Why TEC data will shape the future of preventive digital care

If TEC is to deliver on its promise, practitioners need to trust its insights, writes Robert Turnbull, care technology expert at PA Consulting

Across the country, councils are getting serious about using technology-enabled care (TEC) data to help adult social care teams make faster, better decisions.

Sixty-two per cent of councils say they’re ready to make the most of TEC insight, according to a report by PA Consulting and TSA.

Leaders increasingly see TEC insight as a route to a more proactive, preventative, and ultimately more affordable, model of care.

The report shows that 96% of adult social care leaders say their organisation would rethink how care is delivered if TEC can genuinely support prevention.

TEC is no longer a niche add-on. It covers everything from AI-supported daily living tools to the consumer devices people already use at home such as the Vocala platform, built on an Alexa Show.

This acts as a personalised digital companion providing tailored reminders for hydration, medication and appointments, as well as access to music, games, social activity updates and fire alarm test notifications.

HOWZ, is another digital remote monitoring technology, which builds a rich picture of daily living that can be used by care providers to ensure someone’s full needs and outcomes are being met.

When these insights are acted on, it can help prevent avoidable crises, improve outcomes and reduce the cost of care.

The challenge is that, in many places, progress still isn’t matching the level of ambition.

Making TEC stick is a workforce challenge

Although 78% of leaders want to move faster, the barriers haven’t gone away. The biggest constraint is workforce capability and culture.

Sixty nine per cent say their workforce has low or no understanding of how to access TEC-derived insights, and 70% say staff don’t yet understand how to use TEC insight to make smarter decisions.

Insight-led decision-making reshapes how practitioners prioritise, how they assess risk and how they plan support

Insight-led decision-making isn’t something you can switch on with a dashboard. It reshapes how practitioners prioritise, how they assess risk and how they plan support, often after years of established practice.

TEC transformation is a change-management challenge, relying as much on confidence and everyday habits as on the underlying technology itself.

The councils making the most progress aren’t just focusing on integration and platforms.

They’re also investing in people, building confidence, supporting new behaviours and embedding TEC into everyday practice.

Smarter decisions take more than data

The appetite to use TEC insight is real and can have a critical impact on the level of care and 51% of leaders plan to increase their use of TEC insight over the next 12 months.

By delving further into the insights they’ve gained, they can help teams spot risks earlier, tailor support more precisely, plan care more safely and reduce demand before it escalates into a crisis.

But the deeper issue is behavioural. For many staff, it still isn’t clear where the insight sits, how to access it or how it should shape decisions in day-to-day practice.

Dashboards alone rarely shift behaviour. Practitioners need clear, contextual prompts that fit within their current ways of working, not static charts they must interpret under time pressure.

AI‑ready, pattern‑based insight supports this and is making it easier for practitioners to engage with the insight.

Ultimately, it’s not the technology that changes practice, but the practitioners who use it.

Where it’s working, councils have put people first 

Several councils that have taken this approach and are seeing tangible benefits.

Kent County Council use activities of daily living monitoring alongside AI-enabled dashboards to help redesign care packages; because practitioners trust the data and understand what it’s for.

It’s visible leadership, practical support and workforce engagement that helps people change how they work

Kent has, on average, delayed people moving into residential care by six months. With fewer than 100 people in the cohort, that translated into around £0.4m in annual financial benefits.

In examples like this, the differentiator isn’t a better piece of technology. It’s visible leadership, practical support and workforce engagement that helps people change how they work.

Make TEC insight usable on the frontline

Councils are right to be ambitious. Demand and capacity pressures are intense,

There have been over two million requests for social care support in 2024/25, vacancy rates three times higher than the wider economy and the ADASS Autumn survey estimates a £623 million overspend across the system in 2025/26.

Using insight well won’t be able to solve everything, but it can help teams target support earlier and make resources go further.

Prevention only works when insight shapes the rhythm of daily practice. This means embedding TEC triggers into assessments, reviews, visits, and multi‑disciplinary discussions.

Prevention becomes real when teams can see what is changing and can act before it becomes a crisis.

Research found that the bottleneck isn’t the technology – it’s workforce capability, confidence, and culture.

The local authorities most likely to succeed will be the ones that:

• invest in people as much as they invest in platforms
• integrate TEC insight part of everyday conversations and workflows
• build confidence through stories, coaching and hands-on support
• embed insight into practice one small habit at a time

This is work best led from the frontline, backed by leadership, not handed down as an “IT rollout”.

When practitioners can see the value, trust the insight, and know what to do with it, the TEC insight starts to deliver on its promise.

If councils put the workforce first – focusing on skills, confidence, culture and simple ways of working – the data will get used, insight will drive decision-making and prevention will become far more achievable.