Hosted by The National Care Forum (NCF), the Care Innovation Challenge 2023 took place on 1st – 2nd July at Coventry University’s TechnoCentre. CMM has caught up with all five Challenge finalists to find out more about their innovative ideas. This month, we concluded our interviews and spoke to Ben Howard from Team Careberry, Belinda McLean from Team Kit and Haoyu of Team Night Safety.
CMM Meets Team Night Safety
CMM: What prompted you to get involved with the challenge and what’s your idea?
Haoyu: I combined my experience of caring for my relatives during COVID-19 (when I was back in China) to come up with a technological system to support caring for people during the night. I wanted to develop a system that did as much work as a human – but reduced the need for humans to work in care settings. I did a lot of research in Japan about how we can care for elderly people by using technology in care settings to increase efficiency and reduce the requirement for human resources.
CMM: What are some of the key features of the product?
Haoyu: The aim is to produce an integrated system to support smaller providers when they are caring for someone overnight. For example, if a person has several tech products looking after them, such as a motion sensor or a medical device measuring glucose, then this one system will gather all of the information in one central place and hopefully we can use artificial intelligence to summarise this information to help providers. For example, if someone was moving into a different room and had a fall, the piece of technology would alert the caregiver and they can come and provide help. Diseases such as cancer change over time, so the systems can keep monitoring those conditions and see what is going on and can provide some basic judgements.
CMM: Have you considered the cost implications for providers?
Haoyu: We have explored the cost in the market and it’s more expensive than we thought for products such as the sensors. We thought we might look into targeting medical start-ups as a way of reducing the cost. There are still more newcomers on the market, and I think that between ourselves, the care provider and start-ups – there is certainly opportunity for collaboration.
CMM: What do you hope to show the judges at the final?
Haoyu: We hope to show the market size to the judges and have a clear plan on how this product can develop and we hope to share part of the product at the show, to show that this can work in the market, and this can secure a profit.
CMM: How did you find the Challenge weekend overall?
Haoyu: It was a lovely weekend. Even though it was a competition, everyone helped each other and shared ideas. At one point, I was surrounded by five mentors, and everyone was very friendly. I think I definitely learnt more about the care sector as a result of the Challenge weekend.
CMM Meets Team Careberry
CMM: How did you find out about the Care Innovation Challenge weekend?
Ben: The Managing Director of Careberry has been following the Challenge and during a team meeting, he brought up the idea of competing in the Challenge. We thought we have some good ideas and wanted to connect with other people from different care sectors – as we are only one part of the sector. We wanted to challenge our idea – to see what we can do to improve.
CMM: What is your idea in a nutshell?
Ben: Careberry provides a software that’s an all-in-one toolkit for care providers and we would hope to build our new idea into the system. The idea is ‘smart care cost’ and it’s a fair estimation cost for care and support for individuals – the provider completes some information about the individual being cared for, postcode, how the care is being funded, whether that’s through social services or it’s privately funded, and what the system will do is calculate a fair cost for care. In terms of overhead costs, travel, training etc, it will work with a bunch of different algorithms in the background to show providers how they can reduce costs in that postcode area. It’s for providers to have the oversight to say this is why we need to charge this. We know from experience that as long as you can demonstrate it to the local authority that this is why the costs are needed.
CMM: Have you conducted any market research?
Ben: We want to make it available as a feature, but we are exploring it as its own entity – not just Careberry customers. We plan to offer it to our existing customers and get feedback from them. Because we have our own domiciliary care company and a nursing home, we have access to data and can trial it with our own customers. We have the environment to test in both and have gathered research and information – we have that aspect ready.
CMM: What feedback have you received on your idea?
Ben: The feedback we got from the mentors was it wasn’t very clear what the idea was – it has the potential but wasn’t clear on how it will work. We spoke to Ben from Marrgo – he was a very good mentor to sit down with and discuss the idea. Once we did the elevator pitch, we discussed about the terminology to make it clearer, and we have been perfecting our pitch to be more precise and clearer about what the benefit is. The issue with other tools is that they aren’t live and not real time – we plan to have it part of our system – it’s based off their real-time data – live information. It’s real-time data based on the provider’s own data.
CMM: How did you find the Challenge weekend overall?
Ben: I got way more out of it than I thought. The mentors blew me away – Ben from the accounting background, he told us a touching story, how he reduced cost but was still able to provide the same level of support. It was great to speak to other participants – it was really fascinating to see how we can put all our brains together and come up with something really revolutionary and that’s what we ended up doing. We started with an idea, and it really wasn’t perfect at all but through the feedback and the mentors talking to us, we made it as perfect as we could. We came with a nugget of an idea and walked away with a gold bar.
We have followed NCF for a long time now; seeing them put so much hard work and effort into getting all of this ready is touching for us. They were all so helpful; it was a really great event, a great day.
CMM: Where would you invest the money if you won?
Ben: The prize money would go straight back into perfecting the algorithms – straight back into the development. At Careberry, we update every two weeks, so we don’t stop development and we don’t plan to stop development any time soon. It’s all onwards and upwards!
CMM Meets Team Kit
CMM: Why did you and your team colleague Yani decide to get involved in the Challenge?
Belinda: I have worked in the health and social care sector for over 30 years, and I currently work as an Occupational Therapist. I have had many ideas on how we can support people better, across a range of areas ranging from transportation, moving and handling, to equipment. I had heard about Hackathons – it sounded really exciting and I felt like I could contribute to it in some way.
I met Yani at the event, who is a doctor and that was probably one of the loveliest aspects of taking part – it was a lovely surprise to find a doctor who is not in the social care sector in her everyday but is linking back to the patient’s journey – so she understands the importance of the functioning of a good social care sector and was interested in developing a way of getting equipment on discharge from hospital. She was on the same table as our mentor, Ann Taylor from Hilton Nursing Partners.
CMM: What’s your idea?
Belinda: Our idea is all about delivering small items of equipment for people who need it – rather than waiting for an Occupational Therapy assessment. It turns out there is something that has been developed by Millbrook Healthcare. It would only be small items of equipment that could be easily installed by a service user or a family member by a smart triage app or a computer, but Millbrook have done this in partnership with Milton Keynes. We are still at a very early stage of chatting to people to decide if we are going to take it forward. I have spoken to some of my colleagues, people who do community assessment for equipment and they think there is a gap – so there is definitely a gap for something but it’s whether it can be done in such a way that it can be a one-stop-shop set-up. It is complicated to try and pull together.
CMM: How does the current offering work?
Belinda: The Millbrook app does it via a series of questions – the individual in need of care either gets the equipment there and then or waits for the equipment. On the one hand, it could be through linking social care providers or it could be something that could empower the individual to purchase privately. It gives power to the individual drawing on care and ensures that they aren’t at home without equipment to make their life easier and to stay at home for longer.
Anyone can do this assessment. It is to empower people and their family and prevents people going on the OT waiting list and if the assessment is done and they don’t fit the criteria, they do go on the waiting list. We would hope there is willingness from equipment companies to do this at scale.
CMM: How did you find the Challenge weekend?
Belinda: Speaking to Clenton and colleagues at TLAP was really important to hear directly from people who draw on care and support services. Even though the pace was fast at the Challenge, you understand why because it really encourages people to move quickly and progress with an idea. We’ve got to throw out more ideas and hopefully the one good idea will go forward!
The proof of our idea is that it’s already been done! There is something to do – it’s just whether we join forces and look at what they’ve done or try and extend it.
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