Artificial intelligence in social care
Artificial intelligence used as aid for social care recruitment
The background
Sanctuary Personnel Ltd provides qualified social workers and care professionals to the social services sector throughout the UK. Based in Ipswich, the company has grown to become the largest independently owned social work provider organisation in the country. Sanctuary Personnel is the preferred supplier to more than 140 local authorities and organisations across the UK, including Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC).
The issue
Rostering busy social care staff – and ensuring the right staff with the right skills attend the right patient at the right time – is central to providing a safe, high quality service, and maximising providers’ resources. But ensuring that the most suitable carers and social workers are visiting individuals based on the condition of the person requiring the service is a complex procedure.
"This was a really great project that moved the novel computational intelligence research developed in the University of Essex to commercial products that are internationally leading."
Professor Hani Hagras, project supervisor for the University of Essex
The solution
Sanctuary Personnel Ltd approached the University of Essex to find out if the world-leading ‘artificial intelligence’ techniques developed by the University’s School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering could be applied to the company’s existing time and attendance software to enable intelligent rostering. A Knowledge Transfer Partnership was set up to transfer and embed artificial intelligence expertise into the company. The company and University jointly recruited an exceptional postgraduate to lead the three-year project.
The benefits
The project resulted in the development of a product that has wide application across a number of different sectors. It has a worldwide patent pending and the project won the 2009 Lord Stafford Award for Achievement in Innovation in the East of England. Sanctuary Personnel Ltd is confident that the intelligent software that has been developed will play a major role in expanding their activity into new markets, and a new company has been formed to commercialise these techniques. The academic team’s contribution has further developed their research interests and teaching in the field of novel computational intelligence. Sanctuary Personnel has recently commenced two further three-year Knowledge Transfer Partnership projects with the University of Essex, applying artificial intelligence technologies in other sectors.
Who to contact
Please contact Knowledge Exchange Manager, Jenny Young for more details.
