How Age UK is helping an aging population feel less alone with AI and comms technology

Whether it’s running dance classes and lunch clubs, helping access welfare benefits, answering questions on housing or just being on the end of the phone for a quick chat, Age UK operates a raft of services to support older people across the country.

As a national charity, Age UK needs to deliver its services at scale. It’s really over the past 10 years that technology has become a key driver to the charity becoming more efficient and effective, and its ability to reach more older people and have more impact.

All the lonely people

This tech drive started back in 2016 with an updated version of its telephone befriending service, which initially was a very small provision. Given that there's around a million lonely older people in the UK, the charity recognized it needed to find a way to scale that up.

It used Twilio’s cloud ...