With modern technology and AI, using cognitive services and leveraging Microsoft’s ecosystem such as Office 365 and the Power Platform, you could save up to two weeks of time every month in your administration department.

The best bit: you don’t need to be a developer to achieve this. By transforming your document driven process, not only will you be able to save hours of staff time, you’ll also be able to extract data for reporting purposes and use the insights to make more informed business decisions.

Working smarter with the help of technology

Imagine receiving 5,000 paper/electronic invoices each month. In the context of adult social care, it’s likely to be a lot higher than this for some councils.

These invoices need to be receipted and reconciled to extract key information such as invoice date, invoice number, total amount, invoice sender, and recipient. This data would then typically be stored in an Excel file.

Could you imagine how long this manual process would take? An admin would have to extract the data from a PDF received via email and then copy it across to the Excel file.

Now, let’s assume we could find a way to improve this process and only save one minute per each invoice. That would be a saving of 5,000 minutes. 83 hours every month for a single business process. Imagine what else you could achieve with that time instead.

Here is how we do it:

In SharePoint Online:

• Create a Document library.
• Add columns for the fields you want to extract from the documents.

In PowerApps:

• In AI Builder create a ‘Form Processing’ model.
• Add sample documents to train the model.
• Select the fields you want to use from the document that have been identified.
• Publish the model.

In Power Automate:

• Create a Solution.
• Create a FLOW inside the Solution using the trigger when a file is created in Sharepoint.
• Edit the FLOW to orchestrate the data extraction from AI builder to SharePoint Online (this FLOW only has five steps at minimum to run).

You will be surprised how easy it is. Best of all, this requires no coding experience. We’ve got some great documentation to further help you use the AI Builder.

Driving innovation with data-driven insights

With the AI builder and Power Platform, many business processes can be improved or even fully automated. This also enables you to harness the data to generate insights, drive innovation and boost efficiencies.

Such a data process as described here, only takes about two to three hours to build. Not only does it save time and reduce cost, but it also reduces the error rate by eliminating the need to manually key in or transfer data from one system to another.

Making the data available in Office 365 greatly improves the business productivity and creates opportunities to achieve more. A very simple step to become a data driven organisation.

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Enhance your workflows with AI builder

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About the author

Bjoern is an experienced IT professional, working in the UK Public Sector team. He looks after Local and Regional Government organisations to help them with their digital transformation. As an Account Technology Strategist, he is a senior member of the enterprise Account Team across 3 territories and focus mainly on C-Level engagements.

Bjoern is passionate about all Microsoft technology – in particular the Power Platform and Azure Data, AI and IoT services.

Technology is so powerful and versatile today but many organisations struggle to keep up or grasp what is possible to improve and transform the business processes. This is my mission to help overcome these gaps.

The post How to work smarter, reduce admin, and generate data-driven insights in social care appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

Help in a highly regulated industry

To protect vulnerable people and ensure they receive the highest quality of care, social care is one of the most highly regulated industries in the UK. That includes the use of technology. In Care Quality Commission’s latest Key Lines Of Enquiries there is a question that specifically asks how technology and equipment is used to enhance care.

The answer is that the right technology can help managers and care home operators shape the way they deliver and enhance the quality of care they provide. Particularly when applied to areas that require improvement, or to meet the care needs and preferences of residents. So rather than choosing a single solution, multiple should be considered – each as a source of risk reduction, and a way for care providers to become more proactive and responsive.

For the carers

Many innovations are rightly focused on improving residents’ experiences of person-centred care. However, those who provide the care should not be overlooked. Some of the latest software is aimed at improving carers’ working conditions. For example, mobile-based services enable staff to evidence and record care interactions on-the-go, cutting paperwork for each carer by at least an hour a day and giving them more time to spend with residents.

With this electronic real-time recording, managers have access to detailed information that accurately reflects the care that was given. They can audit care activities against plans far more effectively compared to paper reports. For instance, staff can accurately and immediately evidence fluids they have offered, and what residents have drunk to reduce the risk of dehydration.

By effectively monitoring fluids electronically, one care home group reduced falls by 33%. Another care home group found that since using electronic evidence of care and care planning, the retention rate for carers increased by 40% due to improved morale.

Transparency for families

In today’s connected world, digital records are likely to become even more important as care homes come under greater scrutiny from family, friends and the media. They are demanding transparency about how loved ones are being cared for and treated.

One benefit of digital records is the ability to offer a secure portal for friends and family of residents in care homes to share messages and photos electronically. And if appropriate, relatives can view care updates and electronically sign care plans. This not only dispels families’ fears but keeps them more connected to a loved one’s new stage of life. It also gives value back to carers, since it shows and recognises everything that they do, from major activities to the smallest acts of kindness.

Continuous innovations

Other innovations that benefit both carers and residents are applied technologies, such as heart monitors. These can be worn by residents to monitor a range of medical and physical conditions, helping to ensure optimum well-being. Another is acoustic monitoring which replaces night checks by continuously monitoring residents and alerting staff when needed. Smartphones can now access the latest AI and facial recognition technology so care providers can monitor pain in people who are non-verbal, such as those living with dementia.

The future for technology in social care is both urgent and exciting, but we must never forget that people need to have contact with people. Any new technology must ensure carers have more time for personal interaction, with the focus always on improving both the lives of carers and those they’re looking after.

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How technology is modernising health and social care

About the author

After many years as a professional software developer, Jonathan’s career in care began in the early 90s when he developed a service user billing system. The billing system went on to become the electronic care administration system CareSys, which Jonathan sold in 2010.

A few years after this Jonathan and his brother, Simon, set up Person Centred Software. Jonathan is a business analyst by training so he can look at a problem and work out innovative ways to solve it. Jonathan’s vision is about joined-up, holistic care, and works with carefully chosen partners to deliver the most effective systems to achieve that. As he says, ‘if it affects care, we will be there’.

The post Transforming the social care experience – from transparency to innovation appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.

This blog is the first in a series where we will shine a light on some of these ‘different things’. We’ll take a virtual tour up and down the UK to explore stories of new ways of working, partnerships and of course the role which data, AI and digital are playing in this field. Change is happening, not only in service transformation, (because you’d be right to expect that) but also in how digital is paving the way for consumers of care to make our own choices about the sort of care which really matters to us – after all, this will be all of us one day. So where will we be stopping off?

With many services currently experiencing more ‘front doors’ than citizens can cope with, there are some substantial changes in the way which organisations are thinking about how services of the future will be accessed by those seeking help. An increasing number of authorities are looking to AI-driven virtual assistant services (aka bots) to support people in helping themselves by, for example, using this technology to suggest appropriate assistive technology which can help people in the home. Newcastle City Council’s Adult Social Care Equipment bot is one of the first of its kind, with similar technology popping up elsewhere in the country.

Others are bringing the power of AI and blockchain to help people source the care they want close to their own homes, and in doing so are beginning to address the issue of care ‘blackspots’ which leave many people without any care at all. Using the Tribe Project’s platform, individuals in pilot sites in Dorset Council and Shropshire Council can choose how to spend their care budget on support delivered from carers in their local area, people they trust to support them at the time and in the way they most need help.

North of the border in Dumfries and Galloway, exploring and deepening partnerships between the sector, the IT industry and academia have given rise to a new breed of assistive technology which goes beyond detecting falls to actually predicting the likelihood of them happening – Loreburn Housing, supported by ARMED technology managed to eradicate falls during tests. This is a genuine step forward in using technology to enable early intervention in order to prevent (or delay) the otherwise seemingly inevitable journey into increasingly costly care pathways.

A little further south,  Manchester City Council, together with health partners forming the Manchester Care Organisation are looking to evolve their integrated health and care approach through a data platform to manage and respond to real time needs from people whilst they are still in the community. Putting a focus on supporting people wherever possible to stay in their homes supported by family and friends, the integrated team is looking to make its combined data work for the benefit of the whole system and for the people of Manchester delivering a person centred, data driven ‘whole system’ approach. This is a truly different way of delivering health and care and should be of interest to Sustainability and Transformation Partnerships and Integrated Care Systems up and down the country.

We hope that you will find this series of blogs useful and that you will enjoy reading this UKAuthority whitepaper which showcases some other examples of innovation in health and care.

If you would like more information, please comment below to get in touch or reach out to your Microsoft Account Manager.

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Download the whitepaper: Smart and Connected Health and Social Care

Discover how to transform patient outcomes with AI 

About the author

Helena is Microsoft UK’s Local and Regional Government Industry Lead. She is passionate about the positive impact which technology, sensitively applied, can have on communities and cities of the future. Technology embedded in the fabric and infrastructure of our lives should help improve our day to day experiences, but it must do so in a way which helps us build a strong sense of community with those around us, encouraging a shared sense of ownership about our immediate environment, and on those further afield. Helena’s remit at Microsoft involves looking at how technology can help transform public services, particularly integrated health and social care, and leading on Microsoft’s smart cities programme in the UK. During her ten years at Microsoft, Helena has worked in various public sector focused roles, working with a mixture of start ups and major commercial organisations serving the public sector and with local government customers in the UK on their digital transformation activities. Prior to Microsoft, Helena managed a number of large change programmes and is well versed in the importance of the people side of change and transformation. 

The post How technology is modernising health and social care appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.