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How Data is Set to Redefine Social Care

1​4 July 2022

Stuart Barclay, UK Sales Director at Vayyar Care sets the scene for how better use of data by local authorities is a game-changer in its approach to providing a more consistent, more proactive social care service.

 

It’s now been six months since the Department of Health and Social Care outlined its vision in the whitepaper “People at the Heart of Care”. The goal is to “shift away from a reliance on residential care and offer people genuine options for drawing on outstanding care at home and in the community.”

That’s all well and good. Unless they’re at risk of social isolation, people naturally want to remain in their own homes as long as possible. But for local authorities, delivering a comparable level of care to what a residential community can provide is a tall order.

Take falls. In a care home, the risk of “long lies” and their disastrous consequences is limited. They do happen, when people can’t reach the alarm button or if they haven’t put on their pendant, but in most cases, a nurse or another resident is going to find them relatively quickly. In social care it’s a different story.

Communities are much more fragmented these days, and a care user could easily suffer a fall and not be discovered until their caregiver visits. That might be too late.

That’s why Vayyar Care conducted a survey of social care leaders at this year’s ITEC conference in Birmingham. One of the key findings was that falls account for almost 70% of callouts.

Then there’s the flipside. We also confirmed that false alarms are a significant issue for LAs, with 63% agreeing that over a quarter of callouts are unnecessary. Sometimes it’s the result of accidentally triggering a device, but often it’s due to misuse. As well as draining precious resources, that inevitably increase the risk of “boy who cried wolf” scenarios. With the best will in the world, a user with a history of DAU misuse might well experience delayed response when they need help most.

As the social care sector expands over the next decade and beyond, these issues are going to place a huge burden on overstretched social care staff, 58% of whom are already spending over five hours a week on paperwork. It’s obvious that providers need a more reliable way to protect service users.

Vayyar Care is exactly that. It’s the most accurate and robust fall detection solution on the market, using the data from advanced radio frequency sensors to instantly identify falls of all levels of severity and summon help, even — and especially — when users can’t.

What’s more, fall detection is only one dimension of the data that Vayyar Care gathers. In partnership with leading system suppliers and platform providers, we’re rolling out the behavioral analytics that almost 90% of social care leaders agree is central to achieving person-centred outcomes.

 

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By tracking activity — or lack of it — we can identify reduced mobility, potential mental health issues and even medical conditions like UTIs.

For local authorities up and down the country, it’s a game-changing approach. To learn more about the results of our survey and how social care can leverage data to unlock true personalised outcomes, register for our upcoming virtual roundtable at 11:15 on August 2nd.

Introduced by Alyson Scurfield, Chief Executive Officer at TSA and featuring leading care technology suppliers Millbrook Healthcare, Anthropos, and Appello; this session will open your eyes to what’s now possible.

Sign up here for the webinar

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