Future of home care
Sensor technology is being developed to assist older people to age in place.
With most older Australians preferring to stay at home rather than enter a residential aged care facility, medical technology is increasingly being developed to enable people to age in place.
Established in 2016 with funding from the New South Wales Government, the NSW Smart Sensing Network is a not-for-profit innovation network that brings together universities, industry and government to gather and translate world-class research into smart-sensing solutions.
In that regard, the NSSN developed the Healthy at Home initiative to investigate how sensor technology can support people to stay at home for as long as possible.
The idea behind the project is to create a tech-driven model of care – a model that is significantly less expensive than aged care or hospital care.
“The aged care royal commission found that people want to stay in their homes, they don’t want to go to an aged care facility,” NSSN MedTech theme leader Catherine Oates Smith tells Australian Ageing Agenda. “So the purpose of the Healthy at Home initiative is to help people stay healthy at home and out of hospitals and out of nursing homes.”
Joining the NSSN in October 2022, Oates Smith is responsible for engagement with university, government and industry stakeholders in medical technology.
As she explains to AAA, the sensor technology is being used to collect data. “And that data is communicated either to the person themselves, their carer, a GP or a telehealth service. The idea is that people are able to get the care that they need at home – both from a preventative and from an emergency perspective.”
The sensors – either embedded in wearables or situated around the home – record all manner of information.
“Some of the data is biometric information – about heart rate and breathing and other things that help tell a doctor or a nurse how that person is travelling,” Oates Smith says.
The information received can even anticipate an unexpected event. “For example, there are sensors that can predict if someone will soon have a fall. This information can trigger urgent, preventative alerts.”
Diving deeper into the tech’s capabilities, Oates Smith tells AAA that in hospitals there’s a measurement called “between the flags”.
“It’s a set of parameters that tells the nursing and the medical staff that we are safe in a certain biometric parameter,” she says. “If we fall outside of the flags, then we are in the danger zone and an alert goes off and someone in the hospital attends to our needs.”
However, as yet, no such biometric measures exist for care in the home. With the help of sensor technology, Oates Smith and the team are working to remedy that.
The benefits for older people are clear, she says. “It will give them better agency over their own health. It means that they can stay more in control of where they live and how they communicate with carers.”
Once people understand that the technology can help them stay at home longer … then they’re very happy with it
Oates Smith tells AAA the Healthy at Home consortium is also working alongside three local health districts “because we recognise that the need for care at home arises when people go to hospital and realise that when they come home they need some help.”
The idea, says Oates Smith, is to make sure that the transition between hospital and home “is a smooth one”.
Aged care providers are also involved in the Healthy at Home program – “we are in regular communication,” says Oates Smith – and are showing a keen interest in sensor technology.
As well as partnering with providers and LHDs, the Healthy at Home group is collaborating with older people themselves.
Oates Smith tells AAA the consortium is committed to older people participating in the development of the Healthy at Home program.
With that aim in mind, NSSN conducted a 1,000-person survey to gauge the acceptability of sensor technology in the home – the results of which will be announced at an event at Parliament House in Canberra in November.
Consisting of one-on-one interviews, the initial findings of the survey were very positive, Oates Smith says. “Once people understand that the technology can help them stay at home longer, can help them communicate with their carers, can help them avoid going to hospital, can help them avoid going to a nursing home, then they’re very happy with it – but they need to understand it. And part of this exercise is helping them to understand that technology is there to help them achieve their aims and their goals.”
The Healthy at Home program is, says Oates Smith, a process of human-centred co-design. “It’s about making sure that we don’t do anything that imposes technology or does anything ageing citizens feel unhappy about. We’re very focused on making sure that the people who are going to be using the technology are happy with the technology.”
As the Australian Government’s reforms of the home care sector indicate, the intention is to enable older people to age in place and have autonomy over their own health.
To accommodate this shift, Oates Smith tells AAA the government needs to support home-based care solutions, such as sensor technology.
After all, she says, “it’s the future of home care, people having increased agency over the choices about where they want to live and achieving their aim – which is to stay at home.”
The apps driving tech-driven care
Among the industry partners collaborating with NSSN and the Healthy at Home project are the developers of My Medic Watch. Funded by the NSW Government, My Medic Watch is a series of smart detection apps that – though a smart watch device – can monitor people with chronic illnesses or seniors who experience falls or seizures.
“If a person experiences a fall it sends an alert to their nominated caregiver and all of their events are recorded into a portal,” explains My Medic Watch cofounder and advisor Helene Blanchard.
“With the Healthy at Home project, we are trying to propose a model of care. Our contribution in that model of care is constant monitoring inside the house or an aged care facility.”
The apps – which have been clinically validated – record an individual’s movements. “If we notice a change in the activity in the individual maybe they need to address that,” Blanchard tells AAA.
For example, the data may indicate that the individual needs an appointment with a physiotherapist. “The sensors and the technology help people to stay healthy as long as possible,” says Blanchard.
An Australian company, My Medic Watch is “slowly being adopted in different countries”, says Blanchard.
She tells AAA the aim is “to have an amalgamation of different sensors and technology that could help keep people remain healthier for longer”.
As Blanchard acknowledges, Australia’s population is ageing and there is not enough aged care infrastructure to accommodate everybody. “So this is a good way to help people stay at home.”
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