Thanks to improvements and advances in health care, many people around the world are living longer. While this is undoubtedly good thing, it inevitably follows that people will require more assistance as they get older. As a greater number of us reach old age, the stresses on health services increase. NHS England data from 2015, for example, showed that between 2007/08 and 2013/14 the amount of accident and emergency attendances by people aged 60 or over grew by two-thirds. This, it noted, represented a "steeper increase than is expected by demographic change alone."

The social care crisis – as demonstrated with the Conservative Party's disastrous manifesto pledge – is one of the biggest issues facing the NHS. Spending squeezes have led to bed-blocking in hospitals; while low wages and poor working conditions are causing carers to leave the industry in droves. One social care startup thinks that a solution might lie in AI. Cera, founded by Ben Maruthappu, a former innovation adviser to NHS England, is a startup that wants to provide smarter social care using an Uber-style platform to match carers and patients. The startup has to date raised £2.7 million in early funding, and in March signed a partnership with Barts Health NHS Trust, as well as several clinical commissioning groups and hospitals in London to test its solution.

Can AI overhaul the social care system? The startup has today taken the tiniest baby steps to launch an AI chatbot that it hopes will, at an unspecified point in future, be able to assist carers with recommendations for home care of people with conditions such as dementia. And even potentially steer off medical emergencies via pre-emptive alerts. The far more basic reality of the chatbot it's launching today is that Martha (as it's called) will be able to recommend care packages to potential customers. Which underlines how the inflated promises of AI really do hinge on data acquisition.