Social distancing has been a particular challenge for telecare monitoring services, but Astraline has created a solution – a social distance delivery service with self-install equipment that is easy to set up and requires no face-to-face contact with others. The team has complemented this with an over-the-phone install service, should the service user encounter any problems, and the equipment is delivered directly to the customer’s home and left outside for them to collect.
Joe McLoughlin, director of Astraline and Innovation, said: “We wanted to ensure that we were doing our bit in helping local people, at a time when communities coming together and supporting one another has never been more important. Adapting our local TEC responder service to allow them to deliver equipment with no contact with the customer is something we’ve never done, but we believe that this offer is a vital service.”
Astraline and Progress Housing Group are both working closely with local ambulance services throughout the crisis. When a call comes in about someone who has fallen but is non-injured, the ambulance control centre is now trained to deploy TEC emergency response teams rather than sending an ambulance – reducing the pressure on blue lights while demonstrating that integrated services and technology enabled care is pivotal in response.