Tech’s bright future in the gloom of the aged care staffing crisis – opinion

Caring for our ageing population has been nothing short of a challenge in recent years – from the issues which urged the Australian Government to hand down the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, to the COVID-19 pandemic that left elderly residents in homes vulnerable to the virus and psychological effects of isolation.

Now, elderly Australians are facing, often, inadequate care under a severe staffing shortage.

According to the National Skills Commission, job vacancies for aged care workers doubled in the last three years, with new data revealing job ads seeking carers rose from 1,987 to 4,575.

But lack of talent isn’t an issue isolated to the aged care sector – the nation has almost run out of spare workers across the board.

The Federal Government is due to host a Jobs and Skills Summit in Canberra at the start of September, gathering 100 people to identify solutions that “keep unemployment low and boost productivity” to influence policy.

The prime minister has previously nominated fixing aged care as a key priority, and in the Summit’s issues paper, it indicates “scope to improve productivity” in the sector.

It should feature a prominent part of the discussion, because ultimately, if we don’t take action now, Australia is set to face a shortage of at least 11,000 direct aged care workers in the decade ahead, and our ageing population isn’t in a position to carry the burden. 

While improvements to wages, investments in training, and establishing new dedicated skilled migration incentives are some of the more obvious solutions, Australia has an opportunity to bring its increasingly digital economy to the heart of aged care to improve productivity and soften the load.

But true digitalisation cannot be achieved on archaic infrastructure.

While they remain largely out of sight and out of mind to the everyday person, data centres will be a cornerstone for how we solve aged cares issues today and advance the sector tomorrow; forming the foundation that brings innovative, supportive technologies into the hands of carers for better patient outcomes, safely and effectively.

An evolution of readiness

While some might criticise the industry for ‘stubbornly’ holding onto outdated technology – fax machines, filing cabinets full of physical data, paper-based processes – much of this stems from the regulation that carefully monitors what technologies are suitable and accepted into the industry.

While other industries may have more freedom to try and fail, healthcare and aged care are life and death and technology adoption needs to be tried, tested and shown to enhance treatment.

But even with solid regulation in place, the Aged Care Royal Commission brings technology adoption for improved care front and centre to the sector’s future.

With the recommendations earmarked for completion by mid-2022, all eyes are on the technology initiatives that will stem as providers follow the new requirements.

Many repetitive, low-value healthcare tasks can be easily automated, especially administrative ones, and even high-value tasks like searching for patient information or predicting outcomes can be automated.

But if we’re to effectively reduce administrative and physical burdens on staff, freeing them up for more face-to-face care, workers need those systems to be part of the experience from the start, not just a fragmented afterthought.

From connected monitors and blood pressure devices to AI-enabled fall detection technology and digital health records, the data generated by these innovative technologies can’t be processed easily or without the necessary infrastructure to handle it.

Data centres can play an effective role in bringing together regulation and innovation, providing secure and low-latency access to aged care support services and technologies.

With effective backup capability, they can ensure that these systems don’t go down – medical equipment requires constant availability and power continuity to comply with regulations, and more critically, support safe and accurate patient care.

We’re also increasingly witnessing the role of edge computing – smaller, modular data centre infrastructure located at or very near to where the data is being processed, i.e., the aged care homes themselves.

This kind of infrastructure is vital to not only protect equipment but ensure the delivery of care eliminates latency from the equation so carers can access information anywhere at any time.

The urgency to overturn the sector’s ‘manual’ status quo is undisputed.

As the new Government kick starts its immediate term in charge, there is an opportunity to accelerate the adoption of technologies that bring the aged care sector in line with other parts of our economy.

While funding to invest in new, flashy technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be vital to evolving aged care, we also need CIOs and CTOs to consider how their IT infrastructure will be the foundation of the digital aged care future we’re building.

LuLu Shiraz is Director of Product and Service at Vertiv Australia and New Zealand.

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