Care-Meter vs digital care record systems
How Care-Meter sits alongside Log My Care, Nourish, Person Centred Software, and other UK care record systems
If you're shopping for "care home software UK" or "CQC compliance software," you'll meet two different kinds of product: digital care record systems (DSCRs), and inspection-readiness governance layers. They do different jobs. This page explains the difference, and how Care-Meter sits next to the system you already use.
What digital care record systems do
Digital care record systems — Log My Care, Nourish, Person Centred Software, CareLineLive, ShiftCare, and others — are the primary place a home records what happened during care delivery. Their public product surfaces typically cover:
- Daily care notes (typed, voice, sometimes photo)
- Care plan creation and review
- Risk assessments and body maps
- Incident logging and case management
- Medication administration via eMAR (often a paid module or add-on)
- Rostering (often a paid module or add-on)
- Family-facing apps (often a paid module or add-on)
The leading systems hold relevant accreditations: NHS Digital Transformation Assured Solution for the Digital Social Care Records (DSCR) programme, PRSB Quality Partner status, Cyber Essentials (or Cyber Essentials Plus), and integrations such as GP Connect. The good ones have years of feature depth and many thousands of UK customers.
If your home is still on paper and wants to digitise the day-to-day, moving to one of these systems is the most common next step — and a sensible one.
What Care-Meter does that's different
Care-Meter is not a digital care record system. It's a governance and inspection-readiness layer that reads the records your home creates — paper, photo, voice, typed, or exported from your DSCR — and runs the work that DSCRs typically don't:
- Reg 17 evidence completeness checks across all 34 CQC Single Assessment Framework Quality Statements
- Reg 18 notification drafter that produces the actual notification to CQC after a notifiable incident
- Reg 20 Duty of Candour compliance chain that tracks the four sequential steps with overdue alerts
- Mock Inspection — a live inspection-readiness score across all 34 Quality Statements
- PIR drafting assistant that pre-populates the Provider Information Return from live records
- Inspection narrative pack ready to walk into inspection with
These are governance functions. They don't replace records — they govern them. The architectural rule we follow is strict: LLMs classify and summarise; rules engines and scheduled processes set compliance status. We do not let AI decide whether you are compliant.
Pricing model
Care-Meter pricing (verified 10 May 2026):
- Free for the first 10 residents — no card, no time limit
- Ready £149/home/month flat — for homes moving off paper or spreadsheets
- Govern £249/home/month flat — adds Duty of Candour, recurring risk detection, exception inbox, evidence coverage view
- Inspect £349/home/month flat — adds Mock Inspection, Reg 18 drafter, PIR support, inspection pack
- Group from £199/home/month for multi-site operators (3+ homes)
Most major UK digital care record systems use per-resident or per-user pricing models, with the headline price gated behind sales contact. As of 10 May 2026, Log My Care publishes only the free Starter tier (for fewer than 10 service users); Pro and Outstanding pricing is "Get pricing" only. Nourish and Person Centred Software do not publish pricing on their public websites.
We don't think per-resident pricing makes sense for inspection readiness because the work doesn't scale linearly with residents — a 30-bed home and a 60-bed home both need the same inspection prep workflow. Per-home flat pricing also means staff turnover never costs you a seat upgrade.
When you'll want both
Most Care-Meter customers run alongside something else:
- Paper homes use Care-Meter to digitise capture (photo, voice, OCR) and run governance over the structured output. No second system needed for inspection readiness.
- Homes already using a DSCR export weekly into Care-Meter for governance and inspection prep. The DSCR remains the system of record for daily care notes; Care-Meter is the system of record for inspection evidence.
- Mixed homes use Care-Meter to unify both streams into one inspection-readiness view.
When Care-Meter isn't the right product for you
We're honest about this. Care-Meter isn't right if any of these are true:
- You haven't started recording care at all yet. You need a DSCR first; come back to us when records exist.
- You're confident your evidence is already defensible at inspection. You don't need us.
- You want a single all-in-one system covering eMAR, rostering, family apps, and care planning. We don't build any of those — Log My Care, Nourish, and Person Centred Software all do, and you should look at them.
- You're regulated by Ofsted, not CQC. We are not built for children's services.
How to choose
The honest framing:
- No digital system today and want one? Look at Log My Care first (free entry tier, simple onboarding), Nourish (clinical depth, NHS Digital Assured), or Person Centred Software (legacy strength, broadest product range and largest customer base).
- Have a DSCR and still anxious about inspection? You likely have an evidence-completeness problem, not a recording problem. That's what Care-Meter solves.
- Paper-bound and want to digitise without re-platforming? Care-Meter ingests paper today. You can pick a DSCR later if you want active care planning.
Get started
Start free on your first 10 residents
Last verified: 10 May 2026. Information about other systems on this page was taken from their public websites on the verification date. We re-verify quarterly. If anything is out of date, email support@care-meter.co.uk and we'll correct it within 14 days.