Consortium wins grant to study the use of world-first sensor technology platform in residential aged care fall prevention
Talius Group (formerly known as HSC Technology Group) and partners Whiddon, Anchor Excellence and CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency, have been awarded an Aged Care Research and Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA) grant with a total value of nearly $400,000 to run a feasibility study using a data analytics platform that combines sensor technology to prevent falls in residential aged care.
“The prevalence of falls is unacceptably high in residential aged care and more research is required to support quality and safer care”, said Dr Maggie Haertsch, Consulting Clinical Research Director for Talius Group.
“The ARIIA funding will be used to develop the BEST CARE Project, which will provide an excellent opportunity to be smarter in detecting functional changes early and help design care to enable older people to have timely support as their needs change. The aged care workforce is currently under stress and there is much that this technology can do to help. The first step toward implementation of the technology is to address how to make it easy for adoption,” she said.
The BEST CARE Project will test the feasibility of a world first sensor platform called Talius in residential aged care.
Talius incorporates an algorithm originally developed and tested in an in home care setting by CSIRO as part of their Dementia and Aged Care Services trial using the Smarter Safer Homes platform.
“The use of CSIRO’s monitored smart technologies in home care has demonstrated that for older adults with Home Care Packages, the intervention benefited their social care related quality of life. Using similar sensors and the aggregation of this data into the Talius platform for the prevention of falls in residential aged care is a logical next step,” said Marlien Varnfield, Principal Research Scientist, at CSIRO’s Australian e-Health Research Centre.
Talius uses a combination of sensors placed around the residential aged care home with settings adjusted to individual risks to identify factors that can lead to a fall. The study will explore the acceptability of these autonomous sensors and the use of an individual’s ‘sensor story’ to inform residents, their families, and care staff of the older person’s wellbeing. The study will also identify any barriers to adoption and the impact of this technology on the organisation’s operations.
Innovative aged care provider, Whiddon, are among the first residential aged care service in Australia to introduce Talius to improve residents’ safety and to support staff to continue to provide high quality care.
The Talius platform is the first of its kind that combines information from different types of sensors to provide real time information about residents care needs to mobile devices and healthcare dashboards used within the service. This state-of-the-art technology using the Internet of Things (IoT) can reliably monitor and alert staff to an older person’s changed health status. Talius is sensor agnostic and can link any number of sensors autonomously collecting data into its platform. In this study there will be six different types of sensors with a total of 967 sensors installed throughout the home.
“The tech using sensors has been trialled by CSIRO in people‘s homes. Many aged care providers asked me if this technology could also be used in residential aged care homes as they saw how the data moved from a reactive to proactive solution. I am very pleased that we have won this grant and with the collective expertise of our partners, refine our approach”, said Graham Russelll, CEO of Talius Group.
“Using autonomous data collected through the sensors ensures dignity for older people, it is not invasive like a camera or CCTV, and can be very sensitive to help predict a change,” said Mr Russell.
Whiddon’s Executive General Manager Technology and Property, Regan Stathers, describes the grant as an exciting opportunity.
“We are excited to introduce Talius linking real time information through a variety of the sensors into one dashboard and alerts to handheld devices. The Talius platform provides us with information that informs care and up-to-date information on the residents’ changing needs. Whiddon is constantly striving to improve our quality of care through innovative new approaches. This technology is like a smart sensor messaging system and we are eager to better understand the experience of our residents’ and staff experience using Talius”.
“We are delighted to be involved in this collaboration to help find solutions to the serious impact of falls. As part of this research program we will be working with the clinical team to identify high impact high prevalence risks for each resident and ways the Talius platform can send out alerts and prompts that support the team with their care,” said Cynthia Payne, Managing Director, Anchor Excellence. “This is an area of great need in the sector and the ARIIA grant is enabling this innovation to take the next step towards implementation.We are looking forward to seeing the results and how this can support innovation across the sector”.
About the organisations:
Talius Group provides a suite of technology enabled care solutions to the aged and disability sectors, across multiple verticals including retirement living, residential aged care, home, and community settings to improve the quality of life, later in life. Talius’ Software as a Service (SaaS) data analytics platform Talius Smart Care combines smart sensors with AI machine learning (powered by CSIRO) that delivers automated actions. Talius links awareness, analysis, and action through one platform allowing the care model to move from spot check care to sense-respond care. Talius helps protect and connect our elderly and people with disabilities with a scalable healthcare technology platform integrated with leading third-party providers to ensure end-to-end solutions for Connected Health.
From our philanthropic beginnings, we have grown into a large not-for-profit organisation with more than 2,300 customers and over 2,000 people. We’re an award-winning aged care provider with residential care, community care and retirement villages across New South Wales and Queensland.
Whiddon is passionate about enriching lives and keeping older people connected to what matters most to them in life.
We invest back into our people, our communities and services, and we partner with academics and universities that are developing the latest thinking, innovation, programs and training around quality of life and ageing.
Our strong presence in regional, rural and remote NSW and QLD sets us at the heart of our local communities, both as an employer and aged care provider. We actively promote and maintain a proud sense of community – wherever we are, everyone matters.
The Australian e-Health Research Centre (AEHRC) is CSIRO’s digital health research program – enabling the digital transformation of healthcare to improve services and clinical treatment for Australians.
We have world leading capability in areas such as clinical terminology and data interoperability; health data analytics; clinical image analysis; genomics data analytics and engineering; biostatistics, mobile health, tele-health and health internet of things, amongst many others.
We work with many collaborators across the healthcare system to improve diagnosis and treatment across Australia and internationally.
Anchor Excellence is a national Aged Care Consultancy with 20 aged care specialists. All experienced leaders in their fields, their complementary mix of skills support aged care leaders in executive management, governance, strategy, quality and compliance management, asset and property management, stakeholder management, customer experience and coaching.
Anchor Excellence has developed an online High Impact Risk Governance Solution that delivers an end-to-end clinical and care governance framework. HiRA-E is a complete evidence-based risk register that will pre-emptively identify high impact risk for consumers, support care teams to understand, minimise and monitor each individual and the community, and significantly reduce compliance risk.
About the grant – Aged Care Research and Industry Innovation Australia
Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia (ARIIA) is an industry-led organisation established to engage with the sector to collaboratively lead and facilitate the positive transformation of aged care nationwide.
The ARIIA Grants program supports high-quality research studies and findings that address important gaps in aged care workforce capability and knowledge, and lead to relevant, translational research findings for the benefit of the sector.
