Digital revolution in social care to bring £127m of future improvements

12 Aug 2021 02:29 PM

Our Social Care Programme funded new ways of working which will ultimately reduce hospital admissions and GP visits, as well as improve quality of life. This revolution in digital technology is expected to lead to £127m worth of benefits.

A drive to expand the use of digital technology in social care is expected to lead to £127m worth of benefits.

Analysis of NHS Digital’s Social Care Programme found that new ways of working will reduce hospital admissions and GP visits, as well as improve quality of life.

The programme aimed to harness the power of information and technology to help England’s social care sector care for people more and effectively and efficiently.

It started in 2016, had an investment of £23m, and has funded over 100 projects including the development of apps, the roll out of new robotic technology to help carers and tools to reduce the risk of falls.

Other innovations included:

An Electronic Red Bag to replace the physical ‘red bag’, which accompanies someone when they go into hospital from their residential care or nursing home. The eRedBag contains a standardised set of information about health and care, such as medications, medical history, personal preferences and information about safeguarding.
Remote monitoring technology which monitors care home residents, particularly through the night, to alert staff to unusual movements or people calling for help. Participating care homes saw a large reduction in falls and in one case, could give immediate help to a resident who had suffered a cardiac arrest during the night.

Projects driven by the programme are expected to result in benefits equivalent to £127m over their lifespan.

James Palmer, Programme Head of the Social Care Programme at NHS Digital, said: “We are delighted to see the impact that digital technology introduced through our programme has already had on people’s lives and the multitude of benefits it will bring in the years to come, both on individuals and on the wider health and social care sector.

“Our approach throughout has been led by users of the services and we have worked collaboratively with care providers and local authorities, which has given us high confidence they can deliver outcomes and benefits for those commissioning, providing and receiving care.”

Areas of work in the Social Care Programme included the Social Care Digital Innovation Programme and Social Care Digital Accelerator Programme, which saw innovative ways of using digital technology developed by 69 local authorities.

Through another project, the Digital Social Care Pathfinders, new digital tools were adopted by participating providers to transform care. Other providers can now benefit from these innovations, such as a monitor which sends health data from care home residents to GP systems, then uses artificial intelligence to predict their care needs.

Under the initial phase of this programme, 26 Pathfinders were funded to run small pilots in their local areas. In this most recent phase, which ran from 2019 to 2021, 16 of these organisations received funding to develop their products, scale them up and make them available for use by other organisations.

Products were mainly focused on standardising information and developing digital ways of sharing that information, reducing delayed transfers of care and hospital admissions and preventing health conditions worsening using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Mandy Thorn, Vice Chair of the National Care Association, said: “The Digital Social Care Pathfinders programme has left a lasting legacy, in particular it has helped create stronger links between the adult social care provider sector, local authorities and the NHS, whilst empowering individuals to have their voices heard. The Care Provider Alliance is proud to have been an integral part of this programme and to have been involved in such transformational work.”

Ann Mackay, Director of Policy at Care England, added: “It is hard to single out individual projects from amongst the 16 - the proof of concepts, such as the use of integrated acoustic monitoring technology will have a long lasting impact. In addition, the focus on predictive technology has been particularly impressive and the project with HFT (My Health Guide) has actually given people with learning disabilities a voice.”

The Digital Social Care Pathfinders project ran until March 2021 and the products developed are now available to be used by other organisations.

NHSX is leading the digital transformation of social care and will build on the work of NHS Digital.

Alice Ainsworth, Deputy Director for Social Care Tech Policy at NHSX, said: "This programme has demonstrated the huge potential benefits of technology in improving the quality of care people receive in the adult social care sector.

"We want to see many more people benefit from digital transformation and are focused on ensuring digital social care records are adopted across the sector by March 2024.

"Every provider needs to have the foundations in place to unlock the benefits of digitisation for the people in their care, so they can confidently adopt the most effective care technologies, improve the quality and safety of the care they deliver, and enable much closer integration with NHS partners."

Social Care Programme

The Social Care Programme ran from 2016 to 2021 and has made a significant contribution to improving digital maturity in the adult social care provider sector (such as domiciliary care and care homes) and has helped the adult social care to join up its IT systems with the health sector.

Notes for editors

NHS Digital’s Social Care Programme ran from 2016 to 2021 and more information can be found here.
Benefits analysis shows that the work developed as a result is expected to be worth a total of £127m in cost savings, increased efficiency and productivity and in wider health and wellbeing benefits such as reducing the number of hospital admissions and GP visits.
The overarching Social Care Programme involved several different workstreams:
- Wider programme work;
- Initial programme work in 2016/17;
- Local Investment Programme 2017/18;
- Social Care Digital Innovation Programme 2018/19;
- Discovery and Proof of Concept projects in 2018/19;
- Digital Social Care project;
- Social Care Digital Demonstrators (2018/19);
- Social Care Digital Pathfinders (2019/21);
- Social Care Digital Innovation Programme (2019/21); and
- Social Care Digital Accelerator Programme (2019/21).
More on the Social Care Digital Innovation Programme and Social Care Digital Accelerator Programme is available here
The Professional Record Standards Body (PRSB) was commissioned to support the Pathfinder projects and develop five new national social care standards for integrating key health and social care information. The new national standards have been introduced to ensure that information is recorded and shared in a clear and consistent way, which will provide professionals with a full picture of a person’s needs so that they can provide safer and individually tailored care. The standards are published at www.theprsb.org/standards
The Care Provider Alliance (CPA) brings together the 10 main national associations which represent independent and voluntary adult social care providers in England.