Using technology to transform service management

Paul de Savary, Executive Chairman at Home From Home Care, talks about their use of technology and data for effective care service management.

Running a care service today demands a combination of empathy, skill, and, increasingly, technology. As a co-founder with my wife and son of Home From Home Care where I am executive chairman, we've been on a technology journey for over 15 years, and it’s totally changed the way we deliver care.

Our service supports 95 high acuity people living with a learning disability, autism and complex physical and mental health, with 550 outstanding colleagues. For our team, every care plan, rota, HR process, daily diary and every piece of daily care information is stored in our own custom-built, cloud-based solution called Zone Standard. The breadth of data we capture is vast, with everything from care plans, dairies, incidents, constipation, hydration and meds to the way our vehicles are being driven and maintained and current water temperatures, all in real time as the data is constantly being updated by colleagues or integrated at source from across the organisation.

One of many benefits is the platform’s ability to manage rotas in a way that goes beyond just filling shifts. It enables us to have the right people with the right attributes and skills working with specific individuals at the right time. For instance, it’s not just about having enough staff on a shift; the system checks if they have the right qualifications for the tasks at hand—whether that’s administering medication, changing a peg or with the right skills and experience to work with a particularly complex individual. With everything in real-time, we can adjust on the fly to make sure care isn’t compromised.

Communication across care is often fragmented, but our platform continuously evolves to address this challenge. Every one of our colleagues accesses the system with the latest mobile app being rolled out, so information is shared only with those who need it, at the time they need it. Gone are the days of missed messages or relying on others to pass information along. If an issue arises—whether it's a rota gap, a health concern, or a maintenance need—alerts are automatically triaged to the relevant people, with appropriate teams expected to act on them. This level of personalisation in communication means little falls through the cracks as we create organisational awareness in place of just local awareness.

One unexpected benefit we’ve found is how the platform has impacted our HR processes. We've reduced our HR team by automating the underlying work allowing us to redeploy colleagues by repurposing their roles to staff wellbeing that focuses on supporting colleagues rather than managing administrative issues. This has had a positive impact on retention, with happier and better supported staff delivering outstanding care.

From a staffing perspective, Zone Standard has significantly improved our flexibility. Thanks to the platform, we haven't needed to use agency staff in nine years. It’s made it incredibly easy for colleagues to pick up extra shifts and cover gaps beyond contracted hours. On top of that, it’s enabled initiatives like paying staff within 24 hours of taking on additional shifts, which has greatly boosted engagement and job satisfaction. This has helped alleviate financial stress for colleagues by reducing their dependence on services like payday loans as we make payment available for them so quickly.

As for the future, artificial intelligence (AI) is the next frontier we’re exploring. By layering AI on top of our existing data, we can start to predict future issues. For example, by analysing behaviour support data and health interactions, we can forecast potential challenges and act before they escalate. Zone Standard captures something like 80 million data points annually. When you combine predictive analytics with such large pools of care data, it has the potential to deliver huge improvements in quality and risk management.

One thing I will say is that I’m cautious of depicting an overly positive image of our approach. When we first started out with tech, we assumed that building our own platform would be the all-singing, all-dancing solution to our problems. It seemed logical—tech solutions are often presented as magic bullets for whatever issues you’re trying to solve. While our platform did address many of these, what we quickly realised was that it didn’t eliminate all problems but introduced a variety of new challenges that we had to be overcome.

Building the platform across its 15-year life span to function how we wanted it to has required a team of 16 developers. We also have a dedicated team, called Zone Standard Management, who manage the ecosystem that sits on the platform by managing the data. This team encompasses about 20 people, six of whom work almost exclusively on continuously improving the processes around communication, who does what and when and how better to ensure practical operational outcomes from the data. Now that the platform itself is built, these six people have become the heart of our operation. With the rollout of A1, their impact will be multiplied many times.

Early on, we encountered some typical challenges, such as struggling to get everyone on board with using the platform. However, as the system improved and people realised the benefits, the adoption rate improved. Now, it has become a common currency where every colleague automatically uses the platform in their daily duties. We have achieved this by evolving our training to ensure that everyone is confident and comfortable using the platform.

In my view, the biggest barrier to widespread adoption of technology in the care sector is resistance to change. There’s a mindset that care should look and feel a certain way, but we need to focus on outcomes, not rigid binary models of service delivery. I think that in order to deliver the best possible care, we really need to accept that technology is essential to our sector and think about ways to properly integrate it. In reality, as we have experienced, the technology and data ends up shaping the organisation’s structure and in this respect, Home From Home Care looks like no other care company.

In conclusion, technology isn’t a silver bullet, but it’s an enabler. Implemented correctly, it allows us to run our care service more efficiently, deliver highly personalised and nuanced care, and be proactive rather than reactive. The potential is mind blowing, and I believe the future lies in fully integrating digital tools into all areas of our sector. The key is to embrace the change, use the data to inform decisions, and focus on the outcomes we want to achieve for the individuals we support. We call it the data informed care model.

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