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How digital transcription is changing adult social care

Oliver Spence, Business Development Lead at First City Care Group, shares insights into how his organisation is using transcription services to deliver better care.

At First City Care Group, we’ve always been open to finding new ways to improve the way we work, especially when it comes to making our services more efficient and person-centred. Recently, one area that has really grabbed our attention is digital transcription technology, and I think it has real potential to shift how we work in adult social care.

Initially, we started using transcription technology for something quite basic—meeting summaries—but it quickly became clear that it could have a much bigger impact on how we deliver care and support.

It all began when we adopted a tool for meeting transcription and summarisation. We found it great for capturing complicated discussions and summarising action points, but then I started thinking, "Could this work for other areas like care plans and supervisions?"

We tested it out with some role-playing exercises, imagining the sort of conversations we’d have with a person about their care needs, goals and medical conditions. The results were impressive. We saw the potential to streamline how we capture important details—right there in the moment—rather than relying on handwritten notes that later have to be typed up.

Efficiency was a big driver for us. Before adopting this tool, we still relied on paper-based care plans, and our staff had to come back to the office to input everything into the electronic care system. That’s time-consuming. If we can cut down the time it takes to complete a care plan without sacrificing quality, it allows us to spend more time actually delivering care.

But the real breakthrough for me wasn’t just about efficiency—it was about capturing the voice of the people we support in a more authentic way. When you use a transcription tool, it records what people actually say in their own words, which makes the care plans much more personalised and reflective of their true wishes.

This tech also opened up new opportunities for us in how we relay care needs. For years, I’ve seen skilled colleagues struggle to translate rich, meaningful conversations into the formal written reports, which would often be shared with the council or other organisations. A transcription tool can take a lot of the pressure off by ensuring that those crucial details are captured accurately. In this way, transcription becomes a bit of a leveller, helping us provide stronger, clearer justifications for decisions.

To take things further, we’ve recently reached out to several other tech companies and are working on running larger trials with other care providers to see how these tools can work on a bigger scale. One developer, for example, has designed a piece of software for use in GP practices, but we’re hoping to adapt it to work with our care plans.

One thing we’ve realised along the way is that the care sector isn’t always on the radar of companies developing these tools, even though we carry out thousands of assessments every year. So, we’re actively reaching out to these tech companies to show them the potential for using their products in social care environments. I think the next few years will lead to huge growth in the quantity and quality of these tools, which will hopefully be geared specifically for our sector.

As many of these technologies leverage AI in their operation, we’re also engaging with ethical research bodies like Oxford University’s Institute for Ethics in AI, in particular the team running the , to make sure we’re getting the ethics right as we move forward with this technology.

Of course, introducing any new technology comes with its challenges, particularly in a sector like ours, where digital literacy can vary widely. When we first introduced transcription technology, there was some hesitancy among staff. We’ve found it’s key to ensure they feel they’re involved in the process – this really helps avoid much of the resistance to new ways of working. When you do that, people’s reservations can be addressed before anything has even changed, which makes things work much more fluidly.

It’s also worth noting that the people accessing social adult social care are becoming more tech-savvy. People entering care in the next 10-30 years are becoming increasingly accustomed to technology playing a big part in their lives. So, part of what we’re doing now is preparing for that future—getting ahead of the curve so that when these expectations become the norm, we’re already in a strong position to meet them.

In the end, transcription technology has the potential to transform not just how we work but also how we relate to the people we support. It’s helping us have more meaningful conversations and, ultimately, provide care that’s more aligned with what people actually want. I see a huge future for this kind of technology in adult social care—not just for the efficiencies it brings, but for the way it can help centre the voice of the person receiving care.

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