Education and Research Institutes

During the first wave of the pandemic, Nourish played an instrumental role working alongside CASPA and other digital care providers to capture real time data from Care Homes across the UK on Covid infection levels.

This data was shared with NHS England and informed daily Government reporting as well as analysed to inform strategies for infection control. Using digital technology, Nourish could quickly access and harness important data from multiple sources with ease and support the ever changing decisions needed during the crisis.

The DACHA study was funded by the National Institute of Health and Care Research which aimed to develop and test a minimum dataset with 60 care homes in England. The study was created to help care home staff better understand the impact of day-to-day decisions on residents and also help the NHS to work better with care homes when providing healthcare.

The results indicated that using a minimum dataset could have helped prevent the confusion and uncertainty amongst policymakers responding to COVID-19 in care homes during the first wave of the pandemic. At Nourish, we were keen to be involved and supported the collation and management of the data for analysis.

Nourish is recognised as one of the leading suppliers for DSC and were invited to be part of the working group for the ongoing Vivaldi study hosted by the Outstanding Society alongside University College London (UCL) and Care England which aims to reduce the impact of infection in care homes.

In September 2022, Nourish were part of the task and finish group to establish the new programme of research and surveillance, using data to help shape the future of social care through supporting improvements in care quality. In January 2023, we progressed as one of the stakeholders for the oversight and governance team which establishes core principles regarding data use as well as reviewing applications to use the data and proposed outputs from the data.