technology
When ideas collide
Ideas forum seeks new tech solutions for aged care problems.
Siobhan Curran interviewed by Dallas Bastian
A health monitoring station for large corporations, a Gumtree for health services, and a platform for GPs to connect retirees to local activities – these were some of the ideas hashed out in the lead-up to the University of Newcastle’ s recent New Futures Hackathon for Aged Care.
The hackathon brought together tech heads, aged care experts, innovators and community members for a 10-hour‘ hack’ to turn their ideas into viable solutions.
The Ideas Collider, a warm-up event held before the hackathon, challenged participants to prepare and pitch an idea to a panel of judges in 60 minutes.
Siobhan Curran, manager of UON’ s Integrated Innovation Network( I2N), said the event was an opportunity for people of all backgrounds and experience to learn new skills, unite their ideas and propose innovative technological solutions for some of the implications of the ageing population.
Aged Care Insite spoke with Curran before the hackathon about the innovative solutions that participants put forward at the Ideas Collider.
ACI: What areas of ageing do you hope attendees delve into at the hackathon? SC: We’ ve looked at four key problem areas, and the first is promoting good health across the life span to prevent and postpone disease. As we know, prevention is better than cure, so we’ re looking to come up with technological solutions to deal with the increased risks of health conditions, and the postponement of specific diseases like vascular disease, dementia and diabetes.
Compared with other OECD countries, Australia’ s smoking rates are low, but we have a much greater habit of drinking alcohol and being obese and sedentary. Those risk factors increase the chances of developing various diseases later in life. So we’ d like hackathon participants to focus on solutions to prevent that.
The second area we’ re looking at is enabling healthy ageing. Encouraging active lifestyles throughout the life cycle is key to preventing people going into aged care or developing age-related diseases. So if there’ s any kind of technological solution that can promote and support healthy ageing, whether that’ s with GPs and other allied health professionals, or something that could be done at home, that would be a great area to look at as well.
The third area we’ re looking at is supporting socioeconomic participation. How can we increase older people’ s propensity to stay in the labour force longer? With so many Australians living longer, the idea of retiring at the age of 60 is not relevant or even possible for a lot of people, particularly as the younger generations start to age as well, given the fact that many of the people born today are going to live until they’ re over 100. So how can we make labour force participation possible for a lot longer for our older generations?
Of course, that helps with the labour force just generally, because older people have a lot of experience and can teach the younger generations coming through. The fourth area we’ re looking at is enhancing productivity and healthcare delivery. So along with the broader efforts to improve efficiencies in the healthcare system, there’ s lots of scope for specific efforts focused on the care of older people. So for instance, with high rates of chronic conditions, and use of multiple medications
within our older population, a focus on efficient coordination of care, and safe and effective use of medicines can really reduce the risk of duplication of tests, and medical records not being available at the time of care. So if there’ s some kind of technological solution that could aid in that efficiency of healthcare delivery, that would be another area we’ d be excited to see solutions for.
In preparation for the hackathon, the university hosted the Ideas Collider. What ideas caught the eye of the judges? One team was working on a health monitoring station for employees of large corporations, so not only did it take your weight and height, it could also take your blood pressure, do blood tests, urine tests, all sorts of diagnostic services.
The idea was to encourage corporates to include this as part of a wellness program for their employees, to take some responsibility for monitoring the health and wellness of their employees, and to put in place programs to ensure their employees were having their symptoms checked a lot earlier. That was a preventive measure by that particular team.
One of the other teams was working on the Gumtree equivalent for health services, and that was focused specifically at people who were moving into different suburbs, regions, cities or even countries, to be able to work out who was the best person to seek advice from for a particular health service – so if you’ re looking for a new osteopath, physiotherapist and so on.
Another idea was an online platform for GPs to connect patients to activities in their local area to encourage exercise and socialising. That was targeted more at people who have retired and may be indulging a little in their post-retirement bliss, drinking a bit too much, maybe not exercising as much as they should. The idea behind that was for GPs to connect patients to that particular platform and provide mentors or people who own businesses, or meet-ups for walking groups and other exercise groups, and encouraging them to participate in those programs.
And we all know that health and wellness in any person, not just those within an ageing population, is not just about diet and exercise, it’ s also about the social aspect and making sure people don’ t feel like they’ re alone. So that was another idea that covered socialising, which I thought was quite clever. n
36 agedcareinsite. com. au