The winners – ITAC Awards 2012
The ITAC Awards were presented last night in a ceremony at the Crown Casino in Melbourne, as part of the ITAC 2012 conference.
Above: ITAC conference MC, Ms Megabyte.
By Stephen Easton
The Information Technology in Aged Care (ITAC) Awards were presented last night at a gala ceremony and networking function inside Melbourne’s Crown Casino complex.
The awards form the centrepiece of the ITAC conference and trade exhibition, and are open to aged and community care providers and companies that help the industry improve care and business outcomes using information and communications technology (ICT).
Four awards recognise the best ICT implementations, according to the number of beds or community care places that the system supports.
Above: Amanda Seymour, group quality manager at McKenzie Aged Care Group and Kim Sheree, project manager, i.on my Care.
McKenzie Aged Care Group won the category for the largest scale implementations – those over 650 beds or places – for their rollout of an i.on my Care clinical information system across seven facilities in three different states, which employ 800 staff and look after 730 residents.
McKenzie Aged Care’s group quality manager, Amanda Seymour, said the implementation was a success because staff had embraced the change.
“The staff are so happy because it is simple,” Ms Seymour said. “It is simple to use, and every single facility and management team, whether or not they’re new people only just coming on board now, they’re so positive about it and excited with what we still have to do in the coming months.
“That, to me, is the biggest achievement really because with any change of systems – and it was a fairly big change in the systems – there is a new understanding that people have to take on board.”
“We’ve had several visits from the accreditation agency. We’ve had one this week, and the feedback from them has been, ‘What an amazing system,’ and they’re very excited about what we’ve achieved with it.”
The system helps McKenzie Aged Care manage areas of the business including quality, risk, education, hazards and incidents, human resources, infection control, surveys, audits, consumer feedback and reporting, Ms Seymour said.
Above: The team from Leecare, the ITAC 2012 ICT Company of the Year.
Software company Leecare was named ICT Company of the Year, in a special category just for aged care technology companies.
Leecare CEO, Caroline Lee, said the company’s most recent fourth generation clinical software was now able to run in any web browser, such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari or Internet Explorer.
Our platform now is web browser-based, so it enables the program to sit on any device,” Ms Lee said.
“So you’re not restricted by desktop systems – you can use Android, you can use iPads – so it’s really opened up the whole industry’s capability to look at their total cost of ownership, and make some real cost savings by not being restricted to a particular operating system.
“And its compatible with our mission,” she added. “Our mission is to support all aged care facilities, no matter what size, to ensure they can afford a really good IT system. So part of that mission was to … give the industry something that they could afford and that wouldn’t restrict them in any way.
“It can be on NEC’s cloud, it can be on our cloud or it could be on a client’s cloud, and that obviously assists with the total cost of ownership.”
Above: Nigel Faull was inducted into the ITAC Hall of Fame.
The ceremony also saw Nigel Faull, CEO of Star Gardens in Beaudesert, Qld, become the newest inductee into the ITAC Hall of Fame.
Star Gardens did not win it’s category for implementations covering less than 150 beds or places in the awards – that honour went to Thomas Holt Villages – but did come away with a High Commendation.
Star Gardens care manager, Anne-Marie Baigent, said the facility had implemented several different major technological systems over the past 18 months.
“We did iCare, the clinical system, first,” Ms Baigent said. “Then we did Vocera, which is the communication system, and we did Simavita, which is the continence system. We also have a new system which is around payroll and accounting.”
“We chose to do it like that because we were doing lots of hard copy, lots of documentation-type things and then we thought, ‘We have to start somewhere, let’s just keep the training rolling on.’ 

“And we had the staff involved right from day one – we asked, ‘What would you like, how would you like it done?’ – and it worked brilliantly. Absolutely brilliantly.”
The full list of winners:
ICT Company of the Year
Winner: Leecare
ITAC Hall of Fame
Nigel Faull, CEO of Star Gardens, was inducted into the ITAC Hall of Fame
Best Implementation under 150 beds or places
Winner: Thomas Holt Villages
High Commendation: Star Gardens
Best Implementation, 150 to 650 beds or places
Winner: Sundale (Atlassians JRA implementation)
Best Implementation under 650 beds or places
Winner: McKenzie Aged Care Group
High Commendation: Salvation Army Aged Care Plus
Best Implementation Infrastructure
Winner: Jewish Care (Victoria) Inc.
Great article nice up beat excellent mix of winners