Health Secretary's tech investment promises 'gift of time' to home care workers

Health secretary Matt Hancock has promised to ‘bridge the technology gap between the NHS and social care’ with £4.5m for local authorities to develop digital projects to help people needing home care.

Mr Hancock said investment will be made in adult social care to support local, digital projects to help people to live independently at home for as long as possible and improve information sharing across the NHS and social care.

This could for example include:

• Artificial intelligence with assistive technology: using sensors to establish normal behaviour for individuals, e.g. sleep patterns, walking routes and care worker alerts.

• The creation of shared care records which combine medical and social care information, with NHS and care staff able to access the record.

• Permitting information held by care homes/ home care agencies to ‘smoothly integrate’ into hospital IT systems when a person is admitted to hospital

Home care agencies and care homes assessed on tech performance

Mr Hancock said he will ensure home care agencies, care homes and every other provider ‘knows what they need to do to be outstanding on technology in the 2020s’. This will be assessed by the Care Quality Commission.

Martin Green, chief executive of Care England, which represents independent care providers, said: “Care England welcomes this announcement. It is a real step forward in implementing tech to create efficiencies and ensure quality to care helping people lead meaningful lives.

“The focus on easing communications between the NHS and social care will reap great rewards, and the Government must ensure that the benefits from greater efficiencies filter down to the social care providers who are investing their own money in new tech.

'Gift of time'

"Technology, if used well, will give NHS staff and workers in social care the gift of time to care rather than administrate.”

However, some in the care sector expressed scepticism about the promises with a regulation requirement which could generate more costs than benefits.

Matt Hancock has said the government will invest £40 million in technology to transform slow NHS login times - to save staff ‘thousands of hours’ a day. NHS staff currently have to log in to multiple computer programmes, with each programme requiring its own login details - forcing some staff to log into as many as 15 different systems.

The government will look to support single sign-on technology and benefit such as finger-print access, rather than password-led log ins. The government says there is potential to reduce log in times from one minute 45 seconds to just 10 seconds.

Mr Hancock said: “I want to harness the best digital technology to improve care for patients and ease the burden on our staff. And to do that, we need to get the basics right.

“Too often, outdated technology slows down and frustrates staff, and prevents them from giving patients their full attention and the care they deserve.”