Reflections on the NSSN Ageing Grand Challenge Forum
by Kathryn O’Neill
Clinical Services Manager
Tunstall Australasia
It seems like the weather along with everything else was conspiring against holding an in-person event on Tuesday 1st March. Travelling from Brisbane to Sydney I seemed to bring the rain with me as I went south but it seems that neither floods nor Covid were going to stop the amazing Jane Evans from organizing an absolutely fantastic event in the NSSN Grand Challenge Ageing Forum.
A room filled with representatives from government, industry and academia was always going to produce plenty of chatter but the diversity of the attendees really brought the breadth and depth of the experience and knowledge required to really focus on the issues and the potential solutions.
Our focus was on ageing well and the role technology and specifically sensors, could, would or should have to play in that. This invited discussion on the use of tech in community, home and care settings and the opportunities wearables could provide and what struck me was the overall agreement that technology and by extension of that the collection of data should only ever be collected if it had a positive effect.
That effect is not always immediately noticeable at the point the data is collected but ultimately data should be collected for a purpose and with a use in mind. And the question we should always ask ourselves is does the proposed technology make a difference to someone’s quality of life?
I thought this was the perfect question, not always a straightforward one but fit for purpose all the same. I had the honour of being part of a discussion panel focused on Smart Sensing for Better Ageing in Care Settings and as a registered nurse I really think that the focus of tech in care settings should be on facilitating the fantastic work done by our care providers in making a difference to someone’s quality of life.
Many if not most of us, are well aware of the challenges facing our aged care system, our hospitals, and other care providers in providing a high quality workforce but what we sometimes miss is the optimization of the workforce we do have. As a nurse, I can’t even begin to calculate the amount of time spent writing up care records and clinical notes, completing manual risk assessments, faxing request forms for tests, and walking down the halls of the ward time and time again to respond to equipment alarms that could have been easily reviewed and attended to remotely.
All these things were necessary for the care of the patients but they could have been made quicker and easier by the use of technology giving our frontline care providers more time to spend with people providing care, checking on them, and just having a chat; all those things really make a difference to someone’s quality of life.
It also really reinforced the importance of what we try to do every day here at Tunstall, facilitating a world where people have the freedom to live life to the full in a place of their choice. Our alarm services mean that people can live at home and go about their daily activities, safe in the knowledge that help is at hand if and when they need us.
Remote health monitoring means that we can identify early signs of health deterioration and provide expert advice and knowledge to help someone stay out of hospital, stay at home and keep doing all the things they like to do. As we move to more predictive and proactive monitoring and care we will be able to identify those even earlier warning signs meaning that we can alert people before they even know they need help and they can take action to prevent events from even occurring and seek care and assistance on their own terms.
The final part of the day focused on trying to solve big questions using design thinking techniques. Our group Neina Fahey, Paul Egglestone, John Sutherland and Nicholas Trpezanovski worked on how to encourage decision makers to engage with practical and effective potential solutions and came to the conclusion that collaboration between industry, government, academics, frontline organisations and most importantly those who are doing the ageing (all of us in the end) was needed.
Fascinatingly enough although every other group had a different problem to work on many came to the same conclusion. This essentially underlined the purpose of the forum and the benefits collaboration can bring to these challenges, no one person has all the answers.
Many thanks to all those who attended on the day, my group members, and fellow panelists Dr Alessandra Doolan, Dr Duncan Macinnis, Prof. Daniel Kam Yin Chan, Nicola Ware and to Jane Evans, Susan Pond and the rest of the NSSN team.