An innovative approach to tackling supply shortages in health and social care services

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Covid-19 has indiscriminately exposed the fragile state of the Health and Social Care (HSC) services in the UK. On 16 April 2020, a leaked letter seen by the BBC has revealed an extensive list of concerns about how the social care sector is coping with the Covid-19 crisis. The letter raised fears about funding, testing, personal protective equipment (PPE) and the shielding scheme for vulnerable people. What is evident now is that there is a clear imbalance and disparity in the availability of, and access to critical resources across the HSC sector. This has forced them to rethink their supply chain models and evaluate sustainability levels to cope in times of emergency.On the flip side however, a number of businesses and individuals have quickly adapted their services by responding to the pressing and urgent need to fulfil local supply-chain demands. For example, in Scotland, Leith Gin and BrewDog have suspended their distillery activities to focus on the production of hand sanitiser. Similarly, more restaurants and cafes are turning their severely disrupted dine-in services into (non-contact) deliveries. These adaptations demonstrate that there is potential for strong collaboration and support between society, public and private sectors to fulfil the supply demands of their local HSC services and provide mutual aid across the region.In this project, Stevenson Astrosat Ltd. - an Earth Observation and data visualisation company from Scotland - will run a trial with Shropshire Council to identify the location and type of supplies that could fulfil the demands of the HSC services in Shropshire. The trial will aim to gather data from the community via an online survey to aid the link-up to local health and social care services through local risk resilience groups and the adult social care services charities. The expected impacts of this project on society are an improved health response to the Covid-19 crisis through improved supply chain resilience and the enablement of volunteers, public and private organisations to collaborate and deliver tangible and immediate benefits to the HSC sector at a time when it really matters. The economic impacts will be enabling local businesses to adapt and continue operating thus retaining jobs and, economic output. This will aid faster economic recovery from the crisis. The environmental impact is to reduce emissions by minimising supply transportation miles as local demands get fulfilled more readily through "buy local" during the crisis and long after it ends.The original project confirmed the need for greater level of granularity regarding supply shortages faced by adult social care (ASC) providers in Shropshire and whether these could be fulfilled by local businesses in Shropshire. It was also evident that local authorities would need to know if these supply shortages continued to persist, particularly during times of crisis so that alternative means of interventions to plug these shortages could be explored; e.g. from neighbouring counties or other parts of the UK. This extension for impact project will aim to gather advanced analytics from the developed product to determine the customer (ASC providers) and supplier (local businesses) interactions so that these metrics can be gathered and reported dynamically. This valuable insight will not place any burden on the users of our product but instead make it leap forward significantly towards commercialisation. These insights will allow local authorities to have the most up-to-date and accurate information about the current state of ASC supply chains and enable them to exercise their responsibilities for ensuring a functional and operationally robust ASC provision in their region. Furthermore, the ASC sector will benefit from these insights as will be able to better manage their supply-chain risks through the support of a stronger local economy.