Residential & Home Care Show
The Residential & Home Care Show 2022: Editor’s report
Returning after a three-year hiatus, 2022’s Residential & Home Care Show had a great deal to offer. The Care Home Environment editor Matt Seex was there on the opening day
Everybody I spoke to at the Residential & Home Care Show was happy to see the show return to ExCeL London after a COVID-enforced three-year break. For my part, having been editor of The Care Home Environment for only a few short months, the show was the perfect opportunity to put faces to names and to chat with people from across the social care space – from tech companies and catering specialists to fellow magazine editors and social care luminaries.
Lots of tech
The first thing that struck me (other than just how big a venue ExCel is) was how many tech companies were present at the show. I began the day by sitting in on a talk given by Jonathan Papworth, founder of Person Centred Software, who, in a spirited and informative presentation, focused on a familiar theme – that of the grand vision of joined-up health and social care and the key role that the implementation of new digital technology and systems have to play in realising that vision. Communicating information is the key here, and Jonathan emphasised that this was easier said than done, given the differences in priorities and language between health and social care. Information which might be of critical importance in a social care environment - a resident’s dietary requirements, for example - might be of little or no interest or value to a GP or nurse. The challenge lies in creating systems that recognise both sets of values.
Nonetheless, it remains crucial that
we ‘join the dots’, and Jonathan pointed to the rapid progress that has been made since 2019 and the arrival of COVID. It
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seems wrong to talk about the pandemic having any sort of silver lining, but necessary relaxations in the DSPT (Data Security and Protection Toolkit) during the pandemic have allowed more data to be shared, removing some of the obstacles to the adoption of software such Person Centred Software’s GP Connect system, which Jonathan said had expanded to ‘310 locations’ in the last 12 months. With the system recently benefitting from increased social care access, and with Person Centred Software’s acquisition of Atlas eMAR promising the triangulation of data between care homes, GPs, and pharmacies, Jonathan’s optimism about the ongoing march of digital seems justified.
Too many solutions? As I mentioned before, there were a lot of tech companies present at the
Every other stand seemed to be offering some game- changing tech that no care provider could do without
Residential & Home Care Show, each vying for attendees’ attention with the latest app or tech innovation, all no doubt mindful of the government’s emphasis on employing digital solutions to meet the many challenges facing the social care sector. Every other stand seemed to be offering some game-changing tech that no care provider could do without, but I had to wonder how many of these will succeed, and how many will likely (as was the recently the case with Atlas eMAR) be acquired by bigger fish, and how many will simply fail to gain traction in a sector that, historically, has been resistant to the digital revolution. The show floor was busy, but not uncomfortably so. I asked exhibitors whether they were expecting the show to be busier, and the unanimous response was that things were a little on the quiet side. Post-pandemic jitters were the likely cause, exhibitors agreed, although more than one expressed the view that there might simply be too many care shows on the calendar. For what it’s worth, I thought the show got a little busier as the day continued. Something else that struck me was
how we seem to have decided en masse not to worry about COVID anymore. My
www.thecarehomeenvironment.com June 2022
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