Part One: Where We Are Now
Let me share something with you that I believe will be absolutely crucial for your care home’s future success – AI is coming, and it will change everything about how we run our homes.
Unfortunately, the term ‘AI’ is chronically overused and abused so let’s first define what AI is and then take a quick look at how you might actually use it right now.
The Difference between Automations, LLMs & AI Agents
Let’s clear something up that confuses most of us. There’s a big difference between automations, LLMs (Large Language models like ChatGPT) and AI agents. Understanding this could save you a fortune when you’re choosing new systems.
Automations
Most of what is currently referred to as AI is in fact automation. It’s just become trendy to stick AI onto almost any existing product to capture our interest and persuade us to buy.
Anyway, think of automation like those automatic doors in your care home – they do the same thing over and over again. Open when someone approaches, close when they’ve gone through. That’s it.
In your care home, automation might be your CRM sending automatic birthday cards to residents’ families or creating a new contact in your accounting software when someone becomes a new resident. It’s brilliant for repetitive tasks, but automations can’t learn, think for themselves or adapt when something unusual happens.
LLMs
LLMs are true AI. You can ask them things in plain English and they understand what you are asking and give a response – usually a suggestion or some written content. What they don’t do is tasks. You still need to take their output and do something with it.
AI Agents
AI agents are completely different – they’re more like having a really switched-on care administrator who can think on their feet.
Let’s say a resident’s family member calls with a complex question about their mum’s care plan. An AI agent can access the care notes, understand the context, and give a meaningful response. If the family member asks a follow-up question, the AI agent can understand how it relates to the first question and respond appropriately. Now that is Artificial Intelligence!
The real magic happens when you combine both – use automation for those repetitive tasks (like sending out invoices) and AI agents for the complex stuff (like handling enquiries from potential residents). That’s when you’ll start seeing real changes in how your care home runs.
So How Do AI Agents & Systems Work?
As we said, think of AI as being a super-efficient care administrator who never sleeps, never takes holidays, and can handle multiple tasks simultaneously. Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Here’s what makes up an AI System:
- The “Brain” – This is like a manager, processing information and making decisions. This is usually linked to a Large Language Model (LLM) like ChatGPT.
- The “Tools” – These are the connections to pieces of software that perform a particular function, like your care planning software or Gmail.
- The “Memory” – This stores everything it learns about your residents, staff, and operations
The 3 components work together to figure out tasks and then to perform them step by step.
Let me give you a real-world example. Imagine saying to your AI, “Check tonight’s staffing levels and tell me if we’re covered.” The AI would:
- Take your Request
- Look at your Rota System
- Check Resident Dependency Levels
- Review Staff Qualifications
- Come back with Recommendations
In essence, it is thinking like a human (well some of them anyway). It first understands the task, then breaks it down into individual steps, then interacts and instructs the various connected tools and finally makes a recommendation or completes the actual task.
Automations and LLMs have been with us for a few years now. AI Agents are new and still in their infancy, though the rate of development is truly staggering!
The UK Care Sector’s AI Revolution
Let me be crystal clear here – we’re standing on the edge of something huge in the care sector (and everywhere else). Over the next 5 years aspects of it will change beyond all recognition.
You know how we’ve all got used to digital care plans and basic systems? Well, that’s like comparing a bicycle to a Ferrari when you look at what’s coming with AI.
Current Technology: What We’ve Got Now
I have to say, the care industry is a relatively slow adopter of new things (sorry but it’s true!). Care provision is still extremely labour-intensive and is likely to stay that way for a while.
However, there are many ways you can currently dip your toes in the water with automation and AI tools.
For example:
Marketing
This is where some of the biggest ROI is right now. Plugging holes (often gaping) in your enquiry generation and conversion process can literally add tens of thousands of pounds to your revenue and profit.
It’s an area I know well through Care Home Marketing Expert and the development of CareMarketingSystems, our marketing automation software for care homes and home care businesses.
You can now have:
- Sophisticated automated follow-up campaigns for new enquiries that massively increase conversion rates.
- Chatbots trained on your own care home and services that can converse with people on your website just like a human. They can even book show arounds directly into your online calendar.
- Voice agents that are natural sounding and can handle incoming phone calls, answer queries and direct calls to the relevant person.
- Automated answering of comments on your social media platforms like Facebook and WhatsApp.
Content Creation & Expertise
Many people use LLM’s like ChatGPT to help them write content, provide expertise or come up with ideas.
A great example is responding to reviews. It’s super important to reply when you get a review or testimonial whether it’s from carehome.co.uk, your Google Business Profile, Facebook or a handwritten card.
This used to be time-consuming to do properly. Now you can just ask your favourite LLM to write it for you and it’s 90% done in seconds. It can even be done fully automatically by connecting up software with this facility.
Recruitment
You can use LLMs to write great recruitment adverts, job descriptions and ‘sorry but’ responses.
With AI Agents you can also take away much of the manual CV and application review process and scoring leaving you with only the decent candidates that you actually want to interview.
Automations can be set up to be triggered at each stage of the process. For example, sending our interview invitations or rejection letters.
Onboarding
AI can read and understand all your onboarding and operational procedures. Automations can be set up to take new starters through your onboarding process, saving many hours.
Experienced staff can ask your in-house chatbot to answer any questions about handling specific situations covered in your policies and procedures. No more excuses!
Research
I recently needed to understand and digest a very wordy 32-page report. Instead of reading it all, I asked the AI we use (Abacus AI) to summarise it. I then asked it to expand on certain sections and asked questions about others until I understood everything I needed to. It saved me several hours.
Conclusion
Here’s the thing. All of the above will save hours, make you more money and your life easier. But… they still need you or your staff to be involved. In AI automation land we call it ‘a human in the loop’.
Our current AI is a very bright and eager but inexperienced new starter. Heor she still needs training, supervision and a human to check tasks are completed properly.
In part two of this article, we’ll be looking at the near and distant future where humans are no longer needed. Cue Twilight Zone music! Makes you kind of uneasy, doesn’t it?
See you then!
Simon Beck
Founder
Care AI News & Care AI
P. S. Coming up in future issues:
Product Reviews – AI based products that save time, make your brain hurt less and take you on a journey down easy street!
Practical Guides – How to prepare your business for the AI Revolution and some easy wins you can implement today
Case Studies – How AI is already saving care homes money and increasing their revenue and profits
AI Innovation News – New technology from around the world
Look out for the next issue coming to your inbox soon!
