Professor Vic Rayner OBE, Chief Executive Officer, National Care Forum
Following another Care Innovation Challenge weekend filled with high energy collaboration in the name of social care innovation, we are still energised and so grateful for everyone’s time and contributions.
The Care Innovation Challenge weekend, a hackathon-style creative weekend of idea generation and prototype trialling for social care, took place on a weekend at the beginning of July at Coventry University’s Technocentre.
The weekend, which has been running since 2018, brought together leading experts in the sector and people with lived experience to provide mentorship to budding entrepreneurs to focus on innovations that have the potential to transform social care, improving outcomes for people. Representatives from the regulatory and policy world also attended to provide added perspectives. The event was made possible thanks to the continuing help and sponsorship of the Care Innovation Hub partners, RWK Goodman, Person Centred Software, Marrgo, Home Instead, Hilton Nursing Partners, Coventry University, Community Integrated Care, Care Management Matters, Care Friends and Borough Care, who all supported the teams’ idea generation and will continue to provide mentoring support for the winning teams.
The culmination of the weekend was the selection of five teams to present their ideas at The Care Show, the largest care event in the UK, on 11th-12th October at the NEC in Birmingham. The teams selected for the final picked up on all the core challenges facing social care – supporting the workforce, promoting independence, addressing isolation, getting data to support prevention and ensuring transparency around costs.
- Team Careberry’s innovation is focused on Smart Care Cost, an add-on to care planning so care providers can estimate costs to deliver a service for an individual.
- Team Kit to Live’s innovation is an assessment tool, via an app, to enable video assessments by an Occupational Therapist (OT) to recommend physical aids for rehabilitation and to reduce OT assessment waiting times.
- Team Night Safety’s innovation is an alert app for people with chronic health conditions to help them manage their medication.
- Team Tresacare’s innovation is a wellbeing app which allows people to earn rewards for taking part in wellbeing gyms.
- Team Wellpal’s innovation is an app to create intergenerational links between older people and students looking to volunteer.
Each of the semi-finalists receive ongoing mentoring and £500 per team. The winning team will receive £1,000 in prize money, media coverage and further mentoring to develop their idea.
Representatives from partners Think Local Act Personal (TLAP), through their National Co-production Advisory Group (NCAG), attended the Challenge and will continue to support the finalists in developing their innovations, ensuring that people with lived experience are an integral part of creating solutions.
Dr Clenton Farquharson CBE, TLAP’s Chair and Challenge mentor, said, “People who draw on care and support should be at the forefront. Participants can come in with a fixed mindset for an idea and one of my roles is to try help them see the bigger picture, asking have they thought what this might mean for people accessing care and support.”
Everyone working in the sector, and those receiving support, will feel the benefits in the future from the idea generation the Care Innovation Challenge is nurturing right now. We can’t wait to see how the ideas progress.
For more information about the Care Innovation Challenge visit https://careinnovationhub.org.uk/challenge/ .
