Transforming social care through tech: A CivTech alumni success story
It’s great to see companies that took part in previous CivTech Accelerator’s going from strength to strength. The Accelerator stage is step four of six of the CivTech programme, it sees Challenge sponsors and companies come together to work alongside each other to develop solutions for real issues.
The mentorship and collaborative thinking at this stage is where our Challenge Teams begin to shine. Care Reality, a CivTech 6 alumni is a great success story. As a result of taking part in this process they have become a key technological innovation company in social care.
Care Reality
This CivTech 6 company only completed the Accelerator this year, and is already making waves in the social care industry! We caught up with their Digital Product Manager, Lucy Cooney, to find out more:
Lucy Cooney, Digital Project Manager, Care Reality
Care Reality was set up to answer the Challenge of how trainers in the health and social care sector could assess the skills and practice competence of learners using remote and online services.
Our innovative solution is an engaging and interactive Virtual Reality (VR) simulation. Learners practice and demonstrate their ability to accurately measure and record a patient's vital signs, a fundamental skill needed for care workers.
This is the world’s first virtual reality training platform for adult social care. It has the potential to transform learning within adult social care and will improve access to knowledge and skills using immersive technology.
Care Reality presented our solution at this year’s Demo Day to great success. We received lots of positive feedback, and several people and organisations reached out looking to connect in the future when the product was further developed.
It’s a very exciting time for the company. We recently won the S5GC Innovation Challenge, which will allow us to improve the user experience through 5G and prepare for when it is more widely available to the remote communities that will benefit the most from the VR solution.
We are currently developing new simulations following industry feedback gleaned during face to face conversations at Care Roadshows. These positive discussions also highlighted how excited people are for the VR product, which is already seen to be of great benefit to the adult social care sector.
We also undertook a nationwide survey to further identify what the sector really needs, and the team, which has more than doubled in the last year, are building further simulations in response.
The future looks bright. Care Reality expects to launch the VR platform commercially by the end of the year, and we hope to again double the team and double the product by 2023. Initially focusing on the South of Scotland, we aim to expand our offering across the UK and beyond within the next few years.
To learn more about Care Reality and how they approached this Challenge, you can watch their Demo Day presentation here: Challenge 10 — Care Reality — CivTech Demo Day