As life expectancy grows, so does the demand for social care. Digital, data, and device innovations have the potential to cut overhead costs while simultaneously improving the quality of both care patients’ and workers’ lives. Social care providers in the public and private sectors worldwide must adopt an improved user-centric approach to the design, testing, and rollout of innovation. They must build ecosystems that incorporate all stakeholders—critically the end-users: patients and care workers.

At the Cambridge University Center for Science and Policy (CSaP) Annual Conference, emerging technology’s potential in social care was a hot topic. In this case, the definition of “social care” is care provided for those who cannot live independently, either full-time or part-time.

People are living longer, but in poorer health, putting a significant drain on care providers.

The World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that the number of people over 60 will double by 2050 and triple by 2100. In response, care homes will need to double their capacity in the next 15 years. The world needs a change in attitude toward aging and healthy living so that the achievement of an increased life expectancy means more years of quality life. The wheels are certainly in motion; the Ageing Society Grand Challenge Plan targets five more years of healthy independent living by 2035.

Technologies are improving the lives of those most in need, but the care sector faces serious challenges.

CSaP’s conference was packed with pioneering innovations in the care sector: voice recognition is detecting the early signs of depression and analyzing breathlessness as the early signs of heart disease. Open Bionics manufactures prosthetics for children and personalizes them through an intellectual property contract with Disney.

Social care providers can also benefit. Digital communication prompts patients to take medication. Care workers, doctors, and patients better-circulate information; scheduling tools and platforms allow providers and authorities to better-allocate resources. But, despite the undeniable potential, there are barriers to the widespread rollout of innovation.

Christina Cornwell, Director at Nesta’s Health Lab, a foundation supporting innovation across health and social care sphere, detailed two key challenges to adopting emerging technologies:

• A technology-driven mindset deemphasizes end-users’ needs. End-users’ needs are often unaccounted for; 40% of in-home technology goes unused.
• The rollout of technologies is sporadic and without process. In biomedical innovation, for example, there is a clear route from R&D to market. With emerging technologies, processes are often not clear, and in social care, there is an even less-streamlined process. Also, care providers in the UK do not have the financial or staffing resources to test and adopt pioneering technology.

Digital is a no brainer for social care, but data and devices remain underused—providers must change the industry’s dynamics.

Ben Maruthappu, a co-founder of Cera Care, a provider seeking to technologically transform social care in the UK, commented that despite digital being “a no-brainer for social care,” mass adoption is a while away; even simple technologies such as mobile phones are not widespread in many cases of care provision. Cera built its own platform from scratch to streamline the care process, with end-users’ needs an integral consideration:

• The platform quickly provides care workers with patient information, that can be updated with ease. Patients can choose their care worker based on workers’ performance data and personal information. Family members can also engage in the process. Cera can centrally monitor and react in real-time to trends and issues related to patient care.
• Cera can optimize the total time allocated to care given per day. Workers can work more hours and earn a better income in an industry with historically poor working conditions.
• By reducing overhead costs, Cera can invest in training and recruiting staff.

Maruthappu also commented that data was “massively underused” in social care versus its use in hospital care throughout the NHS.

Analytics allows Cera to detect issues quickly from its device networks’ data, helping to avoid unpleasant hospital experiences for patients and extra costs for the provider. Detecting subtle changes in patient behaviors that care workers can often miss—such as taking medication, breathing, and movement—allows Cera’s workers to be proactive and preventative with their care. Cera can also pinpoint when a care worker is not required, which Cera claims is 40% of the time.

The number of care workers in the UK is dwindling, while the number in need of care is rising. Reduced overhead doesn’t just mean that Cera can recruit and develop workers to fill this demand, Cera also pays its staff over 50% more than the industry average.

Innovation in the social care sector faces a tough road ahead

“Failing fast,” a beacon of technology management principles, becomes difficult in a social care sector when failure is unacceptable. Take the pharmaceutical industry for example—companies conduct trials with a full declaration that some won’t work, and some might do harm; trial groups have accepted this. Social care, however, has not adopted similar mindsets and processes.

The Bottom Line: For the care sector to meet the challenges of an aging population, it must simultaneously embrace the needs of end-users to slash overheads and improve both care workers’ and patients’ lives.

It’s fair to say that generally, technology is developed by the young, for the young. Less-diverse leadership or design teams within the sector must explore coproducing ideas with users and their communities. Social care providers must pioneer human-centered design to bridge the gap between the innovator and end-user.

Take two examples: WiFi widely covers NHS facilities in the UK, but not care homes. The elderly are more tech-savvy than ever before, yet care providers fail to recognize this end-user need for internet access. Caregivers, the other large subset of end-users, can use digital technology to better-provide care and communicate with coworkers. The conference panel claimed that many care workers would soon refuse positions where they don’t have access to the latest technologies.

From a business perspective, we can label user-centric design as “inclusive innovation.” The more people that benefit from it, the bigger the market is.