How CareCompare is transforming the ￡10bn home care market with support from Innovate UK EDGE

There’s a problem in the UK. Finding home care for yourself or a loved one can be difficult, stressful, time-consuming and costly.

Personal first-hand experience, as medical professional and end-user, led University friends Dr Adam Ali and Dr Liban Saleh (pictured below) to take matters into their own hands. Their solution, carecompare.net , is a simple yet revolutionary website dedicated to helping people find their ideal home care quickly and easily.

With a great solution to a real life problem, all they needed was funding – when along came a global pandemic. Thankfully, with a grant, support and guidance from Innovate UK EDGE , they’re on track and closer than ever to realising their ambitious plans.?

Creating the solution to a real problem

Finding home care that gives you the specialist support you need, within budget, takes time, stamina and determination. Often at a difficult and highly emotional time.

There are over 8,000 home care providers in the UK ??

Personal experience led two friends to act. Dr Adam Ali, CEO, and co-founder Dr Liban Saleh, COO, share their story:

“Liban had faced problems finding care for his grandfather, spending hours trying to contact the different care agencies.

Something like CareCompare would have really helped to solve a very practical problem he was facing.

I'd been working in the NHS for a decade and saw many people who needed care but didn't know where to find it. Suddenly they’re in a situation where they are looking at paying thousands of pounds per month for care and have very little information about who can help.”

Bed blocking costs the NHS over ￡1 billion per year??

Working in a busy hospital meant Adam was aware of the challenge presented by ‘bed blocking’ – when people are well enough to go home, but can’t as they need social care that has yet to be arranged.?

And it’s not just Adam and Liban who are aware of the problem. The Government’s white paper, published in December 2021, states:

“A lack of easily accessible, personalised advice was highlighted by stakeholders as the biggest gap in the current system and the area where there is most scope for innovation.” Source: UK Government Department of Health and Social Care Policy paper: People at the Heart of Care: adult social care reform ??

How CareCompare works

A user, often a relative of the person who needs care, visits the CareCompare website and selects the type of care they need – hourly, night-time or live-in, along with information about their medical needs, duration and timing of care required and any preferences, for example a carer who speaks a specific language.

This information is sent anonymously and securely to local care providers who may be able to help. If they have capacity, the care providers can then message the user to make an ‘offer’ of care, which contains information about the company’s profile, latest Care Quality Commission (CQC) inspection report, price and specific information relating to the user request. This puts the user firmly in control and gives them choice.?

“With our platform, you can quickly reach out to a wide array of care agencies that provide the type of care you need, and see who has capacity to help.”

The CQC inspects and rates all companies as either inadequate, requires improvement, good or outstanding.

“We don’t approach companies who are ‘inadequate’ or ‘requires improvement’. Our automated link to the CQC database means users can see exactly how each company performs in the various inspection domains.”

Another important factor when looking into care provision is cost.

“Most people have little idea about the cost of care when they begin their search. With our platform they can quickly get an understanding of how much each provider will charge – for some this is a fixed rate, for others it depends on the day/time, others have a minimum call-out time… so there are lots of variations which can quickly be understood on CareCompare.”

CareCompare is free for users, with care companies only paying a small commission when someone employs their services. This means a small family-run company can be found as easily as a big national company.

“Most care is delivered by small- to medium-sized companies that can't afford to pay significant amounts of money on digital marketing to compete with the big providers. What CareCompare does is level the playing field, by supporting quality providers of all sizes, enabling people to find the care they need.”

How to build a business from an idea?

As every start-up knows, funding is essential for growth. While CareCompare made a strong start, the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic meant there was a huge squeeze on start-up funding. Here’s how Adam and Liban built their business:

2018 – The CareCompare concept receives initial support and funding from the Oxford University Innovation Startup Incubator. Bill Gale, CTO and software developer, joins and helps to build the website prototype.

Early 2020 – Covid-19 arrives. The NHS and care services come under phenomenal pressure.

“During that period, the Mid & South Essex NHS Foundation Trust awarded me an Innovation Fellowship and helped us to pilot our prototype. Support from the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme was also very important.” ??

June 2020 – CareCompare was awarded a grant from Innovate UK to enable completion of the prototype, ready for live-testing by the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust.

“The Innovate UK grant was critical for us to make rapid progress.

We needed funding to build a version of the platform that we were completely happy to go live with, given the confidential nature of the data we're handling and importance of the platform in a person’s journey to finding care.

Innovate UK gave us all of the funding upfront in one go, which meant we could immediately get help with software development, pay for professional services and do all that was needed to get the product live.”

October 2020 – Adam and Liban start working with Eileen Modral, Senior Innovation and Growth Specialist at Innovate UK EDGE, on reviewing grant and equity funding options to extend the pilot. ?

“Having Eileen’s lens on where we were, and which sources of funding were the most relevant, was very helpful.

She’s acted as a sounding board. We trust her opinion. She understands the journey of the start-up.”

April 2021 – All grant winners need to show how the money is being used. Rather than being a hurdle, this proved critical in securing much-needed private sector funding.

"The pilot was awarded 5 out of 5 by an independent review panel at Innovate UK and we received follow-on funding that gave us a runway to achieve substantial private sector investment.

Our investors said to us, ‘Look, you've been awarded a highly competitive grant by Innovate UK and have done very well – you've been efficient in how you made use of that funding and we're confident you'll do the same with our money’.”

What are you working on now with Eileen??

“She’s helping us, stress-testing and tailoring our pitch for when we speak to investors. Things like how to organise the financial information and talk about the vision of the company, rather than just where we are at the moment. ?

We're really pleased to have buy-in from the Academic Health Science Networks (AHSN) and are working with several charities who also support the work we do.”

Do you have a goal for the end of this year?

“We would like to achieve national coverage within the next year, improve our product design further and explore additional services to add to the platform.

We’re also working with academics at Anglia Ruskin University to help us understand how we can better address inequalities in access to care.

We want to make the platform as inclusive as possible, so that people from ethnic minority groups, rural communities, disabled communities and those with speech and language difficulties can all use CareCompare to find the care they need.”

Last words from Adam

“The support we’ve received, particularly from Eileen, was really important. From guiding us through how an early-stage company can raise funding to developing how our platform fits in the wider marketplace.

The problem we're solving is one that’s replicated across most developed countries. There’s an ageing population and people need care, but they don't know how to find it.

We want to be part of a sustainable, long-term solution to how care is arranged and delivered.

Innovate UK EDGE’s support has been invaluable in helping us achieve this.”