Public Funding for Docobo Ltd

CitywellnessLink envisions a future where it is easy and enjoyable for employees to take responsibility for their health, getting access to the right resources at the right time, thus enabling an increasing proportion of the older work-force to remain in productive employment until retirement age. The proportion of the adult population aged 50+ is projected to increase from 42% to 50% by mid-2030s. Given an older workforce with probable early exit from the labour market for health reasons, the future UK economy is likely to face significant challenges in areas such as the financing of State Pension and maintaining labour supply. Long-term health conditions are more prevalent in older people and some 9M people over 60 (of the 52.4M (2018) UK adult population) will potentially carry or develop them. The London population swells with commuters every working day. Although, there are approximately 10,000 residents in the City of London, the daytime population is 522,000 (2019) with 243,000 employees travelling from the rest of London, others from further afield. 100,000 travel to Tower Hamlets (pop397,000). Pre-COVID-19, 5M passengers annually use London City Airport in Newham (pop 306,102) About 50% of travellers to central London are over 50 therefore about 18% (226,000) have the potential of living with or developing a long-term condition with risk of other co-morbidities: consequently, ceasing to work before retirement age. Health-related lost productivity cost the UK economy an estimated £91 billion\*(ONS data). While adding 1 year to everyone's working life could increase GDP by 1% pa. Accessing GP services is challenging during working hours. So many people resort to local health and fitness services, or a myriad of unregulated "health" apps and lifestyle fitness devices with data stored in unconnected places and relying upon user self-assessment. Coordinating digital health services offered by approved local health and fitness providers would enable older employees to better maintain health and wellness, This greatly benefits them, the economy, and their employer. The CitywellnessLink study will determine the feasibility, acceptability and conceptual architecture of a digital platform to allow people to use different apps and services as needs and tastes change. We envisage that the scalable platform could be integrated with an approved digital health remote monitoring platform to provide clinicians consolidated access to health and wellness data. Rather than requiring people to seek their own resources, we envisage the platform will engage and influence the selection according to their needs.

People with dementia and their carers in Surrey and North East Hampshire will benefit from an innovative new project that will use technology to revolutionize healthcare. A variety of apps, monitors, sensors and other devices will be combined in an ‘Internet of Things’ that will monitor people’s health in their own homes. These devices will produce information to help people with dementia and their carers take more control over their own health and wellbeing. The insights and alerts provided by the combination of devices will enable healthcare staff to deliver more responsive and effective services. The ‘Test Bed’ project is funded by Innovate UK and NHS England to try out combinations of technologies that have the potential to improve care quality and provide better value for money. The project is led by Surrey & Borders NHS Foundation Trust working with the University of Surrey, Royal Holloway, University of London, Kent, Surrey and Sussex Academic Health Science Network, the Alzheimer’s Society, local Clinical Commissioning Groups, charities and other partners.

"Docobo Ltd is a UK healthcare solutions provider, involved in the management and prevention of Long Term Conditions (LTC, formally known as chronic diseases). The company is now investigating the development of a clinical/patient focused product for wound measurement."

Our society is characterized by a steadily growing proportion of elderly people. The majority of these elders have a strong desire to age independently in their own home environment. However, with age physical limitations increase and the social environment changes, which often leads to decreasing activity levels, need for assistance with daily life tasks and social isolation. SOcial Networks for Older adults to Promote an Active Life (SONOPA) will empower elders to stay active, autonomous and socially connected and consequently support and unburden family caregivers. Sonopa will achieve this objective by combining a Social Network with Activity Recognition in a Smart Home environment to stimulate and support activities and daily life tasks. Through the social network component and a telepresence system, new and existing contacts will be included in the activities and therefore in the elder’s daily life. The technologies incorporated in Sonopa include: (i) a social network, (ii) measurement systems to register the activities of the user at home and with their peers, (iii) behavior modeling and user profiling techniques, delivering a pattern of the elder’s activities over time by analyzing and summarizing the large sensory data and registered logs; and (iv) a user interface providing personalized recommendations, reminders and encouraging activities to the elder. Sonopa will particularly target elders living independently, but who may be starting to experience difficulties in their daily routine. This target group was chosen to counter decreasing activity levels and initial social isolation at an early stage. Elders and their caregivers will be actively engaged in all phases of the development process of the Sonopa technology. Prototypes will be tested in the elders’ home environment and in each stage we will carefully examine the needs and wishes of the user.

The main objectives of this integrated project are to: (1) develop methods for designing scalable assistive technologies and services and new business models to promote sustainable market development for independent healthy living in a mixed digital economy; and (2) understand the factors that promote or inhibit the uptake, use and integration of assistive technologies for older people living in the community from a user-centred perspective. SALT brings together a multi-disciplinary team of senior academics with practitioners from business, design, health and social care services, government agencies, third sector organisations and user groups to develop innovative, workable solutions. The project also leverages the extensive resources, and expertise of the Design, Business and Connected Communities activities of SiDE, the RCUK Digital Economy Hub at Newcastle on Social Inclusion through the Digital Economy, and extensive business engagement programmes within Newcastle University. The close involvement of businesses, health and social care organisations and users will help identify a clear route to market. It makes a significant contribution to capacity building in the North East, by developing and testing innovative solutions within existing health and social care structures through co-production; exploring new business models for sustainable new market development through case studies; and informing and validating new workable solutions from a user-centred perspective.

Awaiting Public Summary

ORION is a “strategic development project” involving R&D and demonstrations based on applications in the tele-health and security sectors. The project will examine how the CCTV business model can be implemented based around a cost-effective broadband infrastructure, using a mobile base station and/or satellite broadband network and appropriate network features that allow sharing of costs between surveillance system providers and mobile operators. The project will also examine how a mobile base station and/or satellite broadband network can be used to support rural communities with Assisted Living, with additional innovative focus on enabling voice and video calls via the hub between patients and clinicians/families.

The TSB Assisted Living Innovation Programme (ALIP) projects that have completed or are currently underway have demonstrated how inexpensive, commodity-based services and devices could support older people, those with long-term conditions and their care networks. As an example, the DAP "Anywhere Anytime" project uses commercial products (Cloud services/HealthVault) which use open interfaces to support large scale services. The DAP Connect project, a third round ALIP project, aims to build on these previous ALIP projects to develop unbranded Assisted Living (AL) services or tools that can be downloaded from an online store, a "toolbox", from which service providers in the private, public and third sectors can select services to rebrand for their own use. The DAP Connect project will investigate the potential business and revenue models open to organisations who are new to the assisted living market who wish to provide services to the informal and statutory care markets. Multiple marketing and care co-ordination benefits will arise from connection of a full range of services through sharing a common framework and data store. The project will examine a range of branding, subscription, usage and licensing models and explore their cultural and social impact. The project will test the scalability of deploying AL service models in real-life, at scale. The project will also test the contractual/ procedural and accreditation processes of bringing together services in a common framework or toolbox to small and medium sized enterprises to generate innovative add-on services.

The ALIP2 PEACEanywhere project builds on the results of the ALIP1 PEACE project to enable the care environment to be extended to support vulnerable people anywhere and at anytime. This will be achieved by the development and integration of innovative 'in-house' and 'out of house' technologies for seamless service provision, location detection and monitoring and communication with those who can provide assistance if required. The aim is to further improve the independence and quality of life by taking away the feeling suffered by some, who are fully dependant on their home care environment, that they are a prisoner in their own home. The project will further develop the PEACE vision of integrated health and social care, which will allow health and social care professionals and carers to work in harmony to maximise the quality of life of older people and other vulnerable groups and also to facilitate access to a range of 'anywhere anytime' services to further enhance social and digital inclusion.This activity is further enhanced by the introduction into the project of expertise in the area of neurological assessment and treatment thus extending the benefits of telehealth and telecare beyond the traditional boundaries

The main goal of the ALIP 1 PEACE Project (Personal Care Environments Delivering Support for Vulnerable People) was to progressively incorporate functions proven in other domains to provide integrated health, social and community care services. The project was built upon significant, operational Telehealth/Telecare deployment experience of the Project Partners, who comprised Docobo, Solent NHS Trust, Hywel Dda Local Health Board, Age UK, HW Communications and Chubb. The PEACE project aimed to provide a more seamless experience for Customer, Clinician and Social and Community Care professionals and Informal and Lay Carers alike, allowing them to work in harmony to maximise the quality of life of older people and other vulnerable groups, by providing an Integrated Assisted Living service environment. This combined a range of Telehealth Telecare and Community Care capabilities into a single, easy to use system which can provide access to a wide variety of services, including information and entertainment options designed to address social isolation.

Awaiting Public Summary