Last month the Government published plans to ‘Build Back Better’ in health and social care, underscoring the importance of “better integration between health and social care, so that care becomes less fragmented and people are cared for in the right place for their needs.” This integration will take place primarily through the establishment of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), which the Government has stated will bring greater convenience, choice, and flexibility to citizens.
Digital transformation is key to unlocking the integration with health that heralds significant improvements to the UK’s social care system. Shared care records, home monitoring devices, decision-making support tools for carers, and many more digital innovations have the potential to transform the UK’s social care sector.
Although the NHSX tech plan for health and care acknowledged that technology has the potential to deliver significant system-wide benefits for people in care and care professionals, it highlighted that the social care sector is facing its own challenges in reaping the benefits of digitisation. According to the tech plan, around a third of social care organisations are still largely paper based, with less than 10 per cent of carers able to digitally view or update care records. This paper-based approach continues to obstruct integration between health and social care, with only 29 per cent of social care professionals surveyed reporting that they have digital access to the information they need from health care providers.
We hear a lot about the increasingly complex needs of an ageing population, but the solution to this lack of integration need not be complex
We hear a lot about the increasingly complex needs of an ageing population, but the solution to this lack of integration need not be complex. For instance, IEG4, a software company that recently launched the UK’s first Continuing Healthcare (CHC) patient portal with South Cheshire CCG, creates solutions that simplify the complex landscape of local government by bringing together social care, council tax, welfare, local community services and health all in the same place to provide a directory of services.
IEG4 is, among many other techUK members, an example of how digital innovation is transforming the social care sector. In February 2021, techUK published the Ten Point Plan for Healthtech to outline recommendations for how we can drive progress. With the help and collaboration of our health and social care members, we called for the Department of Health and Social Care, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, NHSX, and local authorities to support the integration of social care through digital transformation.
techUK and its members stand ready to help deliver this transformation by overcoming the lack of interoperability, standards, and common processes that make the current market so difficult for suppliers.