Welcome to Kirsty Meets!
Each month I meet key stake holders and business leaders in the social care sector. This month I met David Lynes, CEO and Founder of UniqueIQ. UniqueIQ provides software to home care organisations which assists digital care planning, scheduling & rostering, electronic call monitoring and emery, all with a mobile app for seamless, real-time supervision of care delivery.
I caught up with to David discuss the role of AI, interoperability and co-creation in social care, and the future of technology in the sector:
So David, how is AI already being deployed in home care?
There are a number of small-scale examples of AI in home care already.
One is scheduling tools – using AI to process the multiple and varied criteria involved in scheduling care visits (e.g. client likes/dislikes, carer qualifications/skills, care continuity etc.). The processing power of AI means it can build very efficient, optimised suggestions for a care coordinator to view.
The second is trend analysis – spotting patterns in client/carer behaviours and sentiment, or trigger points in care visits, without the need for additional input from care professionals.
These are two examples where there is an absolute business case for AI. AI is able to do the leg work and provide a summarised view to a care team, who can then make an informed, human, empathetic response.
And where do you see the future of AI in the sector in the next 10, 20 and 30 years?
We’ve been talking about AI for around 10 years now and it’s taken some time to build a business case. But I think it will accelerate. I expect the way AI is being used in big tech companies at the moment will filter down into the care sector. For example, the way platforms like Facebook suggest personalised content to me based on my behaviour, I can see that being used to help care professionals build a better, more person-centred care plan, based on data that care management systems have gathered about an individual, from a range of sources.
I expect the way AI is being used in big tech companies at the moment will filter down into the care sector
How do interoperability and co-creation currently work within the sector?
Interoperability and co-creation in the care sector is still fairly early stage. But it’s been a hot topic over the last 18 months and COVID has been a big driver. During the initial stages of the pandemic, we saw that the NHS could let some barriers down and do things quickly. A lot of the hoops which social care normally has to jump through were removed, because there was an urgency. That’s meant more opportunities for working in new ways that ultimately benefit people receiving care.
We’re also seeing some shared data standards come in – which have been adopted by a handful of software vendors. However, at the moment, I would say confidence in these is still quite low. There’s a reluctance to commit time to adopt these standards when there’s a high chance of them being replaced by something else. More coordination is needed and there’s still work to do.
Why are interoperability and co-creation important within care work specifically?
As I said when I presented at UK Care Week, co-creation is critical in care work. [Here at Unique IQ] We could have spent time building a medication system that was far more complicated, but we worked alongside care companies to build what they needed quickly, which fit their processes well, and therefore offered better value for money. Without co-creation, there’s a tendency to build something from a tech point of view, rather than from a care view.
Interoperability is important because of the vast number of software systems that are available now to care organisations. If we don’t make them interoperable, we run the risk of repeating the same mistakes we did with paper-based systems – where information is dispersed and hard to analyse and learn from.
In what ways did the Covid-19 pandemic affect the delivery and future of home care technology?
The COVID-19 pandemic massively accelerated technology adoption. There was an uptake in technology use on a large-scale, which has been retained since. For example, we studied recent trends in our software use and found that the number of digital tasks being used by care organisations jumped by 285% between January and June 2020, and those numbers have not dropped again. Coming out of the pandemic, I think the care sector is much more used to change and seeing the benefits of technology, which is fuelling a growing interest in technology-enabled care.
What type of services do UniqueIQ specifically provide to the home care sector?
Unique IQ provides software to home care organisations. Our tailored care management systems cover digital care planning, scheduling & rostering, electronic call monitoring and ear, with a mobile app for seamless, real-time supervision of care delivery. We’re here to help home care agencies deliver outstanding care with the support of technology.
And finally – what’s in store for UniqueIQ in the future?
We’ve recently been through a process of rebuilding our software platform, so that it is completely cloud-based and open to a huge range of integrations. Our aim is to build in more flexibility for care providers – so that the software can be adapted to our users’ needs, facilitating co-creation.
To find out more about UniqueIQ, you can visit the website at www.uniqueiq.co.uk.