Putting people at the heart of technology-enabled care
About 6 mins
Much of the rhetoric around neighbourhood health models presents using technology as part of the solution to bring care closer to home. But in doing so, it's important to ensure that the human relationships that underpin good care aren't lost.
Our Tech for Better Care programme explored how best to do this, supporting teams to develop, test and pilot technology-enabled care at home and in the community.
Learning from the programme suggests that the most promising digital innovations may not always be those that introduce entirely new technologies. Instead, it’s key that innovations use technology to strengthen relationships, build trust and support more proactive forms of care.
Why relationship-centred care matters now
The NHS and social care are facing workforce pressures, rising demand and the impacts of persistent health inequalities. There is growing emphasis on prevention, neighbourhood health, supporting people at home, digital transformation and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to address these concerns.
The challenge is using technology to support these approaches while ensuring care is person centred and inclusive as well as efficient. 10 health and care teams took on this challenge as part of the Tech for Better Care programme, three of which were funded to prototype and pilot their early-stage concepts.
A different approach to innovation
The Tech for Better Care programme’s distinctive focus on relationship-centred (relational) care shaped how teams designed and delivered their services.
Several teams reflected that while they were familiar with prevention-focused, person-centred care, it is still more of an ambition than current practice. The programme encouraged the teams to think differently to create services focused on relationships, trust, belonging and understanding people's wider lives and circumstances. To do this well, the teams worked collaboratively with local partners, ensuring their service concepts aligned with local priorities and strengths. They worked with the people and organisations best placed to engage those more likely to experience health inequalities and digital exclusion.
This resulted in innovations that, instead of replacing human interaction, used technology to strengthen peer-support networks, identify needs earlier and intervene before problems escalated, and support carers and families alongside the care recipient. An independent evaluation, undertaken by Ipsos, found strong evidence that the design of our funding programme, with its thematic focus, emphasis on user-centred design and support to teams, directly influenced the development of more relational and proactive service models.
'The programme design... embodied the methodology, support and capacity to enable you to do something different, and it had the right level of challenge as well as support in there to help you find the answers.’
Pilot team member
‘For me, the relational part was novel […] the relational element became the much stronger theme for work, and that wouldn’t have happened without this focus.’
Pilot team member
Relational, technology-enabled care in practice
The three pilot projects demonstrated different ways technology can enhance, rather than replace, human relationships.
Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire integrated care board created a personalised medication support service by pairing technology with home visits, personalising assessments and ongoing follow-up appointments from project workers.
Sutton Primary Care Networks developed technology-enabled, facilitated peer-support groups for people experiencing loneliness or managing diabetes.
NHS Lanarkshire explored potential uses of technology for falls prevention services and digital solutions to enable a ‘tell your story once’ approach.
What the projects taught us about relational technology-enabled care
The common lesson from all three projects was that relational care did not happen automatically because technology was available. It required deliberate design (with pilot teams involving users in iterative testing processes), interactions with trusted health and care staff, and support from family and local networks.
‘We have learned so much and understand way better the importance of relational care, but also the type of journey you need to go on when making such changes. Because there’s a technical element, there’s a people element and there’s also the emotional intelligence… awareness of some of the barriers, challenges and enablers of those changes that you need to tackle in order to get [these models of care] through.’
Pilot team member
Service users were supportive of AI and digital solutions, even when initially sceptical or not digitally confident, provided these were used transparently and improved their experience. The Sutton pilot project showed early signs that AI can reduce administrative burden and free up staff to focus on building relationships. This mirrors wider findings from our recent research that public trust in AI depends heavily on how it is used and whether people believe it supports, rather than undermines, the quality of care.
Implications for the future
The promising service models supported by the programme show that technology-enabled care can support a future health and care system that is more preventive than reactive, more community-based than hospital-centred, more personalised than standardised and more relational than transactional.
However, achieving this vision will require progress on the longstanding barriers identified by Ipsos’ evaluation, including fragmented funding, data-sharing challenges, workforce capacity and commissioning models that often struggle to invest in prevention.
As health and care systems continue exploring AI, digital transformation and neighbourhood health approaches, one lesson stands out clearly from the programme: technology alone does not create better care. The greatest opportunity may lie in using technology to strengthen the human relationships good care has always depended on.
Jo Scott is Associate Director in the health and social care team at Ipsos.