TALKING TECHNOLOGY ENABLED CARE - A personalised, visual, digital platform to transform health, social care and housing services

"The vision of the _Talking Technology Enabled Care_ project is to conduct a feasibility study to co-design, implement, evaluate and deliver a **novel, visual, digital care management application for those who find communicating their health needs challenging.**

The Talking Technology Enabled Care project will assess the feasibility of co-designing and evaluating a more visually advanced, personalised version of a digital health tool (Talking Mats) for people with communication difficulties.

A need exists for people with communication difficulties to express all their health (physical and mental), social care and housing needs in an effective way with groups of informal and professional care providers. The current state-of-the-art digital care planning tools focus mainly on the health needs of patients/citizens and do not adopt a holistic approach, missing out the social care and housing needs of vulnerable groups. In addition, most digital care applications do not provide personalised visualisations that aid communication but only offer generic, largely text-based solutions that require higher levels of digital skills to use, limiting their applicability in different contexts and reducing their market potential, consumer reach, and social and economic impact.

By creating a more targeted, holistic, visual, digital care management tool that establishes clear and nuanced lines of communication via mobile technology, and testing this with patients/citizens and health, social care and housing professionals, we can assess if Talking Mats can enhance health (physical and mental) and social care outcomes of many vulnerable groups.

The _Talking Technology Enabled Care_ project will enhance the existing **Talking Mats** ([http://www.talkingmats.com/][0]) solution by **co-designing new personalised, visual dashboards of health, social care and housing information** with patients/citizens with communication difficulties who live in social housing and their informal and professional carer network. This will ensure people with communication difficulties receive support for their care needs and individual lifestyle. The technological solution will make the delivery of healthcare more efficient reducing the need for repeated sharing of a client's physical, emotional and social care information with each public agency and numerous professionals. This streamlined and targeted communication will transform healthcare delivery for people with communication difficulties and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of three key public services: Health, social care and housing.

[0]: http://www.talkingmats.com/"