The Green Paper on Social Care must address technological integration with the NHS

Jonathan Papworth, Co-Founder of Person Centred Software, explains what technological developments he would like to see in the Green Paper on social care.

The forthcoming Green Paper on social care is long-promised and much-anticipated. The Government has said that the proposals in Green Paper will ‘ensure that the care and support system is sustainable in the long term’. Investment and collaboration in technology is crucial to ensure this change.

I believe that the Green Paper needs to recognise that social care deserves much more attention than it has been given in the past. The NHS’s view of social care seems to be that social care is tiny relative to the NHS, when the reality is that they are, largely, the same size. The NHS employs 1.18 million people (1.04 million FTE) and social care employs 1.6 million people (1.13 FTE). *

The Green Paper must support the adoption of technology in social care because sharing information electronically between social care and the NHS can relieve the burden on health services. This will enable faster discharge between hospital and social care environments, which are better suited to patients’ needs and preferences and so, above all, will increase patients’ wellbeing.

What technological developments do you think the Green Paper on social care needs to include?