Public Funding for CDS New Ventures Ltd

SureCert is a digitised background checking system for recruiters. With the first Innovate UK grant, we were able to add significant additional functionality to support organisations within regulated sectors to onboard staff quickly and more efficiently. We are focused on the care sector and are Preferred Suppliers to Scottish Care and Care England and our approach has been endorsed by the Care Inspectorate in Scotland. Care providers are subject to regulation and their approach and paperwork is checked by regulators regularly. When checking paperwork on staff recruitment and ongoing checks, the regulator would normally make an unplanned visit, which, during covid, has been difficult. Covid now provides all parties with the opportunity to maximise both safety and efficiency when regulating care providers and we propose to focus our attentions on five additional elements: 1. Our platform will be able to take and store covid test results and display them on the care providers' websites, providing a real time view of how safe the provider is, when the tests were taken and when they are due again; 2. Our platform can be used to ensure all those who are accessing care buildings will self certify that they are not displaying symptoms of covid, providing care providers with a real time view of who is in their premises, helping to manage risk; 3. We will develop a second "module" on our platform that can be used to manage the ongoing compliance for staff, enabling all HR records relevant to the regulator to be stored in one place - this can then be extended to hold all regulatory documentation beyond HR (e.g. Health and Safety); 4. We will develop a "regulator access" to our platform, which will enable, (with consent mechanisms built in), the regulator to log in, access and assess all relevant HR information remotely, without having to waste time on physical visits, as well as help them to plan and manage who and when to regulate. We propose that this will help to enable automation within regulation, only flagging an issue when a candidate fails to meet a standard, or a training course expires, or even if a criminal record check flags an issue in real time; and 5. We will build in the final "SureScore" approach and create an "identity standard" for the care and other sectors, which will enable the level of background checking undertaken on a candidate to be turned into a score, ensuring that personally identifiable information is then withdrawn to a secure area of SureCert and retrievable only when requested by the regulator.

SureCert's vision is to facilitate a frictionless "future of work". As Covid exacerbates existing problems in the care sector, this project has the following objectives: 1. The connection of such a platform to a candidate database, enabling the care sector to search for candidates, interview and assess them remotely and to move successful applicants to the background checking system seamlessly; 2. The completion of one digital platform that incorporates a full digitised background checking system, which supports all of the safeguarding checks required to recruit a new staff member into the care sector in one place; 3. The ability to provide a compliance system that can be checked by regulators in a way that does not compromise the personally identifiable information (PII) (e.g. Identity documents) of candidates and which summarises the extent of a person's background by way of a score similar to a credit score - a SureScore; and 4. The assessment of impact of SureCert on the care sector in terms of the administration time reduced and how that time was then spent more effectively by finding and verifying candidates quicker and enabling the auditing of candidate information by the regulator to also be provided seamlessly, in one place (and potentially remotely). Over the last year, SureCert has developed its digital platform in a way that is particularly suited to the health and care sector, although it is used across a range of sectors as well. SureCert had the approach endorsed by the regulators in Scotland (Care Inspectorate and the Scottish Social Sector Council), who were positive about the Care Sector's ability to "save time and effort" using the system and we are also Preferred Suppliers to Scottish Care and Care England. In addition, the proposed "SureScore" approach was endorsed by the www.lorca.co.uk London cyber accelerator, (SureCert are on the programme), for the potential to reduce fraud and identity theft online. This project would focus initially on the care sector in Scotland and England in partnership with the two care home associations and it can be developed beyond that sector post-project. It will also complement SureCert's recent financial award through the TechForce 19 project on behalf of NHSx, which is focused on developing a national system and service for the recruitment and triaging of volunteers into the care sector. The extension for impact funding will enable us to integrate directly with a major customer (regulator within the care sector), beta testing with their members and provide us with significant monthly recurring revenue from April 2021. It will also enable us to work with a technical partner active within the membership database market, which will provide us with additional channels for sales and marketing and help us scale our solution.