Social Care organisations have been using more and more technology for years. With the most recent figures from the Department of Health and Social Care stating that more than 60% of adult social care providers are now using a digital social care record. The digital transformation journey of the sector is going to continue in 2024. In this article, we’ll explore what are likely to be some key digital transformation trends that we see this year.
- Digital learning and skills
eLearning and online training are not new to the sector, but with the launch of the Digital Skills Framework last year, and the Care Workforce Pathway announcing the development of a Digital Leadership qualification this year, I expect to see an increasing focus on digital training and development as the year progresses.
Grey matter learning
My learning cloud
Access
- Virtual Reality
Virtual reality has been around for years now but hasn’t really picked up much in the sector – because of….
There is however increasing evidence that virtual reality can have incredible benefits for people living with Alzheimers or dementia and tools such as (add) can help with reminiscence and mental and social wellbeing.
Some organisations are also exploring how virtual reality can be used for more immersive training experiences for staff, for example
- Artificial Intelligence
It sometimes feels like you can’t talk about anything to do with technology without talking about AI - particularly generative AI like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard. Some care providers are already starting to experiment with how it could be used as a helpful tool in the sector – for example by writing policies or helping with summarising internal meetings. While there are some early signs that generative AI could be a game changer for social care in the future, there is still a lot of work to do in terms of understanding its potential impacts and the risks which it could pose to the sector before it is likely to have wide scale usage across social care.
That doesn’t mean that we won’t see more AI in social care in 2024. Both Microsoft and Samsung are pushing their AI products, so it’s likely that care staff will be interacting with AI more and more.
Similarly, many care technology companies are utilising AI for example…
Painchek
Health Automated
PredicAire…
- Cyber Security
Ok, it is a little bit of a stretch to say that cyber security is going to be a trend in 2024. It is rarely anyone’s favourite topic. Nonetheless, as the sector increasingly digitises, it is more and more important that care organisations consider their cyber risks and what they can do as an organisation to prevent cyber attacks and systems outages.
For the majority of organisations who don’t have an internal IT team who can manage technology and cyber in-house, it is increasingly common to look to managed service providers (sometimes called external IT support companies) to manage this on their behalf.
https://mitigogroup.com/partnership-pages/care-england/ Vambrace - https://www.digitalcarehub.co.uk/success-story/cyber-security-as-a-catalyst-how-brainkind-pioneer-innovative-technology-with-confidence/
