‘1,076% growth just the start’ says Founders on Deloitte Fast 50

The founders of Person Centred Software, a company that is helping solve the UK’s elderly care challenge, say their 1,076% growth is ‘just the start’ after winning a place on the Deloitte Tech Fast 50 list.

Entrepreneur brothers Jonathan and Simon Papworth of Guildford-based Person Centred Software wrote their innovative electronic care planning software in 2013 and are now installing it at the rate of 50 care homes a month.  

The software is revolutionising adult social care by enabling carers to digitally record care as it is given – saving admin time and improving carer and nursing staff retention in a sector that has a chronic staff shortage.

The company, which employs 34 people, has built turnover from £351K to £4.1m in just four years – an increase of 1,076%. This week it was placed at 31 on the Deloitte list alongside the fastest growing names in UK tech.

Duncan Down, lead partner for the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 programme, said: “The Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 is internationally revered as one of the most important business awards in the industry.

“The awards highlight the success being achieved within the sector today, with Fintech businesses showing significant growth in particular.”

The 50 fastest growing UK technology companies, as ranked by Deloitte, generated around £650m in total annual revenues in the year 2018/19 and employed more than 8,700 people. The Deloitte UK technology Fast 50 recorded an average three-year growth rate of 3,878 per cent.

Jonathan Papworth said: “Winning a place on the Deloitte listing is a significant milestone for the business. Our growth has been rapid, but for us, this is just the start. The opportunity in social care tech is huge – particularly when 80% of care homes in the UK are relying on slow, costly paper processes that our company can digitise in a day.”

Co-founder Simon Papworth said: “Old or vulnerable people will always need people to care for them and these carers need freeing from repetitive admin so they can focus exclusively on highly-personalised outcomes based care We ensure our products are intuitive to use while offering reliability and longevity, so carers can easily evidence the high quality work they do.”

The Papworths’ system, an easy-to-use icon-based app on smartphones, is saving care home staff across the UK an hour a day in admin. It is also helping to attract and retain staff in a sector where there are around 120,000 unfilled vacancies at any one time. In the same four year growth period, the company expanded its UK customer portfolio from 110 to more than 1,200 care homes. Mobile Care Monitoring is today implemented in 1,500 care homes across the UK.

Jonathan added: “Person Centred Software is on a mission to radically improve care provision in the UK. With an ageing population and large-scale recruitment challenges, this is one of the burning issues of our time and improvement cannot happen quickly enough.”

Having floated tech business iRevolution in 2001 and sold another care tech company in 2010, brothers Jonathan, 60, and Simon Papworth, 52, decided to focus on developing an app-based platform they believed could revolutionise social care. Person Centred Software is still privately owned.  

Jonathan adds: “We started the company to help improve standards in social care. We are on a mission to drive outstanding care for some of the most vulnerable people in society. We know from 20 years’ experience developing technology for carers that only passion can create change – and we continue to stay at the helm of the business to help drive digital development in the sector.”

In addition to its electronic care planning software, the company is working on a number of wider projects to improve health and social care in the UK. These include an NHS partnership to trial the electronic transfer of care home records to hospitals, and collaborations with three universities – University College London, Edinburgh and Glasgow - on research to scientifically evidence care outcomes.