31 March 2026 · 7 min read · Arviteni
78% of care leaders say Technology Enabled Care is essential, yet most lack the data to prove it works. Here's how to close the gap.
A new report from PA Consulting and the TEC Services Association has confirmed what many in the sector already suspect: care leaders know that Technology Enabled Care (TEC) is essential, but most organisations are not collecting or using data well enough to make it work.
The third annual study found that 78% of adult social care leaders now consider TEC essential for delivering sustainable services. That figure is striking. It shows the sector has moved past the question of whether technology matters and into the far harder question of how to make it deliver results.
The problem, according to the report, is not a lack of enthusiasm. It is a lack of data-driven implementation. Organisations are adopting technology, but they are not measuring outcomes, tracking usage, or connecting the data from those systems back into operational decisions. Without that feedback loop, TEC becomes something you have rather than something that improves how you deliver care.
TEC is a broad term. In practice, for most care providers, it includes:
Many care organisations already use one or more of these. The issue is rarely whether the technology exists. It is whether the organisation knows what the technology is achieving.
Consider a care home that installs IoT sensors for falls detection. The sensors generate alerts. Staff respond to those alerts. That is the baseline expectation.
But without proper data collection and reporting, the organisation cannot answer questions like:
These are not abstract questions. They are exactly what CQC inspectors, commissioners, and boards want to see when they ask whether technology is improving care outcomes.
The same pattern applies across every type of TEC. If you cannot demonstrate measurable improvement, you cannot justify the investment, secure further funding, or make informed decisions about what to adopt next.
There are three common reasons care providers struggle with TEC data:
1. Systems that do not talk to each other. Many care organisations run a collection of separate tools, each with its own data silo. The falls detection system does not connect to the care planning platform. The scheduling tool does not share data with the HR system. When data lives in separate places, building a complete picture requires manual effort that most teams simply do not have time for.
2. No baseline, no comparison. Organisations often adopt new technology without first recording what performance looked like before the change. If you do not know your fall rate, medication error rate, or average response time before you introduce a new system, you have nothing to measure improvement against.
3. Reporting is an afterthought. When care providers select TEC, reporting capability is rarely at the top of the requirements list. The focus tends to be on features: does it detect falls, does it manage medication rounds, does it produce a rota. Whether the system can produce meaningful reports, export data, or integrate with a business intelligence platform is often only considered after the purchase.
Care providers who get this right tend to share a few characteristics:
They define success before they buy. Before selecting any technology, they identify what they want to improve and how they will measure it. That might be reducing falls by a specific percentage, cutting agency spend, improving staff response times, or reducing medication errors. The metric comes first, the technology comes second.
They connect their data. Rather than accepting that each system is a standalone island, they invest in bringing data together. This might mean choosing systems with open APIs, using a centralised analytics and reporting platform, or working with a technology partner who can integrate disparate systems into a single view.
They review regularly. Data is only useful if someone looks at it. The organisations that get the most from TEC build regular data reviews into their governance cycles: monthly board reports, quarterly outcome reviews, and live dashboards that operational managers can check daily.
They use data to make decisions. This sounds obvious, but many organisations collect data without acting on it. Good practice means using the numbers to decide where to invest next, which technology to expand, which to replace, and where staff need additional training.
If your organisation recognises itself in the data gap described above, the good news is that catching up does not require replacing everything.
Audit what you have. Map out every piece of technology your organisation currently uses. Note what data each system collects, whether it can export that data, and whether it connects to anything else. This exercise often reveals that you already have more data than you think, it is just not being used.
If you are unsure how to approach this kind of mapping exercise, the principles are similar to those in data flow mapping for compliance, just applied to operational performance rather than personal data.
Set three baselines. Pick three operational metrics that matter to your organisation, things like fall rates, staff turnover, medication errors, or occupancy. Record where you are today. These become your comparison points for measuring whether future technology investments are working.
Choose one integration. Rather than trying to connect everything at once, pick the single connection that would give you the most useful insight. That might be linking your IoT monitoring data to your care planning system, or connecting your recruitment data to your workforce scheduling tool.
Build a simple dashboard. You do not need a complex analytics platform to start. Even a well-structured spreadsheet that is updated weekly gives you more visibility than no reporting at all. As your needs grow, you can move to dedicated tools that automate the process.
The PA Consulting and TSA study is now in its third year, and the data gap finding is not new. What has changed is the urgency. With digital transformation accelerating across the sector, commissioners and regulators increasingly expect care providers to demonstrate outcomes, not just adoption. Having the technology is no longer enough. You need to show what it is achieving.
For care organisations that have already invested in TEC, the next step is not more technology. It is better use of the data that technology already generates. For those still planning their approach, building data and reporting into the selection criteria from the start will save significant time and frustration later.
The business intelligence case study from one of our care-sector clients illustrates this well. Before implementing centralised reporting, operational data was trapped in silos across multiple systems. After connecting those data sources into a single platform, the leadership team gained real-time visibility over the metrics that mattered to care delivery. That visibility changed how they made decisions about staffing, resource allocation, and service quality.
That is the outcome the PA Consulting report is calling for across the sector. Not more technology, but smarter use of the technology that already exists.
If your care organisation is looking to close the data gap and get more from the technology you have already invested in, get in touch with our team. We work exclusively with care providers and can help you connect your systems, build meaningful reporting, and turn TEC data into operational improvements that stand up to scrutiny.