Technology offers ‘quick wins’ for improving social care and NHS, says think tank
New policy paper from leading public services think tank, Reform Think Tank, warns there is an urgent need for wider adoption of innovative technology in social care to deal with rising demand.
It also highlights a number of innovations that are having a ‘double dividend’ of helping reduce pressure on both social care and the NHS today including home monitoring technology Lilli.
The new policy paper has been published today warns that without innovation, the crisis in adult social care ‘will only worsen’. Innovating for Independence: A win-win for health and social care, published by Reform, finds that there is substantial evidence for where technologies like home care monitoring can reduce strain on both the NHS and care systems and make rapid savings, yet barriers including ‘poor visibility’ of what is working and ‘inadequate and piecemeal funding’ are holding back adoption.
The policy paper is based on interviews with those working across the sector including in the NHS and councils and addresses the system-wide benefits that technology is already having. These include delivering ‘substantial cost savings’ for councils, ‘enabling [people] to retain their independence for as long as possible’ and reducing ‘the stress and workload for practitioners.’ In the NHS, innovation in social care is leading to quicker discharge and the freeing up of capacity from less admissions.
However, the paper points out that too much of the technology in social care is not being scaled and stuck in small-scale pilots meaning they are not having the system-wide impact they could.
The policy paper highlights several ‘quick win’ actions that should be taken by central and local government in advance of the Casey Commission being published in 2028. These actions include the development of a repository of evidenced solutions held by an umbrella organisation to help build confidence in tech across local authorities. This should be accompanied with co-produced guidance on how to implement the solutions so that they can successfully scale.
It also recommends joint bids from NHS and local authorities to share costs and benefits, as well as consolidating all funding pots to offer more streamlined and substantial ‘seed funding’, building on the Accelerating Reform Fund. The policy paper suggests the upcoming Spending Review ‘presents an opportunity to provide certainty to local authorities on funding over the next three years’.
Examples of well-evidenced technology in the paper include Lilli, the lifestyle monitoring technology for home care that supports people to live independently for longer. By discreetly monitoring trends and patterns in behaviour, Lilli helps local authorities to right-size care packages, reduce waiting lists and keep people out of residential care and hospital. Lilli is already helping councils like Medway to generate £1.23 million in net savings in one year, and save 25 per cent of care costs per service user in Reading, while accelerating hospital discharge.
Rosie Beacon, Reform Think Tank’s Head of Health, comments: “This paper underlines the fact that smart deployment of technology at scale is crucial to ensuring that system-wide benefits can be achieved. That means overcoming barriers to change, through co-ordinated action by central and local government and social care providers. Achieving a more rapid uptake of the existing technologies means greater independence and more personalised care for individuals, and greater capacity in both social care and the NHS to care for people. A double dividend.”
Read the full report here: https://reform.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Briefing-paper-Innovating-for-Independence-1-1.pdf