Telehealth pilots announced
The government has announced the recipients of $20 million worth of funding for the NBN Enabled Telehealth Pilots Program.
Above: Aged Care Industry IT Council Chair Suri Ramanathan
By Natasha Egan
Nine telehealth projects using the National Broadband Network have received $20.3 million in funding to pilot new methods of health care delivery, the Gillard government announced yesterday, a year after applications for the program closed.
The NBN Enabled Telehealth Pilots Program will reach around 2500 people in 50 NBN communities with many projects involving in-home monitoring and telehealth care services for the elderly.
The projects include services targeting chronic disease, palliative care, cancer patients and older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians. (There is a full list of the funding recipients at the end of this story.)
Minister for Ageing Mark Butler said providing appropriate care services to older citizens in an affordable way was becoming increasingly challenging as the population ages.
“This program will demonstrate new models of aged care for older Australians living in their own homes and communities, and how telehealth can help meet these challenges.”
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Senator Stephen Conroy said we now lived in a world where healthcare doesn’t only happen in a hospital and aged care doesn’t always mean having to go into a nursing home.
“These exciting initiatives will help demonstrate how important high-speed broadband is to the future of healthcare and highlight why it should be rolled out to all Australians,” Senator Conroy said.
Serving Older Australians
Leading Age Services Australia (LASA) was one of the successful bidders. It has received $1.8 million for a project involving 180 elderly participants in Geraldton Western Australia and the Illawarra region of New South Wales.
LASA CEO Patrick Reid said age service providers needed to utilise technology as soon as it became available.
“This project will test how telehealth can be used with an aim to replicate its use across the nation,” Mr Reid said.
“LASA understands that the majority of Australians want to stay in their own home for as long as possible, we also know that it is important for health and wellbeing to maintain a primary health focus and minimise hospital admissions. These are key components of the telehealth model.”
The project, Serving Older Australians, will be delivered through the Aged Care Industry IT Council (ACIITC), which is jointly owned by LASA and ACSA, in partnership with technology company Accenture and aged service providers Silverchain in WA and Illawarra Retirement Trust (IRT) in NSW.
ACIITC Chair Suri Ramanathan (pictured) said the project is using TGA approved medical grade devices. And that it will draw on the differences in the aged service providers’ locations and technical experience to encourage cross country networking by clinicians and reflect the varying technological starting points for providers.
Mr Ramanathan noted that while early-adopter Silverchain’s technology component was already quite sophisiticated, IRT was relatively young in its tech journey.
“We want our providers to take a good thing one provider has and replicate it,” Mr Ramanathan said.
Telehealth components being tested in the project include monitoring vital statistics for someone with a chronic disease, care for COPD review, plus other health items looked after in community care.
The project will also test the efficacy of telehealth consultations, such as the interaction between the patient and the clinician over video conference.
After a telehealth nurse connects up the monitoring equipment and the patient gives consent, the data goes into a database for the telehealth nurse and the clinicians to monitor, intervene and teleconference where necessary.
Mr Ramanathan said information such as reading material can be pushed to the patient’s device and the patient has access to all their recorded data to enable them to take control of their own health.
Get involved
The project commenced at the end of April and will run until the end of June 2014 and so far has five people signed up.
People interested in participating in the trial are encouraged to express their interest to the following people:
In the Illawarra region, NSW (Kiama, Dapto, Woollongong and surrounding areas and northern ACT (Crace) contact Kath Mckeown on 1800024915 or kmckeown@irt.org.au.
And in Geraldton, WA, contact Elizabeth Boyd on 08 9242 0242 or Elizabeth.Boyd@silverchain.org.au.
NBN Enabled Telehealth Pilots Program funding recipients
- Feros Care, My Health Clinic at Home, $2.461m
- Royal District Nursing Service, Integrated Home Telehealth, $2.993m
- Flinders University, Telehealth in the Home: Aged & Palliative Care in SA, $2.528m
- Hunter New England Local Health District, Cancer Care Self-Management NBN Telehealth Program, $1.546m
- UniQuest, ConTAC (Comprehensive Telehealth Assisted Care), $2.756m
- Integratedliving, Staying Strong: Enhanced Aged Care for ATSI Australians, $2.104m
- Leading Age Services Australia, Serving Older Australians, $1.829
- CSIRO, Home Monitoring of Chronic Disease for Aged Care, $2.748m
- CSIRO, NBN Enabled Indigenous Tele-eye Care, $1.300m
