industry & reform
But also again , providing them with tools which are of benefit in the short-term . We ’ ve seen them take up things like rostering tools , which enable them to understand their rosters and to change their rosters remotely and easily . Tools which enable them to view data about the individuals they ’ re looking after . And the classic here would be something like My Health Record , which enables them to have a better idea of what sort of care people have been receiving in the past so they can put that into context .
Then even simple tools like communication tools . We use things like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger in our personal lives : can we have similar tools in our professional lives that remain secure , can cover all the privacy constraints , but enable us to communicate in a way that we ’ re becoming more and more used to ?
Are you confident we will achieve technological consistency in the future ? I ’ m confident and hopeful we can get there . The baby boomer generation are going to have stronger demands around what the system can do . So I think there ’ ll be a strong consumer push for organisations to implement solutions that enable individuals to age successfully at home .
We ’ re used to being able to order our entertainment , our food and our services online , so that ’ s going to become more and more of a demand .
It will be an ongoing journey . It will probably be 10 to 15 years , but it will be a continuous improvement journey , I think . As long as we are continuously improving the service , things will fall through the cracks , sometimes things will go wrong , there will be positive days and negative days as we ’ ve seen in every other industry . But the superannuated group that is now starting to retire will have resources to pour in , so there is market opportunity . But also they have the ability to vote , so they have
the ability to influence policy in that way as well .
But also we ’ ll see that by having that interaction between consumers and the providers and that ongoing communication , there ’ ll be continuous improvement . I ’ m quite hopeful by the time I need those facilities that they ’ ll be a lot better than they are now .
At the same time , having been involved with aged care providers for many years , what I don ’ t want to lose is that passion and empathy that we have within aged care now . Nearly all aged care providers I ’ ve met in the last 30 years have amazing passion and empathy for providing better care , and we need to make sure that we don ’ t override that by putting too much pressure on them to do things too quickly , but take them along on the journey .
One of our great challenges will be maintaining empathy and passion but also providing them with tools to be able to provide the high quality , safe care they want to be able to provide . ■
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