As care homes emerge from the crisis in social care caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, carers are finding improvements to working life and quality of patient care are being made possible through a ground-breaking app.

Log my Care, providers of an app for creating and storing care records, have reported rapid increases in their number of users over the past year. The number of homes using Log my Care has doubled in the past eight months alone, and it is now being used to create records for more than 4,000 residents – approximately four times as many as prior to the pandemic.

Traditionally, care homes have kept all records on paper. With steady increases in regulation, carers have been spending more and more hours on admin and paperwork instead of caring for patients. But multiple pressures have led to a shift in the care sector, with technology increasingly seen as a necessity rather than a ‘nice-to-have’.

The Log my Care app enables care teams to take admin online, covering everything from meals and drinks to medication rounds to sleep checks and other health measurements. Through lockdown, care managers using Log my Care were able to access information remotely, as well as share crucial information with external professionals including healthcare staff. Crucially, during periods when families have been unable to visit, by saving time on paperwork carers were able to spend more time with residents.

The volume of information being stored the ability to retrieve and rapidly analyse digital records also means that warning signs can be picked up before they are obvious. For example, changes in food or fluid intake may be small on a daily basis but recording levels through the app means trends can be spotted earlier. Similarly, in response to the pandemic Log my Care developed COVID-19 symptom tracker tools which meant carers could spot early signs of Coronavirus such as changes in temperature or oxygen levels.

Log my Care’s app was designed from the outset to be as intuitive as a social media site. The staff training needed is minimal, with any additional support provided by the Log my Care team remotely. As a result, care homes are typically able to move from making all notes on paper to all notes online in just a couple of weeks, with some homes creating more than 10,000 logs a day. In total more than 38 million records have now been created through the app.

Sam Hussain, Founder of Log my Care, comments:  “In an industry that has had a bit of a reputation for technophobia, using an app to record care notes no-longer feels so difficult. This shift is another part of a much broader acceptance of technology – just as videoconferencing and online shopping have become normal for so many through this pandemic. Through smartphones, carers can capture more information more accurately in a way that simply isn’t possible on paper. Together with the time they are saving, it is vital in order to provide higher quality care.”

 Kelly Gallimore, Registered Manager at Primrose Care Home in Hetton-le-Hole, comments:  ” Everyone was really apprehensive at first. But I downloaded the app, which was just like downloading any other app, and everything after was as simple as that. The Carers can reach into their pocket, pull out their phone, and log the care right then and there. They don’t have to leave the room to go to a computer and type it up or write it down on paper. Things aren’t being forgotten because they can log care immediately. If I can move our care home online in the middle of a global pandemic then any other care home could do it at any point too. I can’t imagine going back to paper now.” 

Log my Care is the fastest-growing provider of care management software in the UK. The core system of Log my Care plus all of their Coronavirus tracking tools are completely free to use for all registered UK care providers, with no long, expensive contracts. Several optional premium modules with enhanced features are also available for a monthly subscription.

To find out more and use the system for free, visit www.logmycare.co.uk.