Care Home Data Platform Innovation Foundation Challenge

Challenge Objectives

Care Homes collect a significant amount of data about their residents for making individual, person-centred care decisions and for management/national reporting requirements. This Challenge will invite companies to assess if currently collected data on residents by care homes, can – alone or when combined with health and social care records – provide a holistic digital picture of a resident’s health, wellbeing and care needs.

This first Care Home Innovation Challenge will lay the foundations for subsequent innovation in this area. The results will enable the future development of scalable and replicable risk stratification and decision support tools that will empower care home staff in collaboration with relevant others to make informed, timely and appropriate interventions for person-centred care.

The Clinical Lead for this innovation challenge is Dr Susan Shenkin from the Department of Geriatric Medicine, University of Edinburgh and NHS Lothian in collaboration with Lucy Johnston, a Research Fellow at Edinburgh Napier University. The delivery partners are Health Innovation South East Scotland (HISES), NHS Lothian, the Data Lab, Napier University and the University of Edinburgh.

Outputs Expected

Phase 1
An accessible technical feasibility demonstration, using currently available care home data, on its own, or in combination with other health and social care records of:

• A real or near real-time holistic record of a resident’s health, wellbeing and care needs.
• A trajectory of changes (over time) in a resident’s health, well-being and care needs.

The companies shortlisted to undertake the challenge are being asked to provide:

• A report setting out additional analysis that identifies gaps, challenges and inconsistencies in the current care home data collected.
• Their expert opinion on whether and how this can be done, given the different ways in which data are collected across the care home sector with recommendations and advice on data harmonization and a minimum or desirable core dataset.
• And if possible, the initial development of a tool capable of predicting a deterioration in a resident’s health and wellbeing thereby enabling staff to intervene timely, appropriately and/or prevent escalation.

Consideration to also be provided on the potential inclusion of other health and social care records and how these could be combined to add value to the tools developed to this Challenge or tools for inclusion in a future innovation challenges for the care home sector in Scotland.

Strategic Priority Area

• To enhance the opportunities for healthy living and well-being.
• To deliver preventative and proactive care.
• To improve the provision of integrated care – both planned and unplanned.

SBRI Key Dates

Applicant briefing event: 11th January 2021 (view the recording and useful links here)
Contract notice closes: 5th February 2021
Phase 1 start date: 15th March 2021

Funding Partners

This is a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) competition jointly funded by the Chief Scientists Office (CSO) in Scottish Government and the Data Lab, and hosted by Health Innovation South East Scotland.