New technology that covers everything from resident care to business administration also promises to improve information flow between aged care and acute.

On the same day that the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) announced that the median age of the Australian population had risen by more than five years over the last two decades, the country’s largest listed health IT company announced its first end-to-end information system designed specifically for the aged care sector.

With Australia’s median age rising to 36.9 years in 2009, the demand for aged care services will continue to rise. iSoft, which launched its Aged Care – Enterprise Wide Health solution in December, is banking on it.

Its new Microsoft-based application is modular and can cover back end trust account management, handle government reporting requirements, manage rosters and care management systems, and interface with iSoft’s Lorenzo system which is marketed mainly to acute care and accident and emergency departments of hospitals.

According to the ABS, between 1989 and 2009 the proportion of people aged 65 years and over increased from 11 percent to 13.3 percent, again reinforcing the need for more, and more efficient, aged care.

But according to Greg Russell, an independent consultant with Waterfall Technology which specialises in IT consulting for aged care providers, only about half of the nation’s 180,000 aged care beds are covered by computer-based information systems.

“There are some places which have moved significantly faster than the acute care sector – but there is a significant distance to go,” says Russell, who is a former chief information officer for Uniting Care. He confirms that until about five years ago, aged care was something of an IT backwater. However, he says interest in e-health is driving more interest in technology from aged care providers.

“For medication management and electronic care programs, the sector is better off than people might think, but the industry is on its way to a great transformation.”

He believes, however, that many aged care providers need to beef up their boards, adding people with technology experience in order to ensure that when they do invest in technology, they get it right. Russell himself has been appointed to the board of his own church’s aged care group for precisely that reason.

Elsewhere, Marc Goldman, global business solutions director for primary, aged and community care at iSoft, says along with rising demand for aged care services there is a shift taking place in the industry itself.

“There is a general shift in sophistication. This has been primarily a cottage industry – but now there is a lot more involvement by federal and regional governments,” which he says is driving demand for improved efficiency in the sector.

Goldman says that Australia has a tradition of community provided services, but additional government funding, and independent investment, means providers are becoming larger and more sophisticated. In order to grow they need to better use technology to allow them to leverage existing services provided at the community level and to interface with IT systems used by health practitioners and hospitals.

“This is not unlike other nations such as Malaysia, Singapore, Spain and the UK.

The result is that organisations like ours have to provide technology to fit that delivery and service model.”

The system, Goldman says, is able to manage the information flows between the acute sector to the health referral network to aged care providers and ultimately to community and home health. “We expect the community sector to dominate the growth and it will be the first to benefit from technology applications – interoperability and sharing data between the providers are key.”

He adds that the system has applications for rostering, conducting assessments, delivering information at the point of care – whether that involved primary health providers or community workers – and also handles financial management and administration.

The package is currently being used in early adopter sites, although the company declined to name any of these organisations.

The challenge that all providers face is the need to deliver reliable and excellent patient care, while also streamlining administration costs. In the US, analysis by consultancy firm Celent has found that as many as $3 in every $10 spent on healthcare goes on administration. The challenge for providers is to drive that overhead down.

Goldman believes the problem will become even more acute as today’s baby boomers begin to require aged care, bringing with them a range of chronic conditions that will require long term management.

iSoft can scale to very large organisations and runs in Microsoft. It interfaces natively to Lorenzo in acute care.

Goldman believes this is important.

“In aged care a lot of people end up in the emergency department, so there needs to be a lot of communication between the facility and the department.”

However, he acknowledges the new integration system is not for every organisation.

“This is for organisations looking to be cost effective. The larger organisations, the charitable organisations and the NGOs. They are saying they have no choice but to provide information to the government to understand what they are paying for. Even more importantly family members and physicians – organisations need to have a level of compliance. And to attract physicians they need a different approach and that’s where we are getting the biggest interest.”

Russell believes iSoft has made some good initial steps, and seems to tackle one of the issues the sector has faced in the past – technology that can grow with the organisation.

“It signals significant investment in this area which needs good quality robust solutions,” he says.

While iSoft is pushing an integrated system approach, Russell acknowledges there are already a number of packages in the market, such as clinical care management from Autumn Care and iCare, and financial systems targeted at the sector from Epicor and Eclipse.

He is, however, pleased to see that iSoft has community care, which he says was previously an area which received relatively little attention from IT developers.