Aged care tech innovators on show

Aged care startup Clevertar has shone among Australian technology innovators at the Tech23 2014 event where it picked up three awards for its tablet-based virtual personal assistant for seniors.

The sixth Tech23, which took place in Sydney last Thursday, provided a platform for Australian technology innovators to present their business model to a panel of industry experts and an audience of entrepreneurs, investors, and representatives from leading research and development and technology organisations and enterprises.

Clevertar co-founder Tanya Newhouse pitched the company’s product Anna Cares, which features clever avatar Anna who aims to help older Australians remain independent in their homes.

The well-received presentation resulted in $3,000 in cash from NRMA for the NRMA Innovation in Sustainable Solutions Award at the subsequent Tech23 Awards Ceremony, where Tech23 sponsors and alumni awarded prizes in cash, meetings with influential people and trips overseas.

Clevertar also won the ThoughtWorks Disruptive Innovation Award, which includes $10,000 worth of non-cash support, and the Creately Diagramming Best Visual Presentation Award.

Speaking to AAA at the event, Ms Newhouse said she was thrilled about the awards and even more so about the positive responses from everybody on the day.

“They just keep coming up and saying ‘I love what you’re doing’ and that is really exciting,” Ms Newhouse said.

“It gives us energy to keep going because it’s a new product for a new market and that’s really hard to do. It is brilliant to get this recognition about how far we have come.”

Anna is currently undergoing trials with aged care recipients living in the community in conjunction with South Australian provider Helping Hand.

AAA spoke to Ms Newhouse at the ITAC Conference in May about how Anna is set to improve the lives of older Australians. You can listen to that interview again here:

Aged care organisations sought to trial compliance software

Mika Compliance founder Kate Jakins was another aged care innovator presenting at Tech23. Ms Jakins attempted to convey the extent of aged care regulation in her pitch seeking $500,000 to finalise the first three components of her accreditation and compliance software.

Ms Jakins, who spent seven years as a quality and compliance manager at a residential aged care provider on the NSW Central Coast, said Mika Compliance aimed to be the most comprehensive subscription-based online catalogue of aged care documentation, resources and cloud-based data management software in Australia.

The resources component is scheduled for launch in July 2015 followed by the compliance system management tools a year later and the human resources management tools after that, Ms Jakins said.

Speaking to AAA after her pitch, Ms Jakins said she was ready now to find aged care facilities interested in piloting the software.

Preferably the pilot facilities will be in NSW, have upwards of a 100 beds, and currently operate with paper-based systems, she said.

Those interested in finding out more can email Ms Jakins at kate@mikacompliance.com.