Gill Horne: from Topol Fellow to driving change in care and AI

Gill Horne Programme Director - Care Services, Rowcroft Hospice sat down with Tash Willcocks from the Topol Fellowship delivery team to talk about what’s happened since Gill graduated.

Gill's original Topol Fellowship project focused on the future of a new nursing home, exploring how AI could be used meaningfully in care.

Working with people living with dementia, their loved ones, and care staff, Gill developed a practical toolkit to support care home managers in making informed decisions about technology.

"I couldn’t find anything that helped me think through whether a piece of technology was appropriate," she explains. "So we created something that did."

The toolkit was shared through the Devon Care Home Collaborative and has since been downloaded widely, with interest spreading beyond the region. This was an amazing result, but as we spoke Gill revealed, that was just the beginning.

The ripple effect beyond the project

What stands out most in Gill’s story is not just the output of the project, but the momentum it created.

Following the Fellowship, she successfully secured funding from Amazon Web Services to take an early AI concept into proof of concept.

Soon after, she applied for further funding through the Health Foundation to develop a web app.

While the final stage funding wasn’t secured, the work didn’t stop there, it kept on rippling. Gill took an inventive approach to getting the app built, working with a professor of information technology from The University of Loughborough who helped organise a hackathon where it was built by students and is now about to be piloted.

Across these opportunities, Gill estimates that close to £100,000 in funding has been unlocked to support further development in AI/digital.

"None of that would have happened if I hadn’t done the Fellowship," she says. "I wouldn’t have had the knowledge or the language to even apply."

The impact has also extended beyond individual projects.

Gill has delivered talks and masterclasses, contributed to national conversations including being invited to be part of a steering group with Oxford Statement on the responsible use of generative AI in Adult Social Care that initiated the Oxford statement on Gen AI and went on to develop guidance for the use of generative AI in the care sector, including supporting the launch of those guidelines.

Confidence through doing

When asked what enabled that shift, Gill is clear: confidence came through practice.

"I think it’s about having the knowledge, trying it, and then using it again in real work," she reflects.

The tools and approaches introduced during the Fellowship, from simple structured ideation methods like Crazy Eights through to agile ways of working with TPXimpact became immediately applicable. They weren’t abstract concepts, but practical ways of progressing complex work.

That learning has since been embedded into her organisation. Gill has designed and delivered a project management course based on agile principles she learnt, helping non-clinical and clinical teams build skills that are often assumed but rarely taught.

"I’d never had any formal teaching on agile before," she says. "Now we’re using it as an organisation to manage projects."

Shifting how we think about impact

One of the more reflective moments in the conversation comes when Gill talks about how impact is measured.

While some conversations focus on immediate cost savings, her work tells a different story, one of long-term, less visible impact.

The projects she has led may not translate neatly into short-term financial metrics, but they have enabled new ways of working, brought in funding, and created the conditions for better care.

"It will save money,” she explains. “But it’s indirect, and it’s not always immediately quantifiable."

This is particularly true in care settings, where improvements in quality, experience, and relationships don’t always show up as a clear line in a spreadsheet, but are no less important.

Keeping people at the centre

Despite the strong focus on digital and AI, Gill is clear that technology is only valuable when it enhances care, not replaces it.

Her organisation has since made technology one of its strategic pillars, with a clear emphasis on using it to improve quality. One example is the introduction of AI-supported transcription, allowing clinicians to focus fully on patients rather than screens.

"It brings the human back into the room," she says. Thank you Gill 

If you would like to talk to Gill about her work she’s happy to say hello via email: [email protected] or Linkedin.