Providing the best care possible for residents is the aim of every social care company. With budgets under increasing pressure even before the pandemic began, and staff vacancies at an all-time high, finding ways to improve outcomes whilst making efficiencies has become the Holy Grail in the sector.
Attending the Care Show at the NEC in Birmingham in October Artificial Intelligence (Ai) expert Alex Plenty, co-founder and Adviser to PredicAire, was able to reflect on what he has seen in the Social Care Market Digitisation area. In the three years in which he has been part of the PredicAire journey, and coming from consulting roles in the private sector, he is witnessing a transformation like those which the banking, insurance and pharmaceuticals industries have experienced, and which have delivered significant improvements in efficiencies, collaboration, and science-lead innovations.
There are many interoperable, intuitive, and resident-focused solutions coming to the market today and these solutions use the most advanced Analytics, are big-data enabled, and led by user experience. The ethics of Ai informed techniques are currently being debated and will soon be pervasive and transform the sector in ways the other sectors mentioned have already benefitted from. It took much longer to exploit Ai in the other sectors, given the technologies were being developed at the same time as their application was being determined.
Ai is having an influence on every part of our lives, from security and entertainment in our homes to the way we access healthcare. Utilising its capabilities in the social care sector is, therefore, an obvious progression.
The technology is certainly wanted. Three years ago a leading care home review site (carehome.co.uk) reported that over half of care home staff thought homes should use Ai such as smart devices to help care for residents. The website surveyed 2,611 care home owners, managers and staff, with 52% responding in this way. Between 2017 and 2020 an International project trialled the use of Ai with care home residents across the UK and Japan, using ‘Pepper’ the robot. The International Caresses (Culture-Aware Robots and Environmental Sensor Systems for Elderly Support) project was a multidisciplinary study, aimed at designing, developing and evaluating culturally competent robots that can assist older people according to the culture of the individual they are supporting. Each resident was given ‘Pepper’ for up to 18 hours over two weeks, and researchers reported a ‘significant improvement’ in their mental health and a slight improvement in loneliness.
With the amount of research already completed or in progress into using Ai in social care, it is only a matter of time before the possibilities for this technology are realised in the sector. But naturally, such a significant development is not without its concerns. The most obvious of these is the ‘human’ element – social care will always need to be delivered by people rather than robots. The Parliamentary Office of Science & Technology wrote in December 2018 that, “Robotics may free up time for caregivers enabling them to focus on delivering a better service for care recipients. However, there are concerns that social care quality may diminish with the use of robots, because robots are incapable of fulfilling the social or emotional needs of older care recipients and may increase loneliness and isolation amongst this group.”
In addition, we have all seen instances of Data Loss and Ai misuse in the media. However the opportunity exists to learn and apply good practice to avoid these pitfalls, as digitisation is advanced and adopted in the Care Sector. As good examples, Alex draws our attention to the integrated nature of the Ai solutions currently available. Specifically, there are now sufficiently intelligent Natural Language Processing (NLP) algorithms which can extract meaning and context from documents. These documents can be either scanned from paper, sent as snail-mail, or extracted from existing documents such as contracts and identification documents to an extent that enables other Ai components (such as decision-trees and clusters) to make sensible recommendations (“next best action”) or even realistic predictions. These components can then offer suggestions on the most effective way to respond to these predictions, which are likely to be medical outcomes or negative situations like a fall.
Although the research carried out by carehome.co.uk suggested that the majority of care home staff would welcome some level of Ai in their workplaces, such a significant change to working practices would naturally take some getting used to. Staff would have to learn how to use the new technology, and in turn show residents how to use it. Data protection concerns, as mentioned above, must also be addressed.
But even taking these concerns into account, Ai has the potential to transform social care for the better, by helping staff to identify anomalies and prevent them becoming significant health issues. Digital care planning technology has been available for some years, but using Ai to monitor vital signs and nutrition to assist in predicting and/or preventing unnecessary outcomes takes care delivery to another level. Concerns can be communicated to family members, increasing their peace of mind, and to medical professionals who can then decide whether to act upon them.
Ai’s other obvious benefit for social care providers is in helping increase efficiency in the actual running of the business. Digital administration for staffing, accounts, and maintenance means staff can spend more time with residents and less on paperwork, and will have the added benefit of making the service inspection-ready with information available at their fingertips.
Technology generally and its application to the care sector has been a key theme at industry conferences during 2022, notably the Care England ‘Facing the Future’ event in March and the Care Show at the NEC in October. Introducing and increasing the use of technology in care homes is high on the Government’s agenda, with £150m of funding to drive digitalisation announced as part of the White Paper in December 2021. CQC’s new Inspection Framework, being introduced in Spring 2023, includes the introduction of ongoing multi-point assessments, the utilisation of additional sources of information particularly in relation to feedback; and the use of internal CQC ‘dynamic dashboards’ to inform regulatory action. The use of digital technology in its many forms will therefore be vital in preparing care providers for these changes.
Of course, the potential of Ai in social care can only be realised if the data it both begins with and collects is meaningful. For example, identifying anomalies in a residents’ health are only relevant if the ‘starting point’ information was correct, and margins for error will be required in the output to ensure that the alarm is not raised unnecessarily. PredicAire is addressing this very issue with the first holistic fully digital care technology software product, which integrates resident-centric care data to predict and prevent unnecessary outcomes before they arise. Because of this holistic approach, each module works together to provide accurate data, whether this is for resident care, staffing, invoicing, quality assurance, or maintenance.
The key to the success of Ai in social care is careful application and responsible technology. Technology can never and should never be used as a substitute for human interaction, but when used in appropriate and responsible ways it can give staff more free time to interact with residents and monitor their health and wellbeing. All in all, the future for technology in general and Ai specifically in social care looks bright, offering better outcomes for everyone.
To find out more about how PredicAire delivers Better Data and Better Outcomes, contact us to book a demo.
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