Cambridge start-up Dom Portal is digitising adult social care records as part of NHS roadmap

Dom Portal, a Cambridge technology start-up, is working to digitise the care system in England as part of NHS England’s directive to digitise paperwork in the adult social care sector.

Formed in 2020, the company has flourished following publication of ‘People at the Heart of Care’, a 2021 government white paper which set out an agenda to transform adult social care through digital innovation.

The innovation programme means the end of paperwork as technology is embedded into care and support services – and Dom Portal is one of 20 UK platform providers involved in delivering the programme.

NHS England’s digitising social care programme is funded by the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) and is delivered by a joint unit of DHSC and NHS England staff.

A spokesperson for Digitising Social Care, the government programme supporting the digital transformation of adult social care in England, said: “When technology is embedded seamlessly into care and support services, it can be transformative: helping people to live happy, fulfilled lives in their homes and communities.

“As part of the plans for reform set out in People at the Heart of Care, we are supporting widespread digitisation across the sector to improve the quality, safety and personalisation of care and support services.”

This includes “using digital care record solutions to capture real-time information and move away from paper-based care planning, using sensors and other monitoring technology to alert you when someone has had a fall, or even using everyday technology like smart speakers or tablets to support care”.

The potential of digitised care records was of interest to Prashant Goud and Lokesh Swamy, the co-founders of Cambridge start-up Dom Portal, way before it was adopted within the NHS.

“We owned and managed a care home service in Cambridge, and a care home at Holland-on-Sea, near Clacton,” says Lokesh, speaking at the company’s St John’s Innovation Centre base. “For me, to make the care setting smoother you have to be very transparent, you have to make sure you don’t spend too much time on admin, plus you need meaningful insights needed into how the business runs day to day – those are the reports we wanted. This led us to develop Dom Portal as a digital care management solution.”

Their tailor-made software solution for care providers offers a wide range of features for efficient management, and that’s just what NHS England is keen to promote – and business is flourishing, says Lokesh.

“To begin with the platform was for care at home, then nursing homes, and now it’s supported living as well. There’s two parts to the system – the care staff and the family have the app, and the care providers have a login platform.”

So how does it work?

“We are a software-as-a-service company, so you log into the portal, and details are uploaded. They include data about where you live, risk assessments, what care is provided – also the care planning side, including timing of visits, what medications are taken, dietary information, fluid charts…

“Carers have all the info on the app,” Lokesh says. “It’s geo-enabled so we know exactly where they are, and have all the details about the service user. It means they can quickly move on to what tasks need to be done, maybe get the resident out of bed, help with a shower, make tea, breakfast, or whatever…

“We are developing our own AI algorithm for rostering and route planning, so you can optimise timing and route planning which needs to be done in the software too. Otherwise they get stuck in traffic, so the technology can help there.”

The founders are keen to help deliver the Digitising Social Care programme.

“The DHSC has set aside £25m for the programme but the benefits it brings are huge,” says Prashant. “They [the DHSC] pay 50 per cent of the digitisation costs for paper-based providers in the first year. Care home providers have to pick an NHS approved platform provider – there’s 20 in the UK.”

Dom Portal currently has “between 2k and 3k users”, and is aiming for 10k across the UK before the end of the year.

The duo are proud graduates of the Accelerate Cambridge programme.

“We’re still with them,” says Lokesh. “They’ve been really helpful.

“They’re helping us to grow from a purely technical company to a service company, with marketing, branding and streamlining operations.”

That growth has seen the team expand to seven.

“Four are based in Cambridge, one in Manchester, and two in London, who work remotely. We have service architects, two service managers, three developers, then the two of us. Mainly we use Java and Python. Then we employ females because we believe in females in technology, so five are female and there’s the two of us. That’s close to our heart in terms of making STEM attractive for girls in schools. I have two daughters, Lokesh has one daughter, and we go to schools and talk about STEM subjects.”

The company has a financial strategy to underpin growth.

“The plan is once we’ve reached critical mass, we’ll go for the first round of angel investment,” says Prashant. “We’ll be presenting to investors at CJBS in June, that’s where the Accelerate Cambridge programme helps us – it puts us in contact with investors and helps us with our pitch.

“The round is mainly to scale the business, to recruit staff – mainly on the technology side, plus to deliver customer success. One key aspect of digital adoption is that it’s a cultural change. It’s our responsibility to make the journey smoother for them, so we will have customer success managers to make digital adoption successful.

“We’re driven by the NHS roadmap, at the moment the only information they have is from GP records, but with our digital option they will have the GP data, and the information from the home – currently not visible to the NHS. That means they can predict hospital visits, and anticipate events before they actually happen.”

Other recent changes to healthcare protocols include the ability for millions of people in England to access and view their prescriptions on the NHS app for the first time, AI technology called Foresight which could help doctors when it comes to monitoring patients or making decisions around diagnosis, a ChatGPT 4-based model that could be better at assessing eye problems than doctors, two digital treatment technologies designed to help people with COPD manage their own condition approved for NHS use, and giving people in the UK better access to their NHS records and receive messages from their GP on their phone.

Meanwhile, Dom Portal has just been selected as the preferred care planning solution by Wigan Council to support reablement, care homes and day centre care services in the community.

“Together, we’re dedicated to making a positive impact in the lives of those we serve,” says a delighted Prashant of the development.