Stirling Council and Stirling & Clackmannanshire HSCP achieve Bronze Digital Telecare Implementation Award

Digital Telecare for Scottish Local Government are delighted to confirm that Stirling Council and Stirling & Clackmannanshire HSCP have been awarded the Bronze Digital Telecare Implementation Award in recognition of the progress they have made on their analogue to digital telecare transition project. 

To achieve the bronze award, a telecare service provider must have implemented a fully operational digital Alarm Receiving Centre Solution.  This is the first major milestone in the transition to digital telecare and sets the foundations upon which the rest of the digital telecare transition will rest. 

Stirling and Clackmannanshire began their transition in 2019 and with the region being a mixture of rural and urban areas, as well as natural collaborations between the two neighbouring authorities brought a few natural connectivity and signal issues. The team initially began the process by upgrading to an in-house digital Alarm Receiving Centre solution and creating a working group to tackle the technical aspects of the upgrade. They successfully completed that upgrade in March 2021 and have since carried out comprehensive testing of communications between the ARC and the Disaster Recovery Unit addressing connectivity issues between the two and future proofing both sites before then progressing to start rolling out digital ready alarms to service users. 

Carol Herity, Customer Services and Relationships Manager, Stirling Council said: "Stirling Council and Stirling & Clackmannanshire H&SCP are delighted to have achieved the HSCP Bronze Implementation Award. The initial steps in our analogue to digital journey was upgrading our call handling platform to a digital solution in March 2021.  A full programme of work is now being developed which includes analysis of the exact numbers and location of supported people who require to have their equipment changed within their homes.  Since March 600 digital alarms have been installed.  

This is an exciting project and a massive achievement for the teams involved including 24/7 call handlers, the responder service, IT and our colleagues from Tunstall who managed to implement an upgrade to system when also dealing with the additionsl pressures associated with the Covid pandemic."

Achieving the Bronze Award is a significant milestone for the HSCP and now that this digital alarm receiving solution is in place, the organisation can move towards the first phase of testing with alarms and peripherals.

Digital Telecare will continue to work with Stirling Council and Stirling & Clackmannanshire Health and Social Care Partnership as they progress towards the Digital Telecare Implementation Award.