Digital care records have already more than proved their worth in terms of improved care standards and efficiency. Real-time data recording and access, from anywhere with a secure mobile WiFi connection was always going to be a massive step up from lever arch files and Excel spreadsheets.
But although digital care systems are well established across the sector, in many ways we’re only just scratching the surface of the potential benefits.
Just think of the millions of care interactions that are captured digitally every day – on PCS’s Care Management systems alone it is over 11 million care notes per day. That’s a huge resource that can be applied to all sorts of issues from strategic capacity planning, right down to better outcomes and risk management for an individual service user.
For care homes, structured data brings the possibility to improve efficiency and identify new revenue streams to improve financial resilience.
From Data To Information
Data, of course, is just data. To be useful it has to be organised and interrogated. It then becomes useful information that can be analysed to make connections, extract insights and make better-informed decisions.
This is very much the journey that Person Centred Software, KareInn and our partners have been making in recent years. Harnessing the vast repository data and deploying emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning will be truly transformative.
From Information To Understanding
The big shift will be from recording what has happened, to understanding what is likely to happen. Trends and patterns in the data can reveal predictive insights – a series of events and common factors that indicate potential system failures and risks to service users. Targeted prevention becomes a possibility.
We’ll also be able to achieve a better understanding of what interventions and activities have the most beneficial effects for health and wellbeing. We’ll have a clearer understanding of the interactions between medications and care interventions for people with a range of conditions.
Care homes will also be able to benchmark their performance in a more meaningful way than against crude cross-sector averages.
It’s clear that care data has enormous potential. The benefits are already being recognised and will accelerate rapidly in the coming years. And that’s a process we’re excited to be part of.
