The prevention opportunity to seize today
Many discussions about prevention often revolve around the application of new digital technologies and ‘big data’. At Taking Care we’re committed to a digital journey and as a predominately private pay business we’re already bringing innovative new digital technology to our customers. But equally most of our existing customers are analogue customers.
At Taking Care we believe we shouldn’t have to wait for ‘sometime’ in the future to support our customers and service users with proactive, preventative care. Instead of waiting, possibly for years, to build a robust data set from digital TEC, we should be able to reap the benefits of a long-term collection of data around the usage of analogue personal alarms – where the true definition of ‘big data’ spans back over 35 years.
We referenced the work of Professor David Hand at Imperial College, London who talks about ‘dark data’ – the data sitting ‘hidden’ inside organisations that no one thinks has value. David suggests the key to unlocking a whole set of new value from this forgotten data is simply to ask the right questions.
We took this as an inspiring challenge and commissioned a team of data scientists to investigate five years’ worth of anonymised alarm button presses from our private pay customers, the reasons for those presses and cancellation of the service.
What we wanted to discover was, if by analysing the frequency, timing, and nature of call interactions, was it possible to identify patterns in the data associated with a higher risk of declining health?
Furthermore, was it possible to establish a progression of need that may involve interaction with Adult Social Care, and when – effectively providing a ‘pipeline of need’ indicator for social care?
The results from the analysis were hugely enlightening and gave a clear indication of being able to predict both death and moving to a care home based on analogue data. What we thought would be a great predictor, the frequency of 999 calls, didn’t feature as a reason at all – in fact the indicators were far more subtle.
Webinar – ‘Delivering prevention. One analogue alarm at a time.’ – 22 June at 10am
We’ve published our findings in our ‘Delivering Prevention Today’ insight report to help apply a similar process to your analogue data.
Collect your copy and join us at our webinar ‘Delivering prevention. One analogue alarm at a time’ on 22 June 2023 – at 10 – 11am, where Steve Gates, MD, and Daniel Lennox, Head of Sales and Marketing will explore how you can start to predict and be proactive using your current data and keep people safe right now.
To collect your copy of the report register your webinar place HERE.
