The Royal Commission quietly released one of its most important pieces of work last week – and it is a must-read for aged care providers.
The 60-page report ‘ICT Strategy and Architecture Review’ was prepared by The Architecture Practice and reviews aged care providers and the Government’s ITC capabilities.
In short, it has found “major deficiencies” with the current system – with five main causes:
- Disconnected business processes;
- Lack of data collection and sharing;
- Poor interoperability;
- Obsolete technology; and
- A fundamental lack of standardisation.
Note: the report disappeared from the Royal Commission’s website within days of being lodged.
However, you can read it and my full report on the findings here.
But the stand-out comment from the report is pictured above from someone consulted during the research.
They note that there are around 420 different vendor solutions available to aged care providers – and none of them talk to each other.
The Royal Commission’s final hearing called out the sector for being in the “Dark Ages” when it comes to technology, but lack of standardisation is a serious issue for providers.
The lack of aged care data collection and analysis by the Government has also been highlighted throughout the Royal Commission.
The paper concludes that the sector needs to be brought into the 21st century – with real-time data monitoring, improved interoperability between healthcare, aged care and Government, digital literacy training for staff and assistive technology as standard.
How many providers are prepared to embrace this new digital world however?