Let’s embrace AI collaboratively, says tech lead

With so much reform due to take effect on 1 July, it is more important than ever to look towards artifical intelligence and assistive technology as a means of ensuring compliance for home care providers Johan Locke – Australian Multicultural Community Services AI and assistive technology projects manager – has told Community Care Review.

Mr Locke also emphasised the importance of sharing technology, encouraging providers to look to each other for important developments in the assistive technology space.

Mr Locke is among a handful of provider tech leads speaking at the this month’s Ageing Australia’s ITAC conference, where he will discuss home care operating models and how AI and assistive technology are driving efficiency, financial sustainability and inclusive care.

He told CCR that AMCS has incorporated AI transcription and in-call AI translation for phone and video calls into their services, meaning all discussions with customers are automatically transcribed, summarised, translated if needed, and saved in the case notes.

This has allowed them to connect with older clients of multicultural and diverse linguistic backgrounds more efficiently. He said that because all interactions between staff and clients are now being automatically captured in the case notes, AMCS can drive their billing automatically too.

“In the new model going forward, we’re going to have to account for every minute that we spend with our customers so that we can accurately recover our funding from government,” Mr Locke said to CCR.

“The only way to do that is to have AI assist the support worker in capturing their case notes, transcribing it into the system, and importantly, not only transcribing it, but summarising it and also drawing next actions out of those case notes so that when the next scheduled and rostered worker picks up that customer’s file, they know exactly where to carry on in the activities.”

Mr Locke told CCR that it is “quite pressing,” for home care providers to begin introducing assistive technology alongside AI-automated administrative tasks, pointing to fall records as a main issue for the sector.

“There are two legs of technology that we see being in battle,” he said.

“The first one is falls are one of the biggest identifiers of whether or not the elderly are going to have good outcomes in the next few years, and we know that active fall monitors have got limitations; the elderly don’t wear them. So we have been trialling passive fall monitors.

“The second thing that’s important to that trial is not just having technology at home but actually automating the messaging that comes into the home care service provider’s back office.

“Home care is not a 24/7 business, we only look at things when we’re scheduled and rostered. It’s important that we document all things coming in, and our business case at its core is that 97 per cent of all falls in home care happen when we are not with the customer, so we do not have that information to take it into account during care planning and care reviews.”

Mr Locke told CCR he hoped providers saw the benefits of sharing technological advancements that address falls and administrative tasks with each other.

“Even though this is a semi-competitive environment, there’s such a lot of customers to cover that we are quite happy to share with people the pattern that we are following and share with them the vendors that we are using and to go and improve the lives of their customers as well,” he said.

“We think we’ve stumbled onto something quite unique here, and we are quite happy to share that with the industry in the hope, of course, that others would share similar advancements with us.”

He also noted that AMCS had been using Australian-built technologies in the AI hardware space and encouraged other providers to not only “shop overseas” when so many Australian-based companies and universities were making great progress.

Other presentations at the conference include:

• Barry Mather, Anglicare Southern Queensland on essential strategies for information governance and risk management
• Daniel Pettman, BaptistCare, on technology integration during growth and change
• Carolyn Bell, Silverchain on strategic innovation to unite merged organisations
• Dr Nic Woods, Calvary Healthcare on provider perspectives on building workforce capability.

Australian Ageing Agenda will be at the ITAC Conference 2025 as a media partner.

ITAC conference 2025 takes place on 12-13 March at Marvel Stadium, Melbourne.

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