Software for care providers, including the evidence trail.
Augustova builds custom software and automation for UK care providers, covering rota scheduling, carer recruitment, visit confirmation, family communication and the compliance evidence regulators expect. Systems generate the audit record automatically rather than leaving it to be assembled by hand.
Two problems, one of them invisible until it matters
The visible problem is scheduling. Rotas, travel time, last minute changes and the phone calls that follow, all managed by somebody who could be doing something more valuable.
The invisible problem is evidence. Regulators expect a record, and in most providers that record is assembled retrospectively from memory, messages and paper. It is accurate enough until the day it needs to be exact, and by then it cannot be reconstructed.
What we build for care operations
Recruitment is usually the fastest win
Carer recruitment has the same shape as high volume hiring anywhere: a flood of applicants, a short window to reach them, and a compliance burden attached to every hire. We run a recruitment platform in production and that machinery transfers almost directly.
Providers who fix speed to first contact fill shifts they were previously turning down, which is revenue rather than efficiency.
What it costs for a provider
Rostering with visit evidence capture as one build sits in the middle of the £8,000 to £30,000 range, because carers need it on a phone and that is a larger surface than a web screen alone. Referral intake and compliance reporting are usually separate phases.
An audit at £2,500 to £6,000 is worth doing first where a care management system exists, since most of them record well and report poorly, and knowing which half is the problem changes the answer entirely.
What to measure before and after
Time to produce a full evidence pack for one service user over one month. Test it today, on a real month, and record how long it takes and how much is missing. That single measurement usually makes the case without further argument.
Then hours per week spent building and amending the rota including the confirmations, and the proportion of visits with a complete record captured at the time rather than reconstructed afterwards.
The rules a provider has to build around
A care provider in England is registered with the Care Quality Commission, whose single assessment framework asks how the provider is well-led, safe, effective, caring and responsive, and every one of those has an evidence trail. Software can make the trail a by-product of the work: rota compliance, training and DBS status, incident and medication records, and the audit of who did what and when. Service-user data is special-category data, so anything that reads care notes runs on a business plan under a data processing agreement with a DPIA, and nothing about a person’s care is decided by software. Recruitment automation in care has to respect the same rules as any agency: advisory screening, a person deciding, the candidate told.
What it costs, and what it replaces
Our published prices apply to every sector: an AI adoption audit at £2,500 to £6,000 fixed, credited in full against any build; a first AI implementation at £4,000 to £15,000; a custom AI system at £8,000 to £25,000; applications at £8,000 to £30,000 per phase; websites at £4,000 to £16,000; training from £1,200. For a provider that usually means recruitment automation as the first implementation, because vacancies decide everything else, then rota and compliance tooling as a custom system, with your care management system kept as the record.
The running cost is stated before go-live, per feature, and it scales with volume rather than headcount. From operating our own AI products, the model is rarely the expensive part; the channels around it, telephony and messaging, usually are, and a well-designed workflow sends most of its work to the small, cheap models. Every system we build reports cost per feature from day one and has spending ceilings that were tested by watching them fire.
Vacancies, rota and the phone
Care runs on filled shifts. An applicant who applies on Sunday and hears nothing until Wednesday has taken another job; an applicant contacted in minutes, screened for the essentials and booked for interview automatically is a shift covered. That is the same screening, chasing and booking pattern we run in recruitment, applied to a provider’s own hiring. The rota is the second cost, and our rota guide sets out what software should and should not decide. The phone is the third: family calls, agency calls and applicant calls, answered by an AI that routes urgency to a person and takes the rest.
Common questions
Do you replace our care management system?
Usually not. Most providers have a system that holds care records adequately and fails at rota logistics, recruitment and communication. Building around it is faster and less disruptive, and we will tell you if replacement is genuinely the better answer.
Can this help with regulator inspections?
It helps by generating the evidence as work happens rather than assembling it afterwards. A record produced automatically at the point of the visit is both easier to produce on request and more likely to be accurate.
We struggle to recruit carers. Can software help?
Yes, and it is usually where the fastest return sits. The bottleneck is almost always the gap between an application arriving and a human responding, which automation closes without adding staff.
How is personal data handled?
A written data processing agreement is signed before any personal data moves, and we are registered with the Information Commissioner under reference ZC152144. Systems sit on your own provider accounts wherever possible.
Will this satisfy an inspection?
The engineering side can be made to: complete records captured at the point of care, retrievable in seconds, with an audit trail of who recorded what and when. The regulatory judgement remains yours, and we will not claim a system guarantees an outcome an inspector decides.
Do carers need a smartphone for this?
For visit evidence at the point of care, yes in practice, and it is designed to work offline and sync later because signal in a service user home cannot be assumed. A system that needs connectivity it will not have gets abandoned, which is worse than no system.
Can AI help a care provider recruit?
Yes. Screening applications against the essentials, contacting applicants within minutes and booking interviews automatically is the same pattern we run at scale in recruitment, with a manager deciding and the candidate told AI is used.
Is it safe to use AI with care records?
For administrative tasks on a business plan under a data processing agreement with a DPIA, yes. Nothing about a person’s care is decided by software, and personal AI accounts should never hold care notes.
Can it help with CQC evidence?
Yes, by making the evidence a by-product of the work: rota compliance, training and DBS status, incident records and an audit trail, queryable rather than assembled before an inspection.
Talk about rotas, hiring or evidence
Tell us which of the three costs you the most hours each week. That is almost always the right place to start.