Delivering more time to care
CareLineLive, launched in 2018, now serves 650 customers, in seven countries, produces revenues of over £3.5m and has over 40 staff. It helps 17,000 carers deliver better care and for the home care companies to improve their operations and their regulatory compliance.
About CareLineLive’s founder
Born with a rare muscle weakening illness, Josh Hough was written off by doctors at an early age. However, this fuelled his fire and today, he is the founder and Managing Director of CareLineLive.
“I hated being disabled and was determined to get out of my wheelchair. I would hear the doctors telling my parents that I might not be able to have a job,” says Josh. “I think it made me very determined and single-minded. From an early age, I learned I could prove people wrong.”
Josh was born with a rare genetic condition called Minicore Myopathy. It meant walking was difficult and he needed a lot of treatment. Also, going to school in a wheelchair was often an unpleasant experience.
“It was just very bad luck. It’s a condition which you only get when both parents have a specific gene. I had a lot of specialist treatment when I was young. I went to school in a wheelchair which wasn’t nice as kids can be very cruel.”
Nonetheless, Josh did well at school and considered university. But he was also entrepreneurial, setting up a publishing company with his sister Zoe when he was just 14.
“I was more interested in business than in studying and had a desire to change things. I think I saw the world differently to a lot of people. I was often looking for new and different ways of doing things. You have to when you literally can’t do things in the same ways everyone else does,” he says.
Indeed, when Josh was young, he was often exasperated by the inefficiencies of the healthcare system.
“I was visited by countless nurses, doctors and healthcare professionals. Every time I met someone new, I had to go through the same routine – answering the same questions, explaining my condition. It was very repetitive and boring. Meanwhile, they were filling out paperwork or leafing through thick folders of information. It wasn’t very efficient and even as a young child, I was thinking: ‘this could be done better’.”
This and the struggle his family struggled to get information about his grandfather’s care was the inspiration for setting up CareLineLive.
“My grandfather was receiving care and the family struggled with the lack of communication from carers. Everything I felt and saw as a child came flooding back. I just felt there needed to be a better system and, ultimately, that I had to be the one to create it.”
Josh had a client in the home care space via a company, MAS Group, providing managed IT services to companies, that he had set up when he was 18. The home care company were facing considerable challenges partly as a result of using a traditional paper-based system. South Coast Care became CareLineLive’s first client and the idea of creating a ‘circle of care’ emerged.
“We created an app that joins up everything in a home care business, from patient notes and visits to invoicing and staff rotas. Family members can access it so they know what’s going on. But also, critical healthcare professionals like ambulance drivers can access it, too. Because, if they are attending an emergency, they really need to know whether or not someone has had their medication that day.”
“The idea of the ‘circle of care’ is that everyone a patient needs is brought into the loop. People no longer need to spend long periods of time hunting down paperwork. All the information is in one place, it’s very efficient and it provides a clear audit trail.”
CareLineLive was launched in 2018 with a mission to transform a sector lagging behind much of the digital world.
About CareLineLive
Our software
CareLineLive offers a Management Platform, a Carer Companion mobile app and a Family & Friends Portal. Our strategy has been to develop a one-stop solution that improves productivity and efficiency through automating workflow processes, such as rostering, invoicing and payroll, leading to decreased costs. The benefit to agencies is one integrated system for users to learn and use which is also faster, as all data is stored on the same infrastructure.
The system is intuitive, enabling easy care management, quick rostering and access to real-time information – it results in less time spent on administration and more time spent delivering care.
The goal is to use digital technology to improve working practices, reduce costs, streamline operations, and ultimately provide carers with more time to focus on delivering exceptional care to their clients.
Working closely with a number of home care agencies, CareLineLive has used the latest technology to develop for home care agency owners and managers an innovative, easy-to-use, cloud hosted home care management system that is truly fit for purpose. CareLineLive delivers more time to care through digitising workflows, automating processes, increasing revenue opportunities and decreasing overheads by creating staff capacity.
To date, CareLineLive’s customers have benefited from increased efficiencies and value, with dramatic improvement in cash flow and increased revenues of up to 50%.
In relation to product development, the company has taken on board requirements from regulators such as CQC and the Care Inspectorate, the Professional Records Standards Body and the requirements of NHSx.
CareLineLive has also added new features in response to requests from customers which are continually monitored via a features request list and regular surveys.
CareLineLive is an NHS Assured Supplier of Digital Social Care Records and as such has to demonstrate compliance with an ever evolving set of functionality and cyber security standards.
A cloud hosted software platform that delivers complete functionality for your home care business.
CareLineLive provides best-in-market, cloud-based, all-in-one homecare management solutions, with the aim of offering a positive impact across a homecare agency’s entire business, providing them with more time to care.
Our mission
CareLineLive’s mission is to become the first truly integrated home care management software to improve home care agency efficiency, give carers more time to care while also providing predictive safeguarding concerns for patient welfare.
Becoming part of the family
In 2023 CareLineLive acquired the businesses behind CareFor IT and Ulysses (UDMS) resulting in a formidable portfolio of product options for both private and public sector providers of home care.
What makes CareLineLive different?
CareLineLive has a focus on customer service excellence. Our support team are all based in the UK and provide 9-5.30 phone, email and message based support Monday to Friday.
Over 80% of support calls are answered within 20 seconds and the median first response time when contacted via Intercom, our messaging app, is just 20 minutes. 90% of support tickets are rated good or excellent.
Check out our customer Trustpilot reviews to find out what makes CareLineLive the highest ranked home care software company on Trustpilot.
Exceeding in customer support alone would not give us the top ratings we enjoy on Trustpilot. The software is best-in-class offering a truly all-in-one solution for home care agencies.
This includes rostering, client and carer management, capacity planning, reporting, real time call monitoring, payroll and invoicing via a management portal, carer app and Care Circle Portal for friends and family.
Our software is trusted by large and small private domiciliary care providers as well as NHS Trusts and local authorities. We are a Crown Commercial supplier on the G-Could 14 framework as well as being a DSCR/NHSX Assured Supplier. Other accreditations include NHS Data Security Protection (DSP) Toolkit, Cyber Essentials Plus, ISO 9001 and 27001.