The technologies that could transform ageing

At the start of the summer, Paula Tinkler was ready to take her career in a new direction. This may not be unusual – but the speed with which she was able to make the transition was. Within a week, she was shadowing a carer in Workington, England. Within a month, she was working as a carer herself.

Not only was her training rapid – it also took place completely in her own home. “I began the recruitment process by e-mail and completed my assessment online, which was followed by an interview and training process that was entirely digital,” she says.

She did this through a UK-based company called Cera Care, a “tech-enabled care provider” that doesn’t own or operate any care homes. It allows families to arrange and manage home care for their relatives using a digital platform that finds a match for customers from a pool of available caregivers. It also uses Uber to ferry patients back and forth to hospitals for appointments and an on-demand delivery service to fetch customers’ prescriptions from pharmacies.

The firm has raised over £20m ($26m) in investment since its inception in 2016 and delivers around half a million home visits every month, Tinkler’s included.