Where were we?
We were at ITAC 2025 at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne recently. ITAC stands for “Innovation Transforming Aged Care”. Except it doesn’t. It’s roots are in the old IT in Aged Care body (literaly ITAC). This means that, on display, there were 30 or 40 exhibitors of every tech, app, software, hardware, robot, and platform you would expect in aged care. Someone should have told the folk promoting “innovation in food” next to us – great guys and deserving of a plug – just at the wrong trade show, poor fellows.
What about the conference, what did we learn?
We learnt futurists love and hate Ex Machina (the movie). Assoc Prof Caroline Ball was excellent, with her visceral reaction to the frightening twitching robots from Clone (made humorous to the Benny Hill soundtrack), and her despair at the US “Tech Bros” and what they will do with AI and Cybernetics (10 billion sexbots, farmbots and home help bots by 2040 apparently). We did some crystal ball gazing through what is happening overseas today e.g. Japan’s Society 5.0. And we were challenged as a care sector to engage with big tech to get what we want and need. We heard a lot about AI and how it would help the care sector. RMIT’s Prof Karen Veerspeer presented their work on Frailty Indices using AI and a cohort of over 2500 residential aged care records of roles/observations/assessments and how useful it was in predicting depression, fall risk and death (it is). Impressive. Futurist Anders Sorman Nilssen and Dr Ball both stressed that AI will augment care, not replace it. Although the best example the former used was that UPS trucks never turn left (or was that right), saving time, $Ms in petrol and the planet (reduced carbon emissions). Should carers in RACFs never turn left? We learnt the Department is really proud of their Digital Transformation to facilitate the coming regime. And we learnt industry bodies like Sparkd are super keen for us all to share data using standardised protocols. Makes sense.
What did we really love?
You know was most impressive? BUPAs excellent execution of Telehealth. Remember Telehealth? Mel White, Head of Quality, and her team, with ARIIA funding, trialled a multi-disciplinary, nurse practitioner-led Telehealth solution, had the courage to hold back 12 months and fix the bugs, then scaled it up to 13 hubs servicing all 57 of BUPA communities across the Eastern seaboard, from Cairns to Adelaide. Teams with diverse skills from physio, OT, pharmacy, wound care, geriatrics and more would Telehealth into communities to consult together on referrals from the clinical teams on site. They solved lots of challenges including getting GPs and onsite clinicians on board. All paid for, ultimately, with existing spend and rebatable items, and delivering $3M saving to BUPA to boot. Brilliant. Prof Len Gray, arguably the maven of Telehealth in Australia, was suitably impressed, after 15 years of championing the cause. Can BUPA successfully transform this into a third party service available to all RACFs and care communities. Stay tuned.
What did we see in the Exhibition Hall?
In a year when the government is re-writing how the industry works and gets paid, we saw a lot of platforms aimed at exactly that. How to roster, comply, budget, acquit, report, and so on. All aimed at getting ready, as a residential or home care provider, for change. As one of our customer-colleagues said, “There are a lot of solutions here, but they are pretty much doing the same thing”. As another one said, “I like the medication dispensing tech”. As I said, to be expected, these are the problems today that need solving. But after all the sessions on AI and sexbots, though, we really have a lot of work to do to live up to the hype.
Think about using voice technologies like Heidi to auto draft care notes from scheduled and adhoc care, reminders for patients and updates for families, for carers/clinicians to vet and finalise of course (augment not replace), to free up carers to spend more time face to face with residents. Think about using AI and IoT to support better care decisions by PCAs and RNs alike, in real time, by surfacing information from patterns of behaviour/ clinical notes/ frailty indices/ resident preferences and the like on request. Smart toilets that monitor nutrient balance and sugar levels. Exoskeletons that cost $5,000 to lift residents instead of hoists (too far? Dr Ball does not think so, suggesting OH&S laws might mean using such tech is obligatory today…).
A shout out to the folk from Fivegoodfriends, Platinum sponsors, great platform and genuinely doing great things for their legions of operator users. And to our fellow operators in care monitoring tech, UMPS and Talius, love your work.
In short
As an observer, perhaps the key insight is that the “best on ground” in 2025 was a transforming technology that’s 15 years old. Maturing technology, executing it well, and trusting that it to work takes time. I am not sure the industry has 15 years though. The great new transforming technologies of today will not wait. Perhaps we will come back in 2040 and see.