Connected Health Group CEO Dougie Adams has been shortlisted in the prestigious EY Entrepreneur of the Year Awards 2023.
From Ballymurphy in West Belfast Dougie is the founder and driving force behind the Connected Health Group, one of the fastest growing homecare companies in Ireland.
As an energetic, successful, and community-orientated entrepreneur, Dougie has built a range of successful business interests — ranging from construction and hospitality to dentistry and retail.
As CEO of the Connected Health Group, Dougie has responsibility for ensuring group synergy, strategic growth, and championing the business’s core values of client-centric care, innovation, and empathetic leadership — the foundation stones of Connected Health’s success.
Under Dougie’s leadership, the business has become an award-winning healthcare company, delivering positive disruption to homecare and its place within the broader health and social care systems island-wide.
Connected Health is one of the fastest growing homecare companies in the UK over the last ten years. This is according to the Independent Sector Market insight company Plimsoll — which records a growth rate of 953% for Connected Health during this time frame.
Dougie said “I am honoured and humbled to be selected for this prestigious award, this nomination reflects the dedication and commitment of our people on the frontline serving their communities. The 3Ts of Talent, Training & Technology are the cornerstone of Connected Health delivering compassionate, quality care across the island of Ireland.”
Dougie and his team have grown the service from a small acquisition of a traditional homecare company employing just 47 staff to a business now employing over 2,000 staff across multiple service lines, ranging from home care and supported living to hospital discharge and augmented technology care solutions.
He has also led two successful acquisitions in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and lowered the average age of the workforce from 52 to 31 he founded Connected Academy this is a notable first in social care workforce re-engineering training to deliver aspirational career progression to the wider health and social care system.
Douglas and the Connected Health senior leadership team have been heavily involved in the thought leadership aspects of delivering improved and more valued care at both NHS and departmental level. This team was instrumental in helping establish Northern Ireland’s first Homecare Collaborative Network, which is focused on a strategic approach to improving the role of homecare in the region.
Connected Health secured two highly successful ‘Hospital to Home’ projects in the North (within the Western and South- Eastern Trusts). These projects focused on providing a digitally enabled, ring-fenced and retrained homecare hospital discharge teams to discharge people out of hospital sooner, reduce hospital re-admission, improve re-enablement success rates and ultimately free up finite acute care bed spaces. The projects freed up hundreds of bed nights across both Trusts.
Through Connected TEC (Technology Enabled Care), Douglas has also been at the forefront of embracing the use of technology across the business, with a focus on providing a more accessible, efficiently managed, and ultimately safer workforce in the communities every day 365.
Douglas was the driver behind Homecare 2.0 (revolutionising the entire concept of homecare) and the development of the ‘Care Configurator’ which allows families and older people to design bespoke care and homecare tech packages with just a few clicks – delivering healthier ageing and wellness for an increasingly older population across Ireland.
