Caredact, Magic Notes and SpeakCase: three different jobs
Published 18 September 2026 · 6 minute read · General information, not legal advice
People searching for "AI for social workers" find three tools with UK care in their pitch and assume they compete. Mostly they do not. Magic Notes and SpeakCase turn recordings of conversations into notes. Caredact removes personal data from text you already have so that any AI can work on it safely. This page sets out what each does, from the vendors’ own websites and public council pages as read on 18 September 2026, so you can see which problem you actually have.
We make Caredact, so read the Caredact column with that in mind. Everything about the other two is quoted or paraphrased from their own materials, with sources at the end. Check current details with the vendors before you buy.
What each tool is for
Magic Notes, made by Beam, records meetings and visits and "uses generative AI to turn meeting recordings into detailed reports and case notes". It is sold to organisations, mainly local authorities: Beam says it is "used by 65,000 practitioners across over 200 organisations". Councils that have published results report large time savings; Somerset cited around 11 hours a week per practitioner. There is "a strong expectation that social workers review and approve all AI-generated summaries".
SpeakCase is an iOS app for individual UK social workers: "Record visits, meetings, and calls. AI transforms your recordings into professional, compliant case notes." It is priced at £9.99 a month or £99.99 a year, with a free tier of five notes. Its site describes "secure UK/EU servers", 256-bit encryption, and notes "encrypted end-to-end", and lets users delete audio after transcription.
Caredact is not a recorder or a transcriber. It sits in front of whatever AI you use for writing: paste a note, report or email, and names, addresses, NHS numbers, references and care-specific identifiers are detected and replaced with placeholders before the text reaches the AI. A person reviews the detections and adds anything missed, the AI works on the anonymised version, and the export restores the real details. It is sold to individuals (£14.99 a month) and organisations (£299 a month for up to 30 users, Enterprise for larger groups).
Side by side
| Caredact | Magic Notes (Beam) | SpeakCase | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Core job | Anonymise text before AI, restore on export | Record conversations, produce reports and case notes | Record visits, produce case notes |
| Input | Text you paste (any source) | Audio of meetings and visits | Audio from the app |
| Who buys it | Individuals and organisations | Organisations, mainly councils | Individual practitioners |
| Published pricing | £14.99/month personal; £299/month up to 30 users | Not published; contact Beam | £9.99/month or £99.99/year |
| Does personal data reach the AI? | No. Only placeholders are sent | Yes, by design: the conversation is what it processes, under the buyer’s contract | Yes, by design: the recording is what it processes |
| Human review before output is used | Yes, before anything is sent, and on export | Expected: practitioners review and approve summaries | Not stated on the site |
| Where data is processed | UK | Not stated in the public sources we found; ask Beam | "Secure UK/EU servers" per its site |
| Audit trail for the organisation | Yes, every action logged | Not stated in public sources | Not stated; single-user product |
| Contract | Data Processing Agreement with every customer | Organisational contract with the council | Consumer terms |
Which problem do you have?
- You want assessments and visit notes written from a recorded conversation, bought and governed at organisation level: that is Magic Notes’ job.
- You are an individual practitioner who wants to dictate notes on your phone: that is what SpeakCase is built for.
- Your staff are pasting existing notes, reports and emails into ChatGPT or similar, and you need that to stop being a breach without stopping the help: that is Caredact.
The tools also combine. A transcript produced by a recorder is text, and text can be anonymised before it goes on to any further AI step. If an organisation uses a recording tool for meetings and Caredact for everything staff write the rest of the day, nothing about the two conflicts.
The questions to ask any vendor
- Does personal data reach the AI model, and if so under whose contract and where?
- Is there a Data Processing Agreement, and does it name sub-processors and locations?
- What is retained, for how long, and who can delete it?
- Is there a review step a practitioner cannot skip?
- What does the organisation get as an audit trail?
- Is anything used to train models, and is that opt-in or opt-out?
We publish our own answers in our Data Processing Agreement and privacy notice.
Questions
Is Caredact a replacement for Magic Notes?
No. Magic Notes records and transcribes conversations; Caredact anonymises text. If you need the first, Caredact will not do it. If your problem is staff pasting text into chatbots, a recording tool will not fix it.
Can I use SpeakCase and Caredact together?
Yes. Anything SpeakCase produces is text, and you can paste it into Caredact before any further AI work, or use Caredact for everything you write that does not start as a recording.
Why does the table say "not stated" so often?
Because we only report what the vendors say publicly. Where a site or a council page did not state something, we say so rather than guess. Ask the vendor; the questions list above is a good start.