Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership Awarded Gold Level Two Digital Telecare Implementation Award
Digital Telecare for Scottish Local Government are delighted to confirm that Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership (EHSCP) has been awarded the Gold Level Two Digital Telecare Implementation Award in recognition of the recent progress of their analogue to digital telecare transition project.
To achieve the Gold Level Two Implementation Award, a Telecare Service Provider must have successfully rolled out a live digital telecare service to 50% of service users and is operating successfully without serious issues or call failures for at least 6 weeks.
Pat Togher, Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership Chief Officer, said: “This award is testament to the hard work and commitment of our telecare team who are delivering this programme. It also demonstrates the Partnership’s ongoing commitment to digital transformation, to improve services for people and communities across Edinburgh.”
The Edinburgh Telecare service supports over 8,000 residents across the city 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The team provides in-home telecare technologies to help people get emergency support quickly. This is delivered remotely from the Alarm Receiving Centre (ARC – the contact centre) or in-person, by the mobile responder team. They answer around 500,000 calls, respond to 13,000 emergency visits and provide telecare to 2,500 new customers every year.
The focus of this service is assisting people who have had falls or mobility incidents at home, requiring emergency social care and emotional and wellbeing support. The service promotes independent living, aiming to:
- Prevent unnecessary hospital admissions
- Facilitate timely hospital discharge
- Provide supportive intervention in emergencies
- Reassure customers, families and carers
- Reduce feelings of loneliness and isolation
EHSCP has been involved in the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government’s Digital Telecare Programme since 2018 as one of the initial pathfinder sites and continue to participate at a national level in the development of this important work. The EHSCP initiated a Digital Telecare Transition programme in August 2022, delivering two projects focussed on harnessing the benefits of digital, building capability and readiness within the service area for change. More critically, there is a strong focus on mitigating the risks associated with the national infrastructure upgrade to telecare users. The two projects are:
- ARC Platform Replacement – EHSCP participated in the national Shared ARC programme and onboarded Chubb Cloud Control in May 2024. This enabled alarm calls to return from Newham Council to the ATEC24 team in Edinburgh.
- Accelerated Digital Device Replacement – EHSCP have continued to switch out analogues device as part of business as usual and the EHSCP has invested in an accelerated replacement project, that commenced in September 2024.
Craig O’Donnell, Service Manager for Assistive Technology Enabled Care 24, said: “This is fantastic recognition for the Telecare team, who have embraced the transition to digital. The collaboration with the Digital Office for Scottish Local Government has been invaluable and will continue to be so as we take forward the final stage of this programme over the next year.”
Achieving this Award is a significant milestone and robustly demonstrates the overall functionality and effectiveness of EHSCP’s digital telecare solution. EHSCP will continue to work with the Digital Office, telecommunications providers and their customers to ensure that they have the appropriate technologies in place ahead of the analogue switch-off. Their ATEC24 team will continue to replace analogue technologies with new digital solutions over the next year. EHSCP are on track for Edinburgh to have a fully digital telecare service by October 2025.
We extend our wholehearted congratulations to Edinburgh Health and Social Care Partnership and look forward to continuing to work with them as they progress towards the Platinum Digital Telecare Implementation Award.
