Introduction
The Digitising Social Care Programme (DiSC) within the NHS England Transformation Directorate is working to improve the digital landscape within the Adult Social Care sector over the next few years through:
Ensuring that all care providers have access to the connectivity, skills and devices they need,
Supporting providers in meeting cyber security standards, ensuring their systems are secure,
Promoting interoperability, with a goal of 80% of care providers having digital social care records that can connect to the shared care record,
Implementing Sensor based falls prevention or detection technology such as acoustic monitoring or equivalent sensor technology to tackle the issue of falls within care homes,
Piloting new care tech, producing evaluated and digital playbooks to support scaling.
The National DiSC team is developing an evidence base for the benefits of digital social care technology. This includes:
The development and maintenance of an assured supplier list for digital social care technology, defining the roadmap for standards compliance and driving adoption of standards by software suppliers,
The development of a minimum data set for adult social care (MODS), exploring smarter regulation and developing commissioner guidance,
The development of care provider guidance, tools and templates,
Continued evaluation of the support provided to the care sector to inform support in future years.
Furthermore, we want to support regional planning for ensuring Digital Social Care Technology solutions are being implemented in a way which drives equality and equity of access. We want to communicate and broadcast information about the programme to ICSs in their regional footprint and facilitate the sharing of learnings across their regional footprint. We also aim to support the ICS local delivery offer to deliver the ICS digital social care projects;
Contribute to the development of the evidence base for the benefits of digital social care records and technology, share lessons learned both across the region and nationally and contribute to benefits cases and evaluations of the support provided to care providers.