digital innovation in social care


Priorities and Opportunities for Scotland


Background

The Digital Health and Care Innovation Centre (DHI) was commissioned by Scottish Government Digital Health and Care division (DHaC) in January 2024 to develop a Care and Wellbeing Innovation Portfolio to support the delivery of the policy objectives of Scottish Government and CoSLA Digital Health and Care Strategy. Social Care innovation is a key part of this portfolio of work.

As a priority action the DHaC Social Care Portfolio Board recommended a review of projects underway to focus on:

  • identifying projects with greatest potential for acceleration to adoption at scale

  • attracting R&I (Research & Innovation) investment

Building on this recommendation, the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) collaborated with colleagues from the SG Digital Social Care Programme to facilitate a series of workshops and aligned activities involving national social care and social work stakeholders in Scotland, to map ongoing projects and reflect on opportunities for innovation and acceleration. 

This web report sets out the approach to mapping digital projects* in social care in Scotland, collaborating with national stakeholders and academic partners to identify key priorities for scale up in Scotland and to lever research and innovation opportunities; summarising key findings and recommendations. A full version of the published report can be accessed here [insert link].

(*Projects mapped were limited to those shared by stakeholders involved.)

[NB: We use the term social care innovation throughout this report – this term also encompasses: social work, third and independent social car sectors, care in housing and housing support.]

APPROACH AND Methodology

This work builds on DHI’s design research and innovation expertise, and experience of collaborating with colleagues across different sectors and disciplines. The work aims to understand and define key priorities for digital innovation in Scotland’s Social Care sector by working with national stakeholders across social care practice and academia. 

Approach to identifying and reviewing priorities for digital in social care

A survey was distributed to all stakeholders invited to join the workshops to capture digital initiatives in Social Care that they are involved in alongside barriers and enablers to their adoption and scale up. The information captured through the survey helped to set the scene for the discussions during the workshops. 

Workshop 1 involved activities to support stakeholders to collectively review social care related programmes and projects in Scotland, share information and insights and map alignment of the work to national strategic themes and priorities, including the Digital Health and Care strategy. A set of design mapping tools were created to support activities (see supporting documents section below for tools). 

Workshop 2 introduced stakeholders to the ‘care continuum’ framework developed from the learnings in workshop 1 (further elaborated on in the findings section). Stakeholders worked in groups to review a ‘vignette’ depicting the needs of a person accessing care and were provided with a template to map the aspirations, goals, circle of care and a ‘day in the life’ drawing from the information in the vignette (see supporting documents section below). Using the ‘care continuum’ framework, stakeholders placed where they felt the person was currently in the continuum and then mapped programmes and projects that could meet their needs and identified opportunities for improving care in the future.

Based on the findings of the survey and workshops, a consolidated set of action areas and a future proposal were developed and reviewed by stakeholders in an online collaborative session to ensure alignment, consensus and gather feedback on the areas identified. 

Workshop 3 focussed on collaboratively developing a distinct pathway/framework to support acceleration and scaling of innovation in the social care sector and approach to creating a digital social care innovation hub, based on emerging actions and priorities identified during the collaborative review. The creation of a digital social care innovation hub can support in creating the conditions to progressing the wider findings of this work. 

FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

 

Landscape of digital social care innovation in Scotland

The mapping activity invited participants to share both completed, ongoing and planned innovation activity related to social care. The projects mapped also included work from across areas of housing, social work and wider community care focused initiatives. It should be noted that the mapping was not intended to provide a comprehensive record of digital social care innovation in Scotland but more an indication of the types of innovations, stages of development and maturity, and the intended areas of impact from the work across the landscape of social care. In this way, the mapping provided a ‘snapshot’ in time of innovation activity across various projects and programmes current and ongoing. The resulting landscape map provides an overview of the work and exemplars of the types of digital social care innovation in Scotland.

Participants were also invited to map the ‘maturity’ of the projects to consider the current stage of development (i.e., design, development, test of change, wider implementation etc.), readiness for adoption of digital technology as an enabler, and relationship of the work to strategic approaches such as ‘Scottish Approach to Service Design’ and ‘Once for Scotland’ as outlined in Scottish Government digital strategies.

Many examples shared involved projects which were no longer in progress and hence were not included in the current landscape map. Key reasons why projects had concluded or were no longer continuing were due to budget implications and the time and funding limited nature of the work. There were limited opportunities to transition these projects from their pilot or test of change stages towards implementation and scale. 

 

Landscape map of digital social care projects in Scotland (2024) 

Interact with the map by clicking on each thematic area on top of the map to see projects relevant to these, alongside an indication of project and digital maturity based on information available at the time of publication. Click on each project title for information on what it aims to do, and who is involved. This is an evolving map and will be updated as new information emerges.

Mapping projects and prototyping scenarios of care led to: the creation of a framework representing care transitions and needs; learning on project alignment with strategic priorities and opportunities for acceleration and scale; a proposal to create a pathway for digital social care innovation; and a set of action areas reinforcing current priorities and policy ambitions for future care practice. 

The key findings emerging from the workshops validate previous learning and insight related to priorities for social care including the need for better integration to support person-centred care, appropriate service responses that meet individual needs, and enabling better access and sustainable models of care.

 

Care continuum as a framework for representing care transitions and needs

The framework was developed following a review of current representations of care continuums. A number of existing care continuums largely draw from and represent a ‘health’ perspective often with a focus on a single ‘health event/ condition’ and a linear journey– i.e., prevention, detection, early intervention, treatment, discharge, post-event care and self-management (ref). It is not an adequate representation of people’s holistic and diverse needs in a social care context.  While there is no consistent model for care continuum found across social care in Scotland currently, we found a ‘pyramid model’ of care (Scottish Government, 2021)– representing people’s journey from universal to targeted to specialist services; this however assumes an upward progression in the level of needs. We found alternative representations in areas such as children and young people’s services, for example the ‘Continuum of Need Windscreen’ which are ‘needs-focused’ than ‘condition-focused’, and further take into account a ‘step up’ and ‘step down’ approach to moving between different levels of need.  This was closest to representing the lived experiences that we have come across during our research. We adapted these to develop a care continuum representative of evolving care needs (see figure below), emphasising a ‘non-linear’ model that acknowledges that people go back and forth between different types of support as their needs change or sometimes concurrently receive different levels of care for a diversity of needs.  

Care continuum for social care (Raman and Kunte, 2024)

The four stages on the continuum focus on:  

  • Universal support for everyone  

  • Prevention and early intervention support for those at risk  

  • Targeted support for managing multiple needs and self management  

  • Statutory and specialist support for managing complex needs  

Findings from the workshops validated current policy ambitions and activity underway to shift care from the bottom half to the top half of the continuum. 

 

Creating an innovation hub and pathway for digital social care 


A key priority identified from the workshops is the need to create an innovation pathway and necessary infrastructure required to support digital innovation in social care. Many of the projects that were shared during the workshops have concluded testing and evaluation however, they remain limited in opportunities to scale and sustain due to a lack of infrastructure specific to social care.  

The Accelerated National Innovation Adoption (ANIA) Pathway is focused on using technology to fast-track proven innovations into the healthcare frontline on a once for Scotland basis, with the aim of reducing barriers to national innovation adoption. However, the current set up, methodology and governance of ANIA is focused on the NHS and does not take account of social care.  Learning from the ANIA pathway provides an opportunity for how the work in health can inform developments for social care in this area.  

Innovation trajectories in health also benefit from the Innovation Design Authority and the Chief Scientist Office (CSO) funded Innovation Fellowship schemes which aim to strength the innovation culture in NHS Scotland. The appointed Innovation Fellows are then attached to one of the three regional innovation hubs also funded by the CSO. Although both the fellowship scheme and the Innovation Hub definitions include reference to social care, to date both have predominantly focused on capacity and capability for the NHS in supporting innovation activity and development and adoption of new technologies.  

The opportunity to create a distinct pathway and a framework for digital innovation in social care could bring benefits through collaborative working across stakeholders, including industry and academia, including: supported navigation and application of innovation processes, development of an evaluation framework to understand impact and support learning and evidence-based approaches to future implementation of digital technology in practice – contributing to technical and cultural readiness.  

Findings highlighted what creating a pathway for digital social care innovation would involve, key benefits and outcomes, and key questions to inform its design and development.

Participants built on these findings and key questions during the third co-design workshop to initiate the development of a social care pathway and innovation hub. During this workshop, participants also reviewed existing frameworks in social care and related areas to identify distinct considerations for development of a digital social care hub/pathway. Participants also considered roles of different organisations in relation to the proposed hub as well as timelines and key actions required for implementation.

Emerging key functions, process/ stages, and deliverables and outcomes of the proposed digital social care innovation hub

 

Proposed timeline and next steps for developing the digital social care innovation hub

 

Prioritising action areas and connections to national programmes 

The findings of the workshops also reinforced key areas for action with connections and alignment to national programmes. The actions support the vision for whole health and social care system reform in relation to access, prevention, quality and people and place. The five areas of action validated by the findings include:  

You can read more about these priority action areas in the full report.

 
 
 

Illustration credit: Tessa Mackenzie

CONCLUSION

One of the key recommendations from the outcomes of this work is to create a distinct pathway/innovation hub for digital social care to create the conditions to enable acceleration, scale and adoption of technology. Working in collaboration with partners across the social care landscape including policy and academia to maximise existing assets and capabilities in Scotland will be critical. Future work will also focus on engaging with people with lived experience expertise and foreground citizen perspectives in further iteration and development of key priorities and the social care pathway/ innovation hub. 

DHI hosts the Healthy Ageing Innovation Cluster which is currently undergoing a refresh in terms of focus areas and objectives and there is an opportunity to embed social care innovation within the new cluster arrangements. 

DHI will continue to progress plans for establishing a digital social care pathway and innovation hub in partnership with stakeholder organisations and explore opportunities to prototype and evidence the infrastructure required to support wider social care innovation and transformation. A key focus of this work would be to create the conditions for the development of digital social care innovations that are sustainable and scalable, supporting the cultural/mindset shift required to implement in practice. The recommendation to shift focus towards ‘universal and preventative services’ as a foundation for holistic support across all stages of the care continuum reinforces the need to strengthen work already underway which prioritises individual wellbeing and quality of life – beyond episodic health interventions. 

For example, DHI is developing a portfolio of care and wellbeing projects that will identify digital services, products and solutions for social care, integrated care and housing. Future work will also encompass broader social care skills and expertise and build on wider digital maturity work to strengthen the focus on digital transformation across social care. 

The report provides a coherent starting point to make sense of a complex and evolving landscape. DHI will continue to adopt an iterative approach to build collaborations and partnerships with policy, practice, academia and industry across the landscape of digital social care to create a strategic framework and pathway to mobilise change. 

By working together to action the recommendations in this report and overcome the barriers to sustainable innovation and acceleration of digital in social care, we can ensure that investment in future innovations contributes to national ambitions around service reform and benefits the people of Scotland.  

Authors

Professor Margaret Whoriskey, Sneha Raman, Aarya Kunte, Don McIntyre

FOR FURTHER INFORMATIOn

For more information about the project, please contact:

Margaret Whoriskey, margaret.whoriskey@dhi-scotland.com

Sneha Raman, s.raman@gsa.ac.uk

For more information about the innovation hub and to get involved, please contact: 

Tara French, tara.french@dhi-scotland.com

FUNDING & PARTNERS

The DHI is a collaboration between the University of Strathclyde and the Glasgow School of Art and is part of the Scottish Funding Council’s Innovation Centre Programme. The DHI is also part-funded by Scottish Government.

This work was undertaken in partnership with the Digital Social Care Programme, Scottish Government and we are grateful to Rikke Iversholt and colleagues for their valuable input to the work. We would like to thank all stakeholders who participated in the workshops for their contributions and expertise. 

The workshops involved participation from national stakeholders across the following organisations and academic institutions in Scotland: