New Digital Health Summary tool to transform aged care
Too often aged care residents are transferred to hospital without, or with inconsistent, critical health information, making it more difficult for accurate clinical diagnosis and treatment by both paramedics and hospital staff. Similarly critical information may be lacking when they are transferred back to aged care from hospital.
This knowledge gap can include a lack of access to advance care directives, or valuable insights into a person’s ‘usual’ physical and cognitive function.
In an exciting breakthrough, a National Centre for Healthy Ageing-led project team has developed and tested a new Digital Health Summary tool, co-designed by hospital clinicians, primary care providers, carers, paramedics, and aged care staff and residents.
The recent trial, conducted by Peninsula Health and the National Centre for Healthy Ageing (NCHA), in partnership with South Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network, Outcome Health, Ambulance Victoria and aged care providers, integrated the Digital Health Summary into three aged care sites in the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Region in Victoria.
The Digital Health Summary provides a tested prototype with potential to transform aged care, making healthcare more connected, efficient, and patient-centred.
Caption: Digital Health Summary prototype.
But creating a new digital prototype wasn’t easy. The multidisciplinary research team, involved in NCHA’s Optimising Health Information During Aged Care Transfers project, is led by Professor Nadine Andrew.
“We know that many [aged care] providers face challenges with effective health information sharing due to inconsistent recording and quality of data, and inadequate technical infrastructure. It varies from centre to centre,” Professor Andrew said.
“So, we knew that overcoming technical and implementation barriers to the digital sharing of health information was a key priority if this new tool was going to improve health care outcomes.
“Working closely with paramedics, hospital and aged care staff, primary care, residents, and carers, during the design phase and testing was vital. This project is a first step towards providing the foundations for shared communication and greater transparency in the Residential Aged Care sector.
“We are also excited about exploring future scale-up opportunities for this unique Digital Health Summary infrastructure.”
Caption: Members of the project team and stakeholders recently shared key findings and discussed future directions.
What’s next?
The project team recently hosted aged care providers, health service staff, researchers, and government representatives to share key findings, demonstrate the digital tool and discuss what’s needed to embed digital health summaries into routine practice.
The project leadership team, Professor Andrew (project lead), Dr Long (implementation lead), Associate Professor Beare (technical lead) and Dr Xie (digital design lead) thanked the valuable contribution of the project partners and collaborators throughout the design and testing process, including Monash University, Peninsula Health, Ambulance Victoria, Regis Aged Care, Arcare Aged Care and Outcome Health. We also wish to acknowledge project funding from the Commonwealth Government’s Medical Research Future Fund.
Find out more about this project.