Harnessing technology to improve old age

by Rachel de Sain


We are all well aware of the challenges facing us and many other countries with both an ageing adult population and reduction in the numbers of people able and willing to care for them. The upshot? We need to be smarter in how we deliver care for our growing older population.

This means we need to look at how we can utilise new technologies to improve the way we care for this growing older population, and improve the lot of those who care for them. We also need to maximise and support our existing workforce and attract younger new people to this market.

Most importantly we need to look at how we can integrate the capabilities of the consumer themselves to be more involved in their own care.

There are three key opportunities for the aged care industry to embrace technology in a bid to improve services for consumers and improve the situation of service providers.

The first opportunity is to grasp social media. It’s important to note that social media isn’t just a fad. Instead, it’s a fundamental shift in how people are communicating with each other, and with corporations.

Using the power of the connected crowd to bring people together and enable them to communicate with friends and family and share their stories is a powerful social solution to the growing cost and care impacts of social isolation.

The second opportunity is gamification, a new word to many that highlights the need to make the technology interface and experience for the user more fun.

Games don't have to be about shooting up the big demon monster or going on an epic quest with your clan: Solitaire was packaged with Microsoft Windows as they knew people were far more likely to learn about using a graphical user interface through moving the mouse around, double clicking, dragging and dropping and right clicking through playing a game than they were going to by reading a manual.

An example of this is the work being done by Dr Stuart Smith, from Neuroscience Research Australia.  In his work, Dr Smith has been using the gaming interface of the Dance Dance Revolution game to help older adults practice step movements through dance. The results have been impressive: it has shown improvements to trip response making it less likely someone will fall. With falls costing almost $20,000 per hospital admission that’s a big saving to not only the bottom line but importantly to the person’s quality of life too.

We are seeing many new features and smart technology enter the home with internet connectivity and computing power appearing everywhere from our mobile phones to our fridges. We will see an increasing use of these connected devices and products in the home to help provide support and access to care as well as provide a pathway to move to a more predictive preventative health care delivery model.

Devices that monitor activity and movement in the house such as the intelligent carpets that not only trigger a response and call to action if someone falls, but can monitor movement patterns and through data analytics provide a way to analyse if the patient is starting to favour one leg over another and recommend interventions at early stages to prevent the need for possible hip replacements or other surgery will one day become commonplace.

This data will become increasingly available which means we will need intelligent systems to gather these rich data sets and provide simple templates to extract the information into relevant, digestible, timely and most importantly actionable information for clinicians and other health professionals.

These will feed into the final opportunity, shared electronic records. There are over 8,000 deaths every year in our aged care homes attributed to medication error.

These often arise from patients transferring back from hospital and the information about their changed medication not being readily available. Providing a platform for fluid data to move around the new electronic system and the work being done by NEHTA on the PCEHR will be a big step forward in supporting the workforce by providing shared records that are easily accessible by the entire care team.

This is an edited transcript of a talk Rachel de Sain gave at the recent Aged Care Council of Victoria Annual General Meeting.

Rachel de Sain is a Digital strategist with over 15years experience working for global media and telecommunications companies such as MTV Networks and T-Mobile, launching the worlds first made for Mobile TV channel. Rachel consults to public and private enterprise on opportunities of new technology, and has a particular passion for health and community services. Rachel is a board member of HISA (Health Informatics Society of Australia), a member of the clinical leads group at NEHTA and technical advisor to DOHA on the eMental Health Strategy.