There had to be a better way

Samir Patel is the managing director of Oaklands Rest Home in Southampton, an award-winning leader and innovator in social care and the founder and CEO of iCare Services. 

This article was first published in Caring Times (December 2024). After taking part in the Digitising Social Care programme’s panel debate at October’s Care Show in Birmingham, Samir gives an honest and open account of why he was an early adopter of digital solutions and the difference they are making to residents and staff.  

I’m not a digital expert, product designer or developer. I’m a registered social care ​provider ​and entrepreneur who cares deeply about quality of care. I’m also passionate about the ability of digital services to drive improvement.  

I have worked with and read enough about digital developers over the years to know that ‘failing fast and moving on’ is a major mantra when it comes to creating effective user-centred digital products and solutions. It is, of course, an inconceivable approach for us in social care, where we have the honour and responsibility of holding someone’s life in our hands.   

As an ‘early adopter’ of digital technologies in our family-owned care ​​​​​​homes, I have sought to share our experiences with colleagues in social care so that they too can deliver improvements, and in the hope that they can avoid some of the mistakes I made. 

We implemented a digital social care record solution more than ten years ago. It was the worst £12,000 I have ever spent. This powerful digital tool sat as a box on the wall that nobody ever used. That was because we didn’t take the time to help staff understand why we were doing it and the benefits it would bring to them and our residents. And we didn’t help them see the connection that by improving our business practices we would be more efficient and therefore plough more investment into the home.  

My more serious admission is that our adoption of digital solutions was partly driven by incidents that I wished could have been avoided. I was also fed-up seeing nurses in one of our care homes writing somebody’s name and date of birth what seemed like a million times a day. I knew there had to be a better way.  

So that’s where we started, and we haven’t looked back since. Now we use everything from digital social care records to acoustic monitoring, which has revolutionised night times in our homes in particular.  

It’s a really clever bit of kit that allows us to monitor residents’ sleep patterns. Again, the idea was born out of my own experience – personal in this case. When my children were small and my sleep was constantly interrupted, naturally it was impacting my wellbeing, not to mention my mood. I started to think about the effect our staff’s two hourly checks, and the broken sleep, must be having on the people in our care. 

We implemented a simple plug and play system that learns an individual’s sleep patterns so it will send an alert to the carers if there is anything out of the ordinary, or if they try to get out of bed when they would usually have assistance. It’s allowed us to stop or reduce those disturbances. We also have wanderers at night from time to time, and because staff aren’t worried about the two hourly checks it means they can spend some time with them. Not only has it transformed our night time care for residents, but it has also empowered our staff to make their own decisions about where to focus their time and attention. 

Often with digital solutions there are knock-on, additional benefits that we didn’t even think of. This acoustic monitoring system has actually helped us to identify covid cases much earlier – spotting and alerting the teams to changes in breathing or coughing, that means we test for covid sooner and people are temporarily kept away from shared spaces and social areas earlier, reducing the spread of infection.  

We are care providers, but we are also businesses. We have to make a profit to remain viable. So being efficient is key, but providing quality care and offering great support to the people in our care and to their families is crucial. Very few people plan to move into a care home. Unfortunately, it’s more likely to come at a point of crisis, so people need support and they need time. If our managers and care teams are so tied up looking after people that they don’t have time to support families, then we are not meeting our wider aims.  

Technology is an enabler to get a bit more time back to help us do the really important things, like sitting down and talking to families, or stopping for a cup of tea and a chat with a resident - which is incredibly powerful when it comes to wellbeing.  

Now ​with multiple ​digital systems up and running well, we are focusing our efforts on digital upskilling. We now have an enormous quantity of data available to us. A home for 30 residents produces at least 3000 data points per day. We need the skills and ability to make the most of that rich data to help us learn about and understand our residents better, to spot patterns and identify issues sooner, which will mean we can put in even better and more personalised care.  

Of course, there is also the new ‘magic silver bullet​’​ of AI. There is no doubt: it has enormous potential, but we are certainly not there yet and it will require careful understanding and control. In our organisation I think we’re doing pretty well, but I’m no data analyst. I don’t know how these big data sets work and I don’t know how it can be ​employed to​ drive improvements in care​ – which is what we want.  

With my business hat on, if I can make some good decisions as a result of data and technology that means one of our residents can stay with us for an extra year or two, that’s good for business. But much more importantly, it’s amazing for them and their families if they are able to live longer and in better health, in a place where they are well cared for. It’s also amazing for our staff, who know and understand our residents better and can see what an incredible job they are doing.