Nquiringminds
www.nesta.org.uk/feature/healthier-lives-data-fund-meet-grantees/nquiringminds/
Using technology to improve sharing care between formal carers and friends, family and volunteers
The value of unpaid care given by volunteers such as charities, friends, family and neighbours in Scotland is estimated to be £11 billion per year (2015), with half a million people providing unpaid care services. However, this resource is almost entirely neglected in existing systems used to manage the care of adults at home. Furthermore, evidence shows that carers are often struggling with financial, health and time pressures themselves.
CareTeam uses the best of digital technology to support the care of an individual in their home. Tasks, essential information, messages and updates are coordinated within a circle of friends and family, and sensors in the home use artificial intelligence to alert problems.
As part of the Nesta project Nquiringminds will be teaming up with The Scottish Personal Assistant Employers Network (SPAEN) and the Digital Health and Care Institute to enhance the app to enable personal assistants to share care information with those people who need to know.
Within the project we will be developing a new enhanced version of the app to integrate personal assistants into the care conversations carried out by friend family and neighbours. We will be engaging with citizens – including adults who receive care at home, personal assistants and other stakeholders to map out their requirements. We will then be developing the app with increased functionality to serve the needs to personal assistants and their service users. This will enable PAs record care visits via the app and securely share key information with others.
The goal of the project is to make a real difference to people’s lives and to realise the potential of making sense of huge amounts of data to improve all individuals’ lives involved in caring for someone.
With the support of the Healthier Lives Data Fund, CareTeam will be trialled in a new area of Personal Assistants. It will be enhanced and extended to realise the potential of combining unpaid and paid for care to look after someone with our increasingly busy lives and huge amounts of information and data. This new partnership creates the potential to extend and improve CareTeam and we are delighted to receive this support.
By Hannah Dalton, Project Manager
