DIALOGUE: Digital care technologies for social connection, care and support of older adults

Research question. Which new digital care services for older adults with assisted living needs have the potential to be feasible, efficacious, cost-effective and effectively implementable at scale?
Background.. Several local authorities are developing pilot projects of new digital care services for older adults to test their efficacy. However, the range and scope of new technologies being piloted by digital care services is unknown, while good quality evidence to support their adoption in mainstream social care is limited. Before research can identify the effectiveness of these services or their scalability, research needs to identify effective outcomes, signals of efficacy and models of health economic assessment for these services. At the same time, we need methodologies which can assess their effectiveness as complex interventions, aware of the socio-environmental contexts in which they are delivered, and the factors that will influence their successful implementation, adoption and sustainability at scale.
Aims and objectives. We will 1) identify range and scope of novel digital care services which have the potential to be mainstreamed; 2) Co-produce a core outcomes set which can generate the necessary outcomes data; 3) Co-create a mixed method, embedded evaluation framework which can assess core outcomes, and factors influencing successful implementation and adoption at scale; 4) pilot the proposed methodology; 5) create a health economic assessment model to assess cost effectiveness.
Methods. This programme development application adopts a mixed methods approach to generate the pilot data and networks required to support an application to the NIHR HTA Social care Technology Assessment Call in 2024. WPs; WP1 Synthesis of current evidence for novel digital care approaches in adult social care; WP2 Capacity building and development of co-production partnerships. WP2.1 Network, project and academic partnership building with relevant stakeholders in novel digital care services, WP2.2 Develop three co production partnerships in NE, SE and SW England, who will be involved in co-producing the project methodology; WP3 Co-produce a core outcomes dataset and signals of efficacy via e-Delphi exercise with 20 TECS stakeholders and workshops with three co-production groups. WP4 Pilot service evaluation of hospital to home transfer services using existing quantitative and qualitative service data; WP5 Develop health economic assessment methodology; WP6 Programme methodological framework and methods; WP7 Project management, advisory panels and co-production panels.
Project partners; The research team includes academics from the Universities of Stirling, Bristol, Newcastle, Hertfordshire, the Open University, Kings College London and London School of Economics. Methodological design support is provided by Bristol Clinical Trials Unit. Five local authorities have agreed participation in principle; Middlesborough Council, Redcar Council, Bristol City Council, North Somerset Council, South Gloucestershire Council. Co-production partners include Age UK Bristol. LEAP (lived experience expert panel) (Herts), e-Kindle (Middlesborough/Redcar). Carezapp (www.cazeapp.com) are an SME which provides an app based data support platform for local authority TECS
Timelines for delivery;. The key deliverable is an application to NIHR HTA social care technology assessment in 2024. Further deliverables will be completed over the 12 months of the project. Commencement 11/2023, completion 10/2024.
Anticipated impact and dissemination. This project will form the basis for a full HTA programme application. Further outputs include a core outcomes dataset and evaluation framework and tools for local evaluations of novel digital care services in social care.