ as they say in corporate meeting rooms, in the process of care design. It guarantees that the people who are utilising a care service are involved in the production of that care. An undertaking that lies at the heart of person-led care.  

If people with support, families and commissioners expect this of care providers, then it is only natural that those care providers should demand it from their software suppliers as well. 

At Nourish Care, co-production is central to our design process. It bridges our technical expertise with our user’s care experience to produce effective, efficient solutions. Our user’s input guides our development, with feature requests, feedback forms and beta testing being just some of the essential ways we keep our user’s experience central to our development.  

The latest Innovation to emerge from this process is our new ‘Time Off Management’ functionality for Nourish Rostering and Community. We know that managing rosters is one of the most demanding aspects of providing home care, for both coordinators and carers. We developed our Time Off Management feature to address these challenges directly based on extensive user feedback, advice and industry insights.  

Our new functionality is designed to simplify your time off processes, making it easier to manage leave, maintain coverage, and ensure a smooth operation for everyone involved.  

The features of our new Time Off functionality are all directly tied to the feedback and input of our users. 

Holiday schemes allow for a group of settings to be built and then applied to relevant carers. This grants customisability and flexibility to coordinators while removing the need to configure each carers holiday settings individually. You can group holiday accrual, reference periods, pay methods and more to make the complexities of specificity a simple activity. 

We found the denominator of our feature requests for time off functionality was customisability. It is the most effective way to support the varied and at times unpredictable home care provider’s scheduling needs. 

Features like year start dates for holiday accrual, carry over time settings for different time off types and pay calculations all vary from service to service, and across different governments and geographies. For example, the holiday pay reference period in the UK is 52 worked weeks while in the Republic of Ireland it is a 13-week reference period. It was vital we build these features with the freedom for our users to customise the settings and wrap them around their unique service. 

We have also included a manual entitlement adjustment for coordinators for precise control when desired. A need we discovered when talking to a lot of the participants in our beta testing phase. 

Of course, it wouldn’t be Nourish without analytics and reporting functionality as well. We have a fantastic analysis page to help administrators keep track of their carers time off. It includes a calendar view of all booked, requested and refused time off, a chart of absence types e.g. holiday, sick, bereavement, a table view of the adjustments made to their carer’s entitlement, a table view of requests, their status and the option to filter or edit them as desired. 

We built several key new time off functions into our carer app as well. This gives more insight and control to carers. With our new Time Off Management functionality carers can request leave directly from the rostering app, simplifying the process of requesting time off for a variety of reasons including holidays, sickness and bereavement.

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

Carers can use the app to review their remaining time off allowance and keep track of requests. We centralised all this information to further our app as the leading carer support platform in home care. Information is power for a carer on the go and with this new functionality we continue to develop our ‘all-in-one pocket’ solution. It provides an overview of their currently accrued time off and helps to make the process of defining availability and accrual more straightforward for everyone involved. 

For non Nourish users who want to learn more about our approach to co-production and working with us to support their home care service, book a demo. 

We have spent years working on our rostering system to make this as quick and straightforward as possible. Something we could only achieve thanks to co-production with our users through our beta testing processes. We spoke to Samantha Rabvu, Care Manager for TLB 24/7 Healthcare, about her experience participating in our Time Off Management beta. 

“We were paper based for annual leave requests,” explained Samantha. “Which meant someone had to fill in a form and scan it or take a picture of it. Then we were constantly just printing so I could give it to the person who’s approving annual leave. So when the offer to take part in a beta test for time off came along I just thought. ‘I don’t know what it is going to look like, but it sounds like something we could really use.’

“It offered the chance to cut out the middle man, the printing, and give power to both our carers and our coordinators. It was the chance to move to real time updates, rather than requests from a variety of platforms. In December last year we had a whole lot of annual leave requests. Honestly, we lost track of them due to the volume and variety of requests. Which was a major concern for us. So, when I saw that you were building something that could show us how many people are asking for time off and those who are already taking time off before approving any more, it was a game changer for me.” 

“I felt very involved,” said Samantha. “I could see the team was really drawing out our feedback with the questions they asked. ‘How is it going?’ ‘How are you guys using it?’ ‘Are there any adjustments we should make?’ I felt like a real partner that the things were saying were being considered. When we saw one of our suggestions in the next update it was amazing. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one suggesting it, but it was awesome.  

“We were involved throughout the process, even my team here was quite involved. Any issue that they had, they knew they could bring it to me, and I would pass it on. That way we always got things resolved.” 

“They were on it,” said Samantha, “They were on the money. It was so easy. If there was an issue, I’d send a screenshot and they were on it, we looked at it in depth, it was awesome. I had a main contact point but worked with several different members of your team. I just knew that they were there. They had our back, no matter what.  

“They are awesome, friendly, approachable, and we could rely on them 100%. Even the way bad news came was awesome. When something wasn’t ready, we always knew that it was still in development, it’s just not ready yet. We understood because of the communication, and we trusted your team.” 

“We’re on the right track,” said Samantha. “This was a great starting point for me. It was fantastic. Even though I was a little unsure at the start, digital wise, this isn’t something i had a lot of experience with. The process helped us to develop skills and tactics on how to navigate the rest of the digitalization roadmap, which is great.  

“So, I’m hopeful. I’m looking forward to it, it’s exciting, because I feel involved in the process. I feel like we are growing with you, and we can build something great together.” 

The future of social care will be shaped by co-production throughout the entirely of our sector. Lived experience, collaboration, data sharing, all fold together under the guiding philosophy of teamwork and community. We received over 150 feature requests for more advanced time off functionality. Which was the starting point of our development cycle, and a continuing example of our approach to digital social care solutions. 

We still have a long way to go, and we are very excited about the journey. Why don’t you join us? 

This post is by Mabel Lazzarin a User Experience (UX) designer from Nourish who focuses on developing the technology we use for use in social care and home care settings. It was originally posted on Medium and we thought it would be good to share it with you here, as she is helping to shape the way that we evolve our design system for home care.

The world is getting older. The number of older people is growing faster than in any other age group. A combination of low birth rates and longer life expectation is driving the ageing process. This scenario forecasts reduced labour forces, lower investment rates, while expenditure in health tends to increase strongly.

Changes in our society also may raise the pressure on hospital admissions and primary care. Whilst in the past it was part of a cultural tradition that older people rely on family and friends to help out with everyday needs, from shopping and help around the house to a conversation. In an urban or nomadic context, these networks may be less reliable. So attention has turned to how support of this kind can be better provided, sometimes by paid professionals, sometimes by volunteers and sometimes through time banks and exchanges. How might we create better experiences to engage a networking of care?

“People helping themselves, one another and health services represents a set of new social movements for health: changing the basics of how the health system approaches the prevention and management of health, in particular long–term conditions.” The NHS in 2030, Nesta

Emerging technologies are transforming the way people engage with their own health. Patients and carers are increasingly using mobile technology to research information online, share experiences, identify treatment options, rate providers and help to anticipate diagnoses.

Most of these solutions are focused on a younger population. Small buttons, fiddly controls,and unnecessarily complicated interfaces can all be barriers to older users. Certain fears regarding technology due to expenditure of a large amount of money with a low benefit return, breaking the equipment or doing something wrong, could also generate anxiety and frustration for the elderly audience.

The lack of solutions designed especially for elderly people reveals a potential unexplored field to investigate. How digital technologies can bring scale to innovative projects that help older people overcome the constraints of location, mobility or lack of memory. How design could adopt a more holistic approach and explore a flexible ecosystem, integrating technology with elements that are already part of these people’s routine.

Map of existing solutions x basic human needs

Some examples of companies working to build the confidence of older people and their carers in using digital tools to improve their quality of life:

Nesta recently launched Dementia Citizens, a platform that brings together researchers and those affected by dementia to help find ways to improve care. They started with two new apps:

The idea is to gather information submitted through the apps and from questions and feedback sent to the users.

Breezie created a senior-friendly tablet solution in partnership with Samsung. Designed to promote practical and social well-being in ageing populations. With simplified versions of everyday services such as email, games, music or video calls.

The digital inclusion could mitigate the feelings of social isolation and the loneliness, which contribute to better long-term mental and physical health.

Nightingale is a speculative healthcare service created by Method. They have been experimenting with Artificial Intelligence, connected devices (IOT), as well as exploring the value of data as a raw material for design. The result is a software platform to help improve the persistent challenges associated with treatment adherence.

The use of technology to monitor changes in patients’ health status outside of conventional clinical settings has increased the potential for remote monitoring through IoT, apps and wearables. However on another hand, there is a big discussion about the balance between data analysis and privacy. What is the minimum information needed to provide a better assistance?

An interesting case of a non-intrusive solution is Howz. It is a mix of inputs from patient’s network of care and data collected from low-cost sensors. It tracks daily patterns on electrical, lights, heat and movement activities, and send alerts to the family when it spots anomalies. By tracking the use of everyday objects and points of contact it is possible to help a frail elderly, their personal networks, families, hospitals, social and other services stay connected through their daily routine.

Recent advances in the development of bio-sensing wearables are extending their capability to move beyond simply tracking activity. New products are able to monitor continuously a broad range of physiology (from posture to brain activity) and convert this information into outputs, through advanced connectivity and computing power.

GSK and Verily are examples of investors in bioelectronic medicine, a relatively new scientific field that aims to tackle a wide range of chronic diseases using miniaturised, implantable devices that can modify electrical signals that pass along nerves in the body, including irregular or altered impulses that occur in many illnesses. This new technology could impact the treatment of certain chronic conditions such as arthritis, diabetes and asthma.

The circle of care could be integrated by family, friends, volunteers, local community, professional carers. This process could significantly change relationships, putting both caregiver and loved ones in new contexts. Chronic or long-term conditions among care recipients seem to be particularly likely to cause emotional stress for caregivers.

It is a challenge to  balance a personal life and a person’s needs. Some companies are working to offer better information and advice from those who have faced the same situation. Unforgettable, for example, offers support to people with dementia and memory loss. New ways of connecting to professional carers, as Honor or HomeTouch can create new scenarios of mixing care support, alleviating the responsibility of a unique caregiver.

Honour

More than technology and existent solutions, it is important to go deeper about the home care routine, expectations, decision points, challenges, fears, motivations and achievements from different perspectives. At Nourish we are exploring new ideas for a better home care assistance through research: listening, observing, investigating people’s story and real needs.
If you want to be part of this journey. We would love to hear from you!