Tech for Better Care: watching innovations come to life

By Jenna Collins, Programme Manager, The Health Foundation

Over the past 12 months, we’ve been supporting teams to explore and test new, tech-enabled ways of delivering care that’s proactive, focuses on relationships and that’s closer to home and the community.

As Tech for Better Care is an iterative funding programme, we’ve been acting on learning as we go. The journey started with 10 teams exploring their ideas, and since March we’ve been supporting six teams to test those ideas in practice. Working with Social Finance and Ipsos, it’s been exciting to see ideas start to come to life, with teams testing, prototyping and iterating their concepts with users, communities and stakeholders. 

Three reflections on tech-enabled innovations

One of the key insights from the programme so far is that tech-enabled innovation in health and care is not necessarily about introducing cutting-edge technology. To achieve their ambitions, the teams are either making use of existing solutions or building new solutions that don’t necessarily use new, state-of-the-art tech. Rather, the innovative work is happening through transforming or creating services that people need. This involves working with people who receive and deliver care, navigating partnerships and weaving technology into this as an enabler, with all the complexities this can bring (eg around data, information governance and interoperability). 

Second, the innovation is tech-enabled but led by users’ needs. This programme has enabled teams to design new ways of delivering care inclusively, working closely with people who receive and deliver care to shape, test and give feedback on ideas and interventions. It is too early to know if these ideas will make a difference to the use of technology solutions and care outcomes, but there are positive signs. The teams:

• have greater clarity on the problems they are trying to solve 

• know who they need to work with to address those problems, and 

• are more confident these insights are strengthening the quality of the solution. 

Providing funding and support to work in this way isn’t necessarily the norm in innovation and technology funding programmes. Building on learning from programmes like Q Lab and Common Ambition, it’s important to continue to share the learning and benefits of this iterative, user-centred approach. Especially when we know that public support for technology in health and care, and tailoring solutions to user needs, are important factors for success. We also know from our research that this support is not guaranteed and varies by use case and demographics.

Third, teams have reflected it’s challenging to launch proactive ways of delivering care within reactive systems, balancing short-term outcomes that prove viability with generating longer term impact. Practical things like governance processes, data sharing, even knowing what current care services exist locally, are a challenge. We’ll be learning more about how the teams navigate this and the role organisations like the Health Foundation can play in enabling innovation to happen. 

Phase three: supporting teams to pilot ideas

We’re delighted to share the three teams we’ll be supporting in the final phase of the programme to pilot their ideas over the next 12 months:

• ‘Personalised medication support service’ – NHS Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucester Integrated Care Board (NHS BNSSG ICB): exploring existing digital technologies to provide personalised support for people taking multiple medications. Learn more 

• ‘Sutton virtual community’ – Sutton Primary Care Networks: developing a virtual space that can empower people who are lonely, create peer support networks and enable social interaction. Learn more 

• ‘No need to fall’ – voluntary and independent sector partners, North/South Health and Social Care Partnerships and NHS Lanarkshire: exploring how technology-enabled care can support people with the highest risk of falls to access support proactively and improve the response when something does happen. Learn more

Although we’re 12-months into Tech for Better Care, we’ve been reflecting on the programme’s learning in light of the government’s three big shifts needed in health and care: from hospital to community; analogue to digital; and sickness to prevention. Tech for Better Care speaks to each of these shifts, also paying attention to the wider outcomes for patients, staff and the system that these shifts might enable. 

For example, NHS Lanarkshire and its partners’ ambition is to develop a personal data store to ensure high-risk fall patients only need to ‘tell their story once’. The team at Sutton Primary Care Networks is demonstrating how general practices can lead tech innovation in the community and, focusing on loneliness, what it takes to develop a proactive, holistic service with potential for scale. Meanwhile NHS BNSSG ICB offers a blueprint for providing patients with greater choice and agency by leveraging existing technology solutions across the system. 

Over the next 12 months our three pilot teams will generate key learning and insights on what it takes to innovate across these shifts. Central to this will be understanding how the health and care system can enable more of this type of innovation to flourish and, crucially, what the impact is for people delivering and receiving care.   

We’ll share the learning as we go but welcome connections and conversations – feel free to get in touch.