Technology Enabled Care Will Be A Priority In 2024

By Steve Sawyer, Managing Director, Access Health, Support and Care

The demand for care services continues to rise. Budgets are tighter, staffing levels are difficult to maintain, and services are under greater scrutiny, and yet the health and care journey largely remains a disjointed, analogue process, with unnecessary administration and repetition.

However, the journey that individuals embark upon when receiving care, whether in their home or in a residential setting is often a largely disjointed, analogue process, with unnecessary admin-heavy elements.

The key issues social care has been facing are capacity, cost, and complexity. None of these issues will be fixed by funding alone and staffing issues in the care sector are an ongoing issue, made even more challenging by the increased demand for services.

Using technology is proven to help mitigate these issues. However, there are still some social care providers with very little technology in place, with a lot of processes being managed and recorded on paper.

Looking forward to 2024, there are many opportunities to innovate across the care pathway, from streamlining commissioning, to predictive in-home monitoring and producing personalised care plans for individuals. All of these changes will help to provide more person centred care. We’re seeing it happen already, but I’m hopeful that this year is where we will see it scale. The vast and often untapped potential of integrated technologies in the social care system, if realised, will all help to provide more person-centred care and free up time for staff to spend where it is most needed.

The care continuum
However, the most important step to take is to consider the whole care continuum and the ever changing needs of the individual. Care is not linear, and all parties involved in caring for an individual should be given the tools to work in a joined up way.

This view is person-centred, recognising that an individual may need to access support at different points of the care pathway at the same time. A person could be engaging in self-care to manage one part of their health and wellbeing, but receiving community care for another issue. The instances provide multiple opportunities to deliver interconnected, seamless interactions which provide the visibility to understand, prevent and intervene to improve individual outcomes, avoiding or slowing a persons decline. This creates capacity in the system and reduces cost.

There are already examples of this happening. The Royal Masonic Benevolent Institution has made it possible for individuals living with dementia to live more independently in their care homes, by creating personalised dementia plans with Access Care Planning software. This has made it possible for their staff to better understand what interventions are working best for each individual, and their plan can continue to be shaped to suit their needs. But 2024 is the year I hope to see more organisations realise this potential. With the target for 80% of social care providers to have a digital care record in place by March 2024, the pressure is on.

Analogue to digital
Technology enabled processes are the necessary catalyst for preventative, predictive care. RMBI has shown as much, taking an approach underpinned by digitalisation, innovation and integration. However, this is just one example of what technology enabled care can do.

In both care home and home care settings, this analogue to digital process can take many forms, such as replacing analogue alarms with digital ones, wearable technology, and sensors. However, rather than using these tools to replace people delivering care, it only intends to enhance their ways of working, supporting them with more intelligent systems. Home sensors could show that a person who is usually scheduled for home visits at 8am to help them get up and eat breakfast actually wakes up at 6am, and would prefer visits earlier in the morning. When this information is integrated into the digital care record, care providers have a more holistic picture of the person and can adapt their care plan appropriately, caring for them in the way that suits them.

The 2024 vision
An integrated system across the care continuum can help to solve the challenges of capacity, cost, and complexity by focusing on prevention, and delivering services in the right place at the right time. Technology enabled care is synonymous with person-centred care. In 2024, capacity challenges associated with low staffing levels and difficulties with retention are likely to persist as they have in 2023, and finding ways to innovate can and will help with these issues. The sooner we view care as a continuum, with services that centre around the individual, the sooner we can unlock capacity in social care at scale.