Announcing the recipients of our CareTech Developers for Adult Social Care Small Grants Programme
The CHI-Zone small grants programme for CareTech Developers supports innovators to explore, develop and test digital solutions with adult social care and support providers across the Liverpool City Region. Our Adult Social Care Testbed, established with the National Care Forum, involves not-for-profit providers from each of the six local authorities which make up the Liverpool City Region. It functions as a collaborative environment where SMEs can solicit feedback from care providers and people with lived experience about the suitability of new and emergent technologies, co-design new software and hardware solutions, and generate real-world evidence about their efficacy through digital trials.
In addition to working with adult social care and support providers, participating companies receive design, technical and business development support from the University of Liverpool’s Virtual Engineering Centre (VEC) and Civic Health Innovation Labs (CHIL).
We are delighted to announce this year’s grant recipients, who are now working with our Adult Social Care Testbed partners to develop and test their digital solutions and transform adult social care provision across the region.
Dr Annemarie Naylor, Director of HealthTech and Innovation Growth at the University of Liverpool, said:
“The Liverpool City Region’s Adult Social Care Testbed affords technology developers a rare opportunity to co-produce digital interventions working with care and support providers. We are connecting SMEs with academic experts, care providers and technical expertise from the University’s CHIL and VEC. This enables solutions to be developed and tested in real-world care environments, generating evidence that’s important to policymakers, commissioners, providers and, crucially, people who draw on care. These grant awards respond to challenges identified by adult social care providers, facilitate R&D and business development - leveraging our caring economy to reap productivity gains and economic growth.”
Professor Vic Rayner OBE, CEO of the National Care Forum commented:
“The Small Grants Programme has given CareTech developers unprecedented access to a panel of experts with deep knowledge and experience of successful implementation and adoption of new technologies. We’re incredibly grateful to our 16 not-for-profit care and support providers, and the people who draw on their services, for giving up their time to participate in the programme in this way. Their expert insights help guide the grant recipients as they continue to develop their exciting solutions, ensuring they are developed around the most urgent challenges impacting adult social care and can make an immediate difference.”
Meet the Grant Recipients
MyHelpa is an AI-driven homecare rostering platform designed for domiciliary care providers. The system automatically generates optimised staff schedules and presents clear options for human review. It matches care workers by skills, availability and continuity of care, while optimising routes and visit sequencing to assist care professionals. MyHelpa aims to further develop the algorithms and mapping capability which underpin its software with support from CHI-Zone, and to benchmark its utility in relation to rostering software already used by providers from our Adult Social Care Testbed.
Sentai is a voice enabled, AI-powered digital companion that helps older adults stay in control of their day-to-day life, keeps them connected to their circle of care and supports them to live a healthy and independent life. Sentai aims to validate and trial its ‘smart speaker’ technology with support from CHI-Zone, working with local adult social care commissioners and providers from our Adult Social Care Testbed.
CareBrain is the first large language model fine‑tuned specifically for the care sector - built by care professionals, for care professionals. It powers a suite of AI‑driven tools designed to ease frontline pressures, enhance service quality and safety, and strengthen the skills and confidence of those delivering care every day. CareBrain will prototype a new software feature and explore Agentic AI solutions with support from CHI-Zone.
An alumnus of NCF’s Care Innovation Challenge, Carpe Care is a start-up developing a care-tech service using hands-free video capture connected to a digital platform for seizure analysis and remote clinical review. Through collaboration with care providers, clinicians, and lived-experience experts, the service is being developed with user needs at the centre. With current focuses on prototyping, service mapping, and testing assumptions, Carpe Care's co-produced service will support real care workflows and strengthen connections between providers and clinicians.
The Liverpool City Region Adult Social Care Testbed provides a structured environment for innovators and care providers to work together on real-world challenges at regional scale. By combining frontline testing across 16 providers and all six local authorities, we aim to catalyse the use of provider data, co-design, test and evaluate data-driven and tech-enabled social care solutions and up-skill the care workforce in the Liverpool City Region.