CARE PLANNING


DIGITAL EVOLUTION


Data-backed benchmarking will transform care in 2026, says Ashleigh Dueker, Programme Director of Care Intelligence at Person Centred Soſtware.


The adult social care sector is heading into a defining moment in 2026 at a time when pressures on providers continue to rise – from tight staffing and growing regulatory demands to the ongoing challenge of maintaining high-quality care.


However, 2026 is set to be the year technology fundamentally changes the industry. At PCS, we are at the forefront of this seismic shift as the UK’s most widely used digital care management system. Supporting over 8,400 care providers, we have the UK’s largest structured social care dataset. This means that we have over 18.5bn care observations and now this data can be turned into foresight in a way that we’ve never seen before.


In 2026, the most transformative of PCS’s developments is our care intelligence app, IQ, which will start to roll out across care homes in the UK.


The current analytics already provide care homes with small operational insights through data, which lead to profound change. In 2026 this will not stop at individual homes. In a sector first, drawing from the largest dataset of its kind, IQ enables anonymised, sector-wide benchmarking. Managers will be able to compare their home’s performance on key indicators, such as falls, infections, wounds, hydration levels and more, with similar homes across the country.


This shiſt unlocks something the sector has never had: a clear, data-backed understanding of where a home is excelling, where it is falling behind and what actions are working elsewhere.


“Managers will be able to compare their home’s performance on key indicators,


such as falls, infections, wounds, hydration levels and more, with similar homes across the country.”


Because many of the team at PCS have worked in care homes themselves, the Connected Care ecosystem was built around real- world pressures: short staffing, inspection readiness, medication accuracy and the near-constant drive to prevent incidents rather than simply record them. Today, every PCS app, from care planning to medication management to rostering, feeds into a unified data layer that increasingly powers something far more valuable: intelligence. But it’s predictive insight that takes this to a new level.


Instead of identifying patterns after something has gone wrong, homes will be able to identify when something might go wrong, days or even weeks in advance, whether that be falls, dehydration, sleep disruption, early signs of deterioration.


With benchmarking, homes move from guesswork to evidence. From isolated learning to shared progress. From reactive fixes to strategic improvement.


As Programme Director of Care Intelligence at PCS, I can say confidently that 2026 will be the year digital care truly empowers the industry and creates better outcomes for residents. The sector will move into a new era as it learns from thousands of data-rich peers, from local best practice to national improvement and visible, positive change.


https://personcentredsoſtware.com


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www.tomorrowscare.co.uk


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