What next for the digital transformation of adult social care?

January is a good time to take stock and think about the future. It has been a busy few years in the digitising social care programme, and we appear to be on track for 80% of care providers having a digital social care record by March, but this is only the beginning. There are so many opportunities for technology to support the delivery of social care, helping people to live independently for longer and making services more efficient, safe and, perhaps most importantly, personalised. 

As we move past the first phase of our work our focus will shift to two key areas, both announced alongside the launch of the Casey Commission on 3 January: 

• We will set new standards for the use of technology in care, so people who draw on care, their families and care providers can confidently buy what works and get the safest, most effective tech into their homes or services, promoting better choice and control for people. 
• We will join up health and care services by enabling health and care staff to access real time social care, GP and hospital data, including by joining up digital systems with a shared platform. By the end of the parliament, we aim for all care providers to be fully digitised, and for staff to have access to essential medical information. 

So what does that mean in practice? Well for one thing it means that I’m going to be massively exceeding the 500 word limit I’ve been given for this blog (sorry!). But it also means that we’ll be taking some big steps towards technology being as essential to people’s care as it is in every other aspect of our lives. Let’s take each area in turn. 

Setting new standards for the use of technology in care 

There is lots of great technology out there that can help people to live independently. But finding it can be an issue – there’s a catch 22 that you can only find what you need if you know what to search for. I know that when I was looking for technology that would help my grandmother to stay at home for longer I only found what I needed by visiting the care show; hardly an option for most people. Although there are now review sites which partially fill the gap there is no independent source of information. So we intend to make it easier for people to find technology that is fit for purpose and meets a clearly defined set of standards. 

There has already been some good work in this space, across multiple standards providers, and not least – the work my own team has done with digital social care records. But there is no single approach across the market and it’s therefore hard for suppliers to know what they need to comply with and for people buying technologies to know what to look for. 

Over the next few years we will be working with partners to categorise different types of technology and provide guidance on where they can be used and the impact they have. Each category of technology will have a list of minimum functionality that must be offered and the standards that apply to the technology. We will then provide a list of solutions that are compliant with the standards. 

Where possible we will not duplicate existing standards. We will instead be listing the ISO, BSI or other published standards that the technology must comply with so that suppliers are not being asked to complete standards that only apply within social care. We will also look to “whitelist” existing assurance models, where appropriate, so that where a supplier has already been through an equivalent process we are not asking them to go through additional assurance. There may be exceptions to this, particularly when we look at how data can be shared with an individual’s health / care record, but we will work with industry to ensure that our approach is proportionate and does not stifle innovation. 

The current intention is to start with sensor based technologies, building on the falls prevention and detection pilots that we have already supported, and then move on to different categories of technology over time, setting out a clear roadmap for suppliers. 

Joining up health and care services 

The care technologies discussed above will play an important part in someone’s care, triggering alerts for the individual. But to make the best use of them we need to connect them to other systems. Linking them to social care records and linking social care data with health will make it possible to approach care in a different way, identifying when someone is struggling more at home and intervening early.  

But there are simple things that can be fixed now. Not having to repeat your care needs when you talk to people in different care settings. Or making sure that front line staff have the information that they need. 

To give a couple of examples when my grandmother was admitted to hospital the doctor only knew her medication history because I was there to point him to her printed care record. That information should have already been visible in his patient record system. 

And when she was discharged we only found out when we let her care home know that we had been told she wouldn’t be discharged that day. It turned out she had arrived in an ambulance just before our call. With no notice. On a Sunday afternoon.  It was fortunate they had the necessary staff on shift to support her. 

Connecting health and social care data should reduce situations like this. The first step has already been taken; by the end of February all assured digital social care record systems will have switched on GP Connect. That will mean that care providers will be able to see a restricted view of the primary care record for the people they care for – in particular changes in medications. We will be focussing on helping care providers to switch on and use GP Connect in their care records over the coming months so that they aren’t wasting time trying to contact the GP. 

We also need to make sure that data can be shared back into the NHS and connected to NHS systems. In 2025 we will be developing an interoperability platform that connects together social care records and provides a single place to connect into NHS systems including patient records, shared care records and the federated data platform. It will share data that is structured around the minimum operational data standard for direct care purposes so that frontline staff have the latest information about the person they are looking after. 

To fully realise these benefits we need to ensure that the whole sector is digitised. We want to ensure that every provider has a digital social care record that can be connected to the interoperability platform and that all care providers meet an appropriate level of cyber and data security before information is shared. We will be developing options for how to achieve this over the coming months. 

Looking further ahead 

There is enormous potential for technology to support care in future. As people’s homes become more connected and smart technologies become more widespread we will undoubtedly see them being used differently as people age. Whether it is smart home devices such as a smart speaker being used to prompt medication alerts or to check on a family member while they take their medication, sensor based lights that can be used to alert carers if someone hasn’t got out of bed in the morning, AI being used to track behavioural changes or smart watches being used to help monitor gait and falls risk there is already a lot available that can help us rethink how we provide care and give people much more control over their own lives. 

Our work over the next few years will help people to rethink how we use existing technologies to support healthier ageing and make it easier to find new technologies that support safety and independence. Joining up health and care data will create a platform for training and deploying sophisticated new AI technologies that can help to target preventative interventions. And making sure frontline staff have the information they need will improve the quality and safety of care.  

Social care could be transformed in the coming years. Our job is simple. We need to enable that transformation to happen.