Helping social care providers go digital

We were asked to create a new online tool to help social care providers, with limited technical or digital expertise, choose their digital suppliers.

Background

The NHS wants to transform the social care sector. They want staff to have modern digital tools and ways of working, so they can gain the benefits of new technologies and improve patient care. Parts of the social care sector still follow paper-based processes, which can increase risks and delays to patient care.

“30% of social care providers are still using entirely paper based systems, and another 30% are only partially digitised” Digital Social Care Record Programme, NHS England

Brief

In 2020, NHS England recognised that social care providers needed support identifying the best suppliers for digital social care records. Since there's a wide range of suppliers offering different solutions, with a vast array of features, many healthcare providers, who often had limited technical expertise, found it difficult to shortlist suppliers.

In October 2021, we were engaged to create a new online tool to help social care providers to choose the best digital solutions for their needs.

What we did

We kicked off the work by reviewing previous research and similar tools available online to inform our approach. This was followed by the design of an interactive tool that asked providers a set of questions about their needs before giving them a list of suitable suppliers.

In total, we carried out 16 prototype testing sessions over two major design iterations. We engaged with both large care providers, some employing over 2,000 staff across different sites, and small local independent care providers in residential and live-in care. We also engaged with a range of digital social care record suppliers to ensure the tool represents their solutions in a fair and user-friendly manner.

Start page of the new tool

Throughout the project, we worked closely with our client and stakeholders inviting them to observe research sessions and to take part in data analysis workshops. We also held regular show-and-tells where we shared progress and gathered valuable feedback on our work.

Following an agile, user centric, design process we created a tool which:

• explained technical features in simple language to help non-technical buyers understand what different solutions could provide
• used a decision tree question flow to help users refine their list of potential solutions based on their needs
• provided consistent templates for presenting supplier profiles to allow easy comparison between suppliers
• provided both downloadable and shareable results to support users’ preferred ways of working
• included a simple maintenance process using a spreadsheet upload, so that the non-technical team can update the changing list of suppliers and features

Challenges we faced

Over the course of the project we found that we needed to ask questions that both technical and non-technical buyers could easily understand. We needed to allow everyone using the tool to select suitable options with confidence and to be able to refine their requirements so that they get relevant results.

In addition, we found providers might select a 'nice-to-have' feature in the filters which would exclude an otherwise relevant supplier. We therefore needed to ensure that users could see which solutions met their needs and which did not based on their answers. Also, to be able to change their answers, if they realised, for example, that some needs were not as important as others.

Another challenge was the lack of an existing standardised supplier profile. So we defined and tested a new standardised format to allow easier comparison between suppliers.

Question page asking users what additional features they require

Results

Our solution was very well received in user research by all types of users and stakeholders. We received valuable feedback which allowed us to iterate our solution so that it works well for all users regardless of ability and digital confidence.

We also wanted to ensure our tool fitted seamlessly into the broader end-to-end service journey of buying digital solutions, so we made recommendations for changes to the Digitising Social Care website where the tool would be hosted.

The tool went live in the summer of 2022. The clients have expressed to us how happy they are with our successful delivery and overall engagement on the project.

Feedback

“Personally I think it’s such a useful tool. Very helpful for providers who need a bit of guidance.” Head of Systems, Care provider

“I am very impressed with the project. It’s a great tool that has been delivered and I would work with you again.” Programme Manager, NHS England

“In the public sector ‘doing with the sector’ rather than ‘to them’ is a very important part of any project delivery. You really represent that ethos in your approach on how you did the project.” Programme Manager, NHS England