Professor Martin Green, Chief Executive of Care England, shares his personal insights into why innovation and technology are the future of care
Skills for Care data has highlighted our serious challenges in recruiting and retaining a skilled and value-driven workforce. Even though there have been improvements over the last few months, we still have over 135,000 vacancies and a significant turnover rate, which is also a challenge for the sector. These figures are extremely worrying, but the projections of how many more staff we need are the most significant cause of concern. We project that we will need well over 400,000 extra staff in the next 20 years, and these people will not be available in the workforce.
The statistics are stark, but they also present an opportunity for creative solutions. As a sector, we can no longer continue to do the same things as we have always done; we do not have the staff or the funding to sustain our current model. We can look at this challenge in two ways: either we see it as something that is going to destroy the current model of care, or we can see it as an enormous opportunity to shift the dial and start delivering in a different way. There has to be a new approach, and technology and data have to be at the centre of how we work in the future. This shift towards technology offers a hopeful and optimistic future for the care sector.
It is important that when we make decisions about how we vary our model, we remind ourselves that technology is not an end in itself, rather it is a means to deliver better outcomes and more choice and control for the service user. One of the challenges of implementing technology is understanding what it can do to improve quality and efficiency within the care service. I have seen some really great examples where using technology has transformed the experience of the person who uses the service, but it has also increased efficiency and improved productivity. I was always disappointed that our sector did not embrace the productivity challenge when the previous government initiated it. There was a lot of talk in the sector about how we were a person-to-person service, and we could not use technology because it would undermine the relationship-based nature of care. I do not believe this is true, and in many cases, I believe it was used as a convenient excuse not to modernise.
In the last few years, I have seen some great technologies that are delivering benefits for people who use services, their families, and the staff and organisations that provide care.
Some time ago, I went to a care home in Lincolnshire and met a man who was living with advanced dementia and who had been to the hospital four times in seven months with urinary tract infections. This man was then fitted with a simple Fitbit that cost just under £30, and it monitored his activity and temperature and identified slight increases in activity patterns were a prelude to a UTI. This knowledge helped the care home bring in proactive medicine, and he was prescribed appropriate medication before the condition became serious. For the last nine months of his life, he lived without having to be admitted to the hospital.
I was also recently at the launch of Alexa Care Homes, and I saw how this new system, developed specifically for the care home sector, enables residents to control many aspects of their own lives and significantly improves efficiency within the care home. Much of the current technology could easily be adapted for care settings and could have a transformational impact on the quality of care and outcomes.
I have also been interested in the development of safety monitoring and quality assurance programs. In care homes that have implemented these approaches, you not only see improvements in the quality of care but can also identify and respond proactively to people’s changing conditions. CCTV safety monitoring and quality assurance can also be very important elements of delivering an audit trail for the regulator and an opportunity for care providers to identify issues and improve practice. This emphasis on technology’s role in improving care quality should reassure the audience about the future of care services.
The care home sector was on the back foot during the first technology revolution. I sincerely hope that as we move into a world of AI and robotics, we will be able to lead the agenda, improve outcomes and efficiency, and enable staff to do their most important work: delivering the relationship-based care they offer to the people they support.
@ProfMartinGreen @CareEngland
