Technology-enabled home care

Older Australians’ preference to age in place has been long known. Latest data from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s GEN makes that evident, showing how the use of home care services has tripled in Australia.

In the 10 years to June 2020, the number of people using home care increased by a massive 199% to 142,436 people. In the same period, the number of people using permanent residential aged care increased by 13%, from 162,578 people to 183,989 people, according to GEN Aged Care Data.

As the demand for aged and home care services continues to increase, the sector faces many challenges, including staffing challenges, funding, regulatory changes and more. In the face of these challenges, the use of digital technologies to deliver care can transform the aged care sector and improve the experiences of older Australians receiving care in the home.

A new project — Implementing Technology-Supported Home-Based Care for Older Australians — by the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) and home care provider Silverchain hopes to innovate home care delivery and support advancement of in-home care.

The project received $150,000 from the Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA) as a part of the ARIIA Grant program, focused on supporting projects in areas of urgent and critical need.

Project lead NARI Associate Professor Frances Batchelor said integrating technology into the delivery of home care will help alleviate strain on the aged care workforce.

NARI and Silverchain are jointly exploring “the role of technology in supporting home care service provision. Our aim is to develop a technology implementation framework that will enable aged care providers to determine how best to introduce digital technology into the home care sector so that it benefits those receiving home care as well as the home care service providers,” Batchelor said.

A multidisciplinary focus

“New thinking and solutions are required to bolster our aged care system. By adopting multidisciplinary methods for providing care, we can improve staff capacity and capability.

“Our team consists of researchers and industry representatives from a range of backgrounds such as physiotherapy, psychology, public health, aged care leadership, frontline staff as well as experts in technology and aging. Importantly, we also have a consumer representative on our project team, someone with lived experience of receiving home care.

“Having a multidisciplinary focus will enable us to consider implementation of technology from all perspectives and adopt a strengths-based approach to improving staff capacity and capability. For example, we will explore the ways in which aged care workers already use technology successfully and their attitudes to adopting new technologies.

“This means we are always finding new ways to create more efficient and sustainable methods of care. With robust strategies and supports for those delivering care, and a multidisciplinary lens, strain on individual carers can be reduced.”

Batchelor acknowledged that technology isn’t a one-stop solution for stressors on the aged care system. “But it can be an incredibly valuable tool for carers when combined with traditional approaches,” she said.

Digitally enabled care can offer a range of benefits to both providers and consumers, including: efficiency improvements, enhanced care prioritisation, good care-coordination, reduced waiting time for services and improved communication.

Integrating technologies into routine care

Silverchain Director of Research Discovery Professor Tanya Davison said that the use of technology to complement traditional face-to-face approaches offers enormous benefits to both home care providers and their clients.

“This will provide older Australians with greater flexibility and choice, and transform the client experience,” Davison said.

“Many technologies are readily available. This research will help the aged care sector to understand how to effectively implement technologies into routine care.

Silverchain’s dedicated community aged care teams will participate in the project, with researchers drawing expertise from the experience, education, skills and knowledge of our frontline workforce, Davison said.

Using co-design methods, NARI and Silverchain will identify the technological capacity of the aged care workforce to integrate technology into the care they provide in the home.

“Thank you to ARIIA for funding this important work, and supporting this new and significant partnership between NARI and Silverchain to deliver the best quality care to older Australians,” said Batchelor, who is also working on programs to prevent falls in older Australians.

“Falls actually account for more injury-related deaths and hospitalisations than other types of accidents; for example, road trauma. Of course, this means that the more we are able to prevent falls, the less strain there is on the health system, and the better the outcomes are for older people.” They are a major problem for older people, with approximately one-third of older people aged 65 and older falling in any given year.

“My work has focused on those at high risk of falls, such as those with stroke or dementia, as well as those with mild balance problems; for example, active older people who might have some concerns about their balance. Our research is practical in that we aim to implement and evaluate falls prevention programs, particularly focused on exercise, to achieve reductions in falls and injury. In the next 12 to 24 months we would like commence trials in residential aged care and hospitals, which are both high-risk settings,” Batchelor said.

Image credit: iStockphoto.com/Giuseppe Lombardo