Dementia diagnosis rates across Bedfordshire, Luton and Milton Keynes Integrated Care System (BLMK ICS) are higher than the national average, with the condition often linked to longer hospital stays, mental health challenges, undiagnosed pain, behavioural distress, and increased safeguarding risks (1).
To support adults to live more independently, and enhance quality and safety of care, Health Innovation East supported (BLMK) Bedfordshire Luton and Milton Keynes ICS’ digitising social care team to secure £1.1million of funding from NHS England’s Adult Social Care Technology Fund. This funding enables access to new technologies (PainChek and RoboPets) which can be used by care home and domiciliary care staff to support adults living with or experiencing behaviour that challenges, cognitive impairment, communication difficulty or dementia in a variety of care settings.
This programme not only enables access to new technologies but is also being evaluated by the University of Hertfordshire and the Office of Health Economics to understand the acceptability, usability, cost-effectiveness and impacts of the technologies. Outcomes will be used to inform the development of an evidence-based plan for the spread of both technologies across BLMK ICS.
-Bid writing and coordination to secure NHS England Adult Social Care Technology funding
-Provided programme management and delivery support to enable effective implementation and evaluation of the technologies
-Coordinated programme governance, including operational and stakeholder meetings
-Coordinated of monthly and quarterly reporting to NHS England funders
-Supported collaboration with the University of Hertfordshire and Office of Health Economics, maintaining a shared deployment and evaluation roadmap
-Coordinated provider engagement and meetings to support baseline data collection
-Supported implementation of the Adult Social Care Outcomes Toolkit (ASCOT)
An evaluation is due to be completed in March 2026 which will fully assess the impact of the programme. Almost 1,300 Robopets have been distributed and as of March 2025, more than 11,300 PainChek assessments have been completed with a total of 582 residents across 22 different care locations. Staff from two local care homes have shared their experiences using PainCheck in this video.
“It’s great seeing how technology can impact the lives of our residents and this is quite a really nice, quite simple way that we can make their lives a bit better. It feels good to see them so happy.” – Tom Bridle, Care and Support Manager at Camphill Milton Keynes Communities Robopet user
Discussions will continue with providers who participated in the pilot to explore the long-term sustainability of the technology.
References
(1) BLMK Healthcare Partnership. (2025). PainChek. [Online]. BLMK Healthcare Partnership. Available at: https://blmkhealthandcarepartnership.org/about/our-priorities/data-and-digital/digitising-social-car [Accessed 10 April 2026].
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