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Digital telecoms specialists Communicare247 has been appointed to the Scotland Excel framework for local authorities’ telecare services worth up to £25.2 million.

The digital telecare specialist will provide cloud-based services, coupled with technologies including GPS devices, telecare mobile phones, personal care detectors and environmental sensors that will enable people to live independently in their homes for longer across all of Scotland’s 32 local authorities.

Communicare247 is the only independent Scottish SME among the 14 companies awarded through the framework to deliver personal telecare technologies across Scotland over the next four years.

Tom Morton, chief executive officer of Communicare247, said: “We welcome this framework that underpins Scotland’s adoption of telecare services that are fit for the future. Now is the time for local authority commissioners to ensure their telecare systems are robust and truly offer citizens choice and freedom.

“Adopting the right services combined with the right technologies can deliver social care that reduces the number of people affected by delayed discharge. As well, digital telecare is the only way to ensure that home alarms reach the help needed as the UK telephone network switches to digital.”

Scotland Excel, the Centre of Procurement Expertise for the local government sector in Scotland, represents its 32 local authorities and manages a £1 billion contract portfolio that supports the delivery of social care, construction, roads, transport, environment, corporate, education and ICT services.

Glasgow-based Communicare247, founded in 2007, says it operates the only facilities in Scotland that can provide an end-to-end digital telecare solution to local authorities and other healthcare providers. The company’s state-of-the-art Alarm Receiving Centre is based in Dunoon.

Article as published in The Insider.

Article as featured in The Scotsman and the Insider

Digital telecare specialist Communicare247 is teaming up with a charity to help support young people across Scotland with caregiving responsibilities.

The health tech business, which provides monitoring services to support in-home care, has partnered with Carers Trust Scotland to provide a weekend break for 30 young carers at a Dunoon holiday park in February.

The event, which is coordinated by Carers Trust Scotland and the Scottish Young Carers Services Alliance, will see the youngsters sail from Gourock to the Hunters Quay Holiday Village, a resort belonging to the Argyll Holidays group.

The resort offers luxury caravan accommodation, a leisure complex with pool and sauna facilities, as well as a fitness centre and dance studio.

The initiative is part of a charity support campaign launched by Communicare247 and its sister company Safe Shores Monitoring to celebrate 20 years in business. Other charities supported by the campaign include Carr Gomm, Help for Heroes and Poppyscotland.

Communicare247 is based in Glasgow with an alarm receiving centre in Dunoon, where the firm was established.

Founder and chief executive Tom Morton said: “We take our hats off to these young people who give so much to help others, and we wanted to help them. By giving them the chance to have some fun and relaxation in our hometown of Dunoon, we hope that it goes some way in helping them feel valued for the sacrifices they make year-round to support others.

“We wanted to do this to celebrate that for 20 years we have been helping employers, and more recently carers, through Communicare247 with ensuring the security and safety of people either in the workplace or at home.”

Louise Morgan, director for Scotland and Northern Ireland at Carers Trust Scotland, said: “These children dedicate their lives to helping their loved ones and are often desperate for a break from their duties and to have a bit of fun – that’s why young carer respite services like this are such a lifeline for them.

“We welcome the support of organisations like Communicare247 to help make it happen each year.”

Tom Morton, CEO of Communicare247, has welcomed extra funding for care services in England and Wales announced in the Budget worth £695million in 2019/20.

However, these funds which will be allocated to local authorities should be focused on delivering a digital transition which will make the UK’s growing care budgets more sustainable in the future.

Mr Morton said investment in digital telecare and applications of services and delivered by “internet of things” (IoT) must be deployed to solve the funding crisis facing local authorities and vulnerable people needing care in their homes across the UK.

With the added pressure of the current changes to the telecommunications network, effectively rendering existing analogue telecare alarm systems obsolete, councils must also ensure money is found to make transformational changes.

Mr Morton said: “The need for a vision and funding plan for adult social care has never been so urgent. We urge local authorities to spend the Chancellor’s boost wisely on the digital infrastructure that will ensure care is affordable and effective for all.

“Digital telecare platforms such as Archangel by Communicare247canenable care for all in the near future. IoT connected sensors will alert family and professional care staff to changes in the vital statistics of a frail or disabled person, while ‘smart’ pill packs will remind the user or their carers when medicines need to be administered and when prescriptions need refilling. Telehealth applications will also deliver care management systems accessible by both family and care providers as well as the users themselves.

“While some of these technologies exist they currently operate as isolated services and generate independent silos of data. Therefore these complex systems require integration within a single platform such as Archangel. Only by merging these data silos can we unlock the necessary efficiencies and the inherent knowledge within. It will require that local health and social care providers change the way their systems operate to ensure that elderly care remains affordable now and in the future.

Article as featured in The Scotsman and Third Force News.

Lone worker protection specialist, Safe Shores Monitoring, and its sister company, Communicare247, have launched a charity support campaign to celebrate 20 years of business growth.

Safe Shores Monitoring and Communicare247 have pledged to support six charities that are aligned with their social values as businesses throughout the group’s 20th year of operation.

The six partner charities that have been chosen to benefit from the Charity Support Programme are: Carers Trust, the UK’s largest charity for unpaid carers; Carr Gomm, which delivers high quality support services and campaigns to tackle loneliness and social isolation; Help for Heroes and Poppyscotland, which support serving and veteran armed forces personnel and their families; and SAMH and SANE, leading Scottish and UK charities that support people and families affected by mental illness.

Through the newly launched Charity Support Programme, Safe Shores Monitoring and Communicare247 will donate funds to the charities each time a customer contracts one of the companies’ services over the next 12 months. Customers will be given the opportunity to select their preferred partner charity or charities. The programme will also enable the customers to raise further funds for the charity partners supported by funding from the companies. Safe Shores Monitoring and Communicare247 are aspiring to raise £25,000 through the programme.

Tom Morton, CEO of both Communicare247 and Safe Shores Monitoring, said: “For 20 years we have been helping employers and more recently carers through Communicare247 with ensuring the security and safety of people either in the workplace or at home.

“We have chosen these six charities for our 20-year anniversary Charity Support Programme because the work they do chimes with our values of offering support, wellbeing and care to people who need it most.

“These charities are tireless in achieving their aims which include addressing homelessness and employment opportunities for former military service personnel and others; tackling mental health; ending loneliness and social isolation; and providing carer respite.

“We have structured the Charity Support Programme to maximise funds raised for our chosen charities, while also enabling our new customers to support their own fundraising efforts too.”

Mark Bibbey, Poppyscotland’s Chief Executive, said: “We are very grateful to Safe Shores Monitoring and Communicare247 for launching this exciting and ambitious fundraising project. Their Charity Support Programme will raise money that will help us provide life-changing support to the Armed Forces community living in Scotland in this most significant of years as we commemorate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Armistice that led to the end of the First World War.”

Margaret Edwards, Director of Communications for SANE, said: “We were delighted to be chosen to be part of Safe Shores Monitoring and Communicare247’s Charity Support Programme and to hear that both the company and its customers will be joining our fight to change mental health for good.”

Lucy Wren, CEO of Carr Gomm, which is spearheading its Stomp Out Loneliness campaign to end social isolation, said: “We are delighted to have been chosen as one of Safe Shores Monitoring and Communicare247’s partners for their celebratory Charity Support Programme. The money raised from this programme will go directly towards funding much-needed projects and activities that tackle loneliness and isolation for people of all ages and stages across Scotland.

“Loneliness has existed as a social concern for many years and has now become widely recognised as a growing problem. Activities and relationships, as well as a sense of belonging and purpose, are all essential to supporting positive health and wellbeing; Carr Gomm fundraises to develop projects that find new ways to address the gaps in society, supporting people to feel part of society and achieve their goals. 

“It’s vital that we continue in taking action to reduce the staggering statistic that one in ten of adults in Scotland often feel lonely.”

Article published in The Herald

THE UK Government’s £20billion boost for NHS brings with it £2bn for Scotland’s health service. But will the funding be enough to meet the challenges created by Scotland’s rapidly ageing population?

Maybe, if we ensure the right approach is taken.

A recent commentator in this paper, the much-admired disability campaigner Dr Jim Elder-Woodward, highlighted concerns about how plans to reshape home care services to meet constrained budgets were affecting users.

On the subject of overnight sleepovers, he said that it would be “impossible” for telecare services to meet the unique needs of people reliant on care support in the home. And we agree that, as current telecare provision stands, it will be challenging to replace carers sleeping over with merely an analogue telecare-enabled hub.

But what is actually happening in Scotland is that those for whom overnight support is the right measure will continue to receive this.

As specialists in the design and delivery of digital telecare in Scotland, we believe there is also great potential in the deployment of technologies alongside traditional sleepover support and this has the potential to increase home care choices rather than deny them.

We believe that technology-enabled care will offer a win-win – improved outcomes for patients as well as cost-effective solutions for care services that face being squeezed by austerity on one side and unprecedented demand from the ageing population on the other.

As fears rise that the funding in England for social care will be delayed and require a rise in taxation, the Scottish Government is arguably further along in integrating primary and social care. It aims to ensure the best care possible while also ensuring it is affordable.

Efforts to deliver a health and social care system fit for the future are being spearheaded by organisations such as Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) and Falkirk Council, each supporting “radical” change in the redesign of health and social care pathways. Falkirk is implementing a single platform, initially for telecare, that will bring all its outcome-focused systems together for its health and social care users.

But this journey is not going to be easy. HIS admits in its recently published operational plan 2018/19, that issues of sustainability and financial outlook mean “difficult decisions” and “tougher choices about priorities” must be made.

What care users in Scotland can look forward to is a commitment across government and the NHS to support systems in the home that are future-proof as well as offering what most of us want – to live as independently and with as much dignity for as long as we can.

In telecare, the changes are happening now as the UK phone network, which supports all home alarm systems in use across the UK, is starting its switch to digital. Taking full advantage of this shift will enable care commissioners such as local authorities to offer fall and movement sensors, medical dose monitors and many other technology-enabled applications to work in a way that is truly integrated across emergency and care services. It will also deliver dramatic cost savings as people are no longer delayed from being discharged from hospital.

But this will only happen if – as Dr Elder-Woodward pointed out – an increase in budgets can be found to implement integrated care systems both in Scotland and across the UK.

I’m confident that Scotland, which has a joined-up health and care system, has identified the right approach to delivering truly effective digitally-enabled care for its elderly and vulnerable citizens, and £2bn would be a great start to making it happen.