Beverly Futtit, Director of Digital Transformation at the National Care Forum, explains how the Adult Social Care Testbed is rebalancing a care technology market where providers have long felt excluded — creating a more collaborative, co-designed future for care.
Adult social care is transforming, and practice and policy is becoming ever more focused on the role technology and innovation, including AI, can play in our sector. However, many challenges remain which must be addressed in order to allow the true potential of digital transformation to shape care and support for the future to flourish.
The Adult Social Care testbed we are delivering in partnership with the University of Liverpool Civic Health Innovation Labs for the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority Life Sciences Innovation Zone is paving the way for a collaborative future where not-for-profit care and support providers, their staff and the people they support, tech providers and academics work together to change the course of care delivery in the future. In our report, ‘Discovering our Digital Potential’, we highlight how this unique collective offers a compelling vision of what collaborative, co-designed data-driven care could look like. But achieving this future demands more than innovation; it requires a cultural shift. Together we’re envisaging a future where the needs of people drawing on care and support are front and centre rather than competition dominating the development of new products. The testbed is creating an environment where digital technology suppliers work in a more collaborative and co-designed way with care and support organisations, their staff and the people they support together with their families and carers.
The testbed is highlighting to us the potential strength of taking a collaborative approach to harnessing the next steps in the digital revolution for care and support providers. Members that are involved in the project have told us that despite their commitment to driving digitisation foward in their organisations, they face significant barriers in achieving modernisation. Frustrations are felt around technology costs, vendor ‘lock-in’ to existing products and contracts and the fragmented basis that many solutions have been sold on instead of as integrated, intuitive ecosystems. The value of social care and support data is universally understood by the not-for-profit providers interviewed in-depth as part of the testbed project. However, they fear that strategic analytics about the people accessing their services are not easily available and even basic data is often too locked up in fragmented systems and dashboards for them to be successfully used routinely for decision-making. There is a strong appetite by care and support providers to seek to rebalance the consumer/supplier dynamic and the testbed is meeting this challenge head-on. By joining this partnership, care providers, their staff and the people they support have a unique opportunity to leapfrog the usual barriers preventing them from grasping the potential of technology and using it to improve outcomes for the people they support and enhancing digital skills amongst their workforce.
Collaboration in Action
This partnership has already begun the process of reshaping the region’s care and support landscape by acknowledging the common challenges faced by care and support providers. The care providers participating in the Testbed employ over 13,000 care professionals who support more than 12,500 individuals and have expressed a strong desire to turn those challenges into solutions and work together to co-design, adapt and adopt digital solutions.
Embedding Collaboration in Practice
To renew care together, collaboration must be embedded across regulation, workforce ‘planning, and innovation.
– Regulation: Compliance should not be a barrier to innovation. The ‘Discovering our Digital Potential’ report calls for a balance between regulatory accountability and the freedom to use data for service improvement. Ethical use of data matters here, and regulators should support collaborative models that prioritise person-centred outcomes over paperwork.
– Workforce Planning: The digital skills gap is a major obstacle. Providers report uneven digital literacy, role boundaries that limit data use, and inconsistent training opportunities. Collaborative workforce initiatives such as shared digital champions and co-developed training programmes can help bridge these gaps. NCF has developed training opportunities that will be open to testbed participants including the Care Technologist Training Project and Digital Leadership Programme . These programmes build on the potential for much wider use of digital technology to empower people receiving care and support to take the lead in their own care and for care managers to drive forward digital transformation in their organisations. Excellence is at the heart of this ambition and following the Quality Assured Care Learning Service initial verification review by Skills for Care, NCF’s Digital Leadership Programme has recently been confirmed as continuing to meet Quality Assured Care Learning Quality Standards.
– Innovation: Co-production must be the norm. The testbed’s emphasis on user-led design ensures that technology serves real needs, not abstract ideals. Providers must work together to test, evaluate, and refine solutions, sharing insights and lessons learned.
The Role of Technology
Technology is both a catalyst and a challenge. The report reveals providers’ aspirations for predictive analytics, voice-first interfaces, wearables, and ambient sensing. But it also highlights concerns around cost, vendor lock-in, and ethical boundaries.
Collaboration can address these issues. By pooling resources, providers can negotiate better terms with vendors, invest in shared infrastructure, and develop ethical frameworks for tech use. Importantly, collaboration ensures that technology augments rather than replaces human care.
A Vision for the Future
Imagine a care system where data flows seamlessly between health and social care, where professionals are empowered by real-time insights, and where people who draw on care shape digital tools on their terms. This is not a distant dream, it’s a recipe already being tested in Liverpool.
The testbed’s work shows that with bold leadership, local flair, and professional wisdom, collaboration can unlock the sector’s digital potential. But it also underscores the need for investment, policy support, and a shared commitment to change.
The Adult Social Care testbed offers a powerful blueprint. All partners taking part have an exciting opportunity to share the project’s ambitions and outcomes, so the wider sector can be encouraged to follow its lead and renew care together.
