December 18th 2024
Michelle Corrigan, Director of Digital Care Hub, reflects on major digital care developments in 2024.
2024 has been a year of major change. AI has really hit the public imagination; cyber security has become a mainstream topic of conversation; and the election brought us the first change of government in 14 years. Digital Care Hub has been at the centre of all these developments.
Protecting the human in AI
The AI genie is out of the bottle and in use before many people have really decided what are their three wishes. We know that, for example, AI chatbots are already being used in social care to generate care plans or write meeting notes. But do users really understand the ethical issues and privacy challenges this represents?
That’s why we have ramped up our work on AI in partnership with leading experts at the Institute of Ethics in AI at Oxford University, the Care Workers Charity and others. This year we have brought together a steering committee and working groups to consider the responsible use of generative AI in social care.
To guide its ethical and responsible use, a small group of individuals supported by Digital Care Hub and the Oxford Institute for Ethics in Artificial Intelligence have developed a set of guiding principles.
These principles are designed to aid social care commissioners and service providers in navigating the opportunities and challenges that AI presents.
Cyber threats
The cyber risks facing the UK are “widely underestimated” and require collective action against an increasingly complex array of threats, according to a new report from the National Cyber Security Centre.
The health and care sectors have been particularly vulnerable to attack, given the sensitive and valuable data that they hold.
The devastating attack on software company Synnovis which resulted in thousands of hospital procedures being cancelled, shows that cyber criminals are active, effective and indiscriminate. They do not care who suffers as a result of their actions.
This year we’ve also seen accidental cyber incidents have a major impact across the world – incidents that cyber criminals took advantage of. For example, an error in a software update from Crowdstrike affected many Microsoft users. Criminals then exploited this by claiming to provide software updates, when in fact they were trying to download damaging malware.
We are playing our part by sharing updates on emerging threats and what care providers can do to reduce the risk and impact.
Better Security, Better Care successes
What has really struck me is how many of our activities have become ‘business as usual’ – enabling us to focus on the wider issues. For example, the vast majority of care providers are now completing the Data Security and Protection Toolkit (DSPT) on a routine, annual basis. Over 75% had the DSPT in place by the June deadline – that’s more than any other sector using the toolkit.
We will never take that for granted, but it does mean that we have been able to shift our attention to the gnarly issues such as how to respond in the case of a cyber attack. We published detailed guidance on how to respond and recover from a cyber incident – and we are planning further support in that area next year. We also published guidance on records management, an audit tool to help commissioners and providers to check business continuity plans, and new guidance and support to help new care providers to get their data and cyber arrangements in place right from the start.
Policy and politics
The national election in July brought about the first Labour government in 14 years. For the first time, we produced our own Manifesto for digital social care, and supported the wider campaigns to make the future of social care an election issue.
Since then, we have continued to highlight how essential it is to continue the recent momentum and support our sector to use tech and share data safely. Worryingly, we’ve heard that 75% of care provider are considering reducing or stopping digital transformation as a result of projected increases in workforce costs.
Digitisation is hard-wired into future plans – from the 10 year plan for the NHS and the adult social care workforce strategy, to new legislation on Data Use and Access. Social care must be adequately supported to fully participate in this digital future – otherwise the millions of often vulnerable people using care services will be left behind. And of course we already know that without a strong social care sector, the NHS will be unable to manage. We are and always will be an essential public service.
This issue is not going away – and we appreciate that purses are tight. But we will continue to advocate for investment in safe tech and data sharing on behalf of social care and the people who use and our work in our essential services.
Recognition
Let’s end 2024 on a positive note.
We don’t often blow our own trumpet – but this year we did! Our first impact report on Better Security, Better Care revealed some remarkable successes and we have continued to build on those. For example, we’ve had over 140,000 page views of our elearning resource this year so far, and we’ve got a new course for data protection leads launching on 23 January 2025.
We were also delighted to celebrate our first Better Security, Better Care awards – recognising the fantastic work of our 28 local support partners and our ADASS regional colleagues.
We basked in reflected glory when one of our founders and current Board member, Ian Turner, was awarded an OBE for services to social care. And just last month, we were delighted that Marta Bascunan our Operations Manager was highly commended at the Women Achieving Greatness Award.
Oh and we’re shortlisted for Tomorrow’s Care Awards – if you want to, you can vote for us until March 2025.
Thanks to everyone for their support in 2024 – especially our Digital Care Hub and Better Security, Better Care board members and our local support organisations.
Have a wonderful Christmas and see you next year when we’ll start the year with our predictions for 2025.
Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash
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