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Sharing best digital innovation practice in care homes

Bringing together companies, care home staff, and academic researchers to learn from each other on the needs of, and co-designed digital solutions for, the care home setting, a workshop ran by Healthier Working Lives in collaboration with Generating Older Active Lives Digitally (GOALD) and the Health Productivity in Cornwall (EPIC) projects was just the start of the co-design process.

On 17 June, Healthier Working Lives in collaboration with Generating Older Active Lives Digitally (GOALD) and the Health Productivity in Cornwall (EPIC) projects ran a workshop for a selected audience of team members, small businesses, and others involved with care homes.

There were four presentations – two from care homes (one in Scotland, one in Cornwall) and two from small businesses in Cornwall. We discussed the challenges and potential digital technology solutions such as the use of face recognition for security and the use of smart speakers and voice activated apps.

GOALD Generating Older Active Lives Digitally project workshop

In many ways this was the start of the co-design process and the discussions at the end of the session highlighted many important insights which will be inform the next stages of co-design work in the Healthier Working Lives Programme.

Here are some of the insights highlighted in the session:

  • User friendly. When using new technology make it ‘friendly’ and approachable by linking it with the ‘old’ … that way it becomes more easily accepted
  • Easy access. Use technology that the workforce already has direct access to and feels comfortable with eg face recognition on smart phones .. and think about how you can use that technology in a transferable way
  • Don’t ‘Lift and Shift’. Don’t just take a paper based system and digitise it … use the opportunity to think from scratch. Don’t think about technology as just replacing something … think, instead, how you can develop technology to enable
  • Care first. Use technology to reduce the bureaucracy associated with Care, to allow Care Workers to free up their time to do what they do best.
  • Unlock value. Answer two key questions – will this new initiative save money or make money … but don’t expect a return on investment in the short term.
  • Keep it simple. A simple but hugely important mantra – only use technology if you are using it to make a process or task simpler.

The workshop is a joint venture between the Generating Older Active Lives Digitally (GOALD) project (supported by EPIC in Cornwall) and the Healthier Working Lives (HWL) project.

The GOALD (Generating Older Active Lives Digitally) project examines how to design and deliver digital resources to provide and engage older people in structured activity programmes and improve health and wellbeing. Led by the Universities of Stirling and Plymouth.

The Innovate UK funded, Healthier Working Lives (HWL) programme assesses the challenges and opportunities for the over 50s care workforce and is led by King's College London in collaboration with the University of Edinburgh. The team is acting to tackle a crisis facing care workers and organisations.

The findings of a recent study by Edinburgh Napier working with the University of Edinburgh’s Advanced Care Research Centre (ACRC) raise questions about whether care homes largely run using analogue systems are ready for a future of digital innovation.

The GOALD & EPIC teams have invested over 3 years developing relationships with both care providers and innovative solution providers in SW England, whilst the HWL programme has begun to engage Trailblazer entrepreneurs and is about to access care homes to begin co-design of products and services.

Bringing together GOALD’s insight and network together with HWL’s market challenge creates an opportunity for a win-win for both projects.

Banner image credit: Centre for Ageing Better

Watch the workshop

You can catch up with the workshop on the University of Plymouth website

Get in touch

Find out more about the Healthier Working Lives for the Care Workforce project and how you can get involved.

Follow our Facebook page, where you can chat with us directly, as well as keep up to date with the latest insights from Care Sector research, and activities from the programme.

If you are an innovator, business leader or entrepreneur working, or seeking to become involved with the care sector, join the Healthier working lives campaign through our registration form or contact dilesh.shah@kcl.ac.uk.

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