Unique IQ continues its PRSB partnership to support better care records

Unique IQ continues to work with PRSB to improve care records, and we spoke with them following their membership renewal to hear more about their work and priorities.

Can you tell me about Unique IQ and the main areas you work in?

Unique IQ has been developing home care management software since 2006. We support a broad range of providers across the sector, including domiciliary care, supported living, live-in care, complex care and reablement. Our core software brings everything a provider needs into one connected system, from staff rostering and electronic call monitoring to digital care planning, electronic medication administration records (eMAR) and real-time reporting, helping teams run safer, more efficient and more compliant services. Carers have everything they need in an easy-to-use mobile app, giving them visit details, care plans and medication records at their fingertips while they’re out in the community. Real-time two-way communication is also available, keeping office teams and carers connected throughout the day.

More recently we’ve introduced our ground-breaking AI Suite. IQ:careassist helps care teams co-author comprehensive, person-centred care plans in a fraction of the time, reducing what was often a multi-hour task to a matter of minutes, a saving of up to 96% in care plan creation time. IQ:careaudit applies AI analysis across visit notes and care records, automatically surfacing risk indicators, documentation gaps and compliance signals in real time, so managers get continuous audit intelligence rather than retrospective snapshots, reducing audit and review time by up to 95%. The time savings are significant, freeing managers and carers from administration so they can spend more time on what matters: the people in their care. Everything we build is grounded in a simple idea: technology that listens, and software that cares.

 

 
What are the most important priorities for your organisation over the next 12 months?
Three things stand out. First, responsible development of our AI capabilities. Our AI Suite is already helping providers save time and strengthen compliance, and we have more on the way. As we grow these capabilities, our priority is making sure the time-saving benefits are always matched by strong governance and genuine trust. Second, continuing to support providers through a period of real change in the sector, particularly around CQC’s assessment framework and the wider move towards digital records. Third, deepening interoperability, making sure the information our customers hold can move safely and consistently across the wider health and care system.

 

What led you to continue your involvement in the PRSB Partnership Scheme?
The partnership reflects something we genuinely believe in. Good care depends on the right information reaching the right people, and that only works when the whole sector is aligned around shared, agreed standards. PRSB brings that alignment, and being part of the partner community keeps us close to the thinking that shapes safe, joined-up care. Renewing was an easy decision.

 

How do you see Unique IQ and PRSB working together over the coming year?
We bring a home care perspective that’s sometimes under-represented in standards conversations compared with other settings, and we’d like to keep contributing that voice. We’re also keen to collaborate on content and thought leadership that helps providers understand why standards matter in practical terms, and to progress conformance for the standards most relevant to our customers.

 

What does interoperability mean in practice for your customers and where do standards make the biggest difference?
For our customers, interoperability means a carer or care coordinator isn’t working from a partial picture. When a person’s information can be shared safely with a GP, a hospital or another service, care is better coordinated and safer. Standards make the biggest difference at those handover points, where inconsistent or missing information has historically caused real risk. Agreed standards turn information sharing from something fragile into something dependable. It’s why we’re committed to aligning with recognised standards as the foundation for safe, connected care.

 

Are there any PRSB standards you are considering for conformance assessment in the near future? If so, which ones and why?
We’re actively reviewing which standards align most closely with how our customers work, with the About Me and digital care planning standards of particular interest given their direct relevance to home care. We’d welcome a conversation with the team to explore further.

 

What would make the Partnership Scheme more valuable for you? Are there any resources, events, introductions, or support you’d like PRSB to provide?
We see real value in resources that help translate standards into clear, practical benefits for providers, and we’d be glad to help create them, bringing our home care experience to the table. Opportunities to connect with other partners working in and around home care would be welcome too, as would events where we can contribute a home care perspective to wider sector discussions. We’re keen to be active partners rather than passive ones, so anything that helps us collaborate and share what we’re learning is genuinely useful to us.
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Personalised care and support planning for people with severe mental illness

A review of a sample of current care plans, and the way they have been developed, may be helpful in identifying the priorities for this improvement. The PRSB Implementation Guide provides more detailed explanations about each element of the plan, including advice on how the planning process might be best conducted.
These questions might form a checklist for current plans to be compared with. 

1. Does the plan include an About Me section in which the service user, in their own words, can indicate the information they want to be available about their lives, their values, their interests, and priorities, available for all those who may care for them?
2. Is the approach to developing a care plan patient centred and engaging, allowing plans to be based on patient priorities goals, and aspirations, along with the actions they plan to take and the support that they will receive?
3. Is there space for a “formulation” to be recorded in which the person receiving care and the professionals who provide it, share and record the personal meaning and the origins of the person’s difficulties?
4. Are relevant procedures and therapies recorded?
5. Where relevant, are one or more contingency plans included for anticipatable disruptions, exacerbations, or deterioration, and do they include advice on what to do and points of contact for those called upon to respond?
6. Where relevant are additional supporting plans incorporated, (an example being an “educational and health plan” for someone with a neurodevelopment disorder)
7. Is a version of the plan available to a service user (if they wish to have it) in a form and format that they can understand and find to be of value?
8. How is a version of the plan available to the GP and other key parts of the health and care system?

Work conducted by PRSB and partners recently has looked specifically at the suitability of this approach to the development and documentation of care and support plans for people with Severe Mental Illness. This resulted in an updated version of the standard (v1.4), for use by any service and for any group of service users, but with some modifications to ensure that it meets the needs of this community. The approach to a patient centred process of identifying goals, hopes, and values, and the support needed to achieve them, is fully compatible with and can be conducted using, specific tools in use in mental health, such as DIALOG, DIALOG+, and ReQoL, for example. 

Where analysis indicates the need for improvement in the content and process of personalised care and support planning for patients with Severe Mental Illness, specific improvement projects should be instituted to co-design with service users and their representatives, and the relevant staff groups, new approaches, and documentation that would be of value in delivering improvement. The toolkit includes a range of existing resources that could be used to engage in this improvement work, including signposting to relevant existing approaches informed by patient experience-based design.

Moving to a single holistic plan

A review of a sample of current care plans, and the way they have been developed, may be helpful in identifying the priorities for this improvement. The PRSB Implementation Guide provides A key development, consistent with national policy on support for Personalised Care across all health and care sectors, is the move towards an individual with complex needs having a single, integrated, care plan, rather than a series of plans developed by different parts of the health and social care system in isolation of one another. For a patient with severe mental illness, the related concerns and challenges might form a very prominent part of such an integrated plan; many will also have concurrent health challenges and needs. The intention is that the relevant services work together to plan and wrap support around the patient and their family in an integrated way, rather than as a series of sequential or disconnected encounters in which the service user or their friends and family have to adopt the role of the integrator.

A starting point would be to agree priority groups of service users who may already have more than one care plan because they need care from more than one part of the system of health and social care. This could be initiated by looking at service users registered with some sentinel practices or PCNs. Alternatively, the approach might focus initially on people with defined co-morbidity or risk that entails collaborative care with agencies beyond specialist mental health services.

The focus here is on the process of care planning and agreement on what should be shared, rather than solely on the technology used;

1. What is the process to agree which professional will initiate care planning and act as the “lead point of contact” for the service user?
2. Will initial plans be agreed with the service user in joint consultations or sequentially? Where and how will they be conducted?
3. What will be the process to agree the elements of the plans which should be available to professionals and potential authorised users beyond the immediate care teams, (A&E services, Ambulance Services, Social services, etc.) with the service user’s consent?
4. How will elements of the plan be updated following consultations in a way which is proportionate, to allow contact and progress notes to be maintained by the service conducting the consultation, whilst avoiding unnecessary work for partners in care if there is no significant change to the personalised care and support plan?
5. What are the implications for workload, logistics, and administration arising out of these decisions?

The answers to these questions and others will best be elicited through focused joint working, grounded in real, or at least realistic examples. This will entail process mapping, and co-design with a range of professionals, service users, and families. Resources from the toolkit and outputs from the Simulation element of this project will be valuable. Some organisations would adopt an approach such as a Rapid Process Improvement Workshop, planned over several weeks and conducted over a number of sequential days, to develop prototype ways of working that could be tested in the field.