Spotlight: MyHelpa – Using intelligent scheduling to support better home care delivery
The CHI-Zone small grants programme for CareTech Developers supports innovators to explore, develop and test digital solutions with adult social care providers and support organisations across the Liverpool City Region.
Our Adult Social Care Testbed, delivered in partnership with the National Care Forum, involves not-for-profit providers operating across the six local authorities which make up the Liverpool City Region. It functions as a collaborative environment where SMEs can solicit feedback from care professionals and people with lived experience about new and emergent technologies, co-design software and hardware solutions, and generate real-world evidence about their efficacy through digital trials.
One of our grant recipients is MyHelpa – an AI-driven rostering platform designed for domiciliary care providers.
For care providers, creating and managing rotas is a vital part of delivering quality support, but it is also one of the most challenging operational tasks. Behind every care visit is a complex set of decisions: matching the right care worker with the right person, at the right time, while balancing travel, availability, skills and individual needs.
MyHelpa was created to help address this challenge by making home care rostering safer, more efficient and more realistic. The platform uses intelligent scheduling and optimisation technology to help care teams create better rotas, reducing the pressure on coordinators who often manage complex schedules manually.
In domiciliary care, rotas influence whether people receive care on time, whether care workers have manageable working days and whether providers can maintain continuity and consistency of support. Coordinators must consider a wide range of factors, including travel time, client preferences, staff skills, availability, visit durations and unexpected changes.
MyHelpa approaches this challenge as a live logistics puzzle with people at the centre. The platform analyses key constraints and creates suggested rotas that care coordinators can review, adapt and approve. Rather than replacing human decision-making, MyHelpa aims to give care teams a stronger starting point, helping them spend less time manually adjusting schedules and more time focusing on delivering high-quality care.
Through the CHI-Zone small grants for CareTech Developers programme, MyHelpa has focused on improving the usability and transparency of its technology. A key area of development has been improving the platform’s underlying algorithm, strengthening map-based explanations, helping care providers better understand why a rota has been suggested, and building confidence in using technology to support operational decisions.
The collaboration with CHI-Zone has also provided an opportunity to test and refine the product with care providers, including Red Robin Homecare, founded by CHI-Zone Fellow Rosie Robinson, ensuring that improvements are shaped around the real needs of the people using it. For MyHelpa, the challenge is not only developing powerful optimisation technology, but ensuring it is practical, trusted and useful in everyday care settings.
Tracy Greenan, Founder of MyHelpa, said:
“The CHI-Zone small grants programme has helped us step back from day-to-day delivery to focus on improving the product. In particular, it has helped us think more clearly about how users understand optimisation results and what they need to see in order to trust them.
It has also been encouraging to be part of a programme that recognises the importance of innovation in social care, where operational pressures are significant and practical technology can make a real difference.”
Looking ahead, MyHelpa aims to continue improving its optimisation engine and user experience, supporting better planning across home care and community care. By reducing unnecessary travel, improving staff working days and protecting continuity of care, better rostering has the potential to help providers make the most of their resources while supporting more people to receive care safely at home.
The team is also exploring how MyHelpa could contribute to wider health and care priorities, including hospital discharge, Home First approaches, reablement and community-based support. By helping care providers plan more effectively, the technology aims to support a future where innovation strengthens the delivery of person-centred care.
For MyHelpa, working with CHI-Zone has involved valuable technical support at an important stage of the business’s development, and the opportunity to solicit feedback from care providers.
Applications are now open for the next round of the CHI-Zone small grants for CareTech Developers. If you have an idea, product or service that could benefit from access to specialist knowledge, real-world testing environments and collaboration with health and care partners, find out more and apply today.