UOW report to revolutionise IT use in the aged care industry

Aug 17, 2005

A University of Wollongong academic from the Faculty of Informatics has written a report that will pave the way to how Australia’s aged care sector keeps information on patients and act as a springboard to the improvement of care for the aged in our communities.

Dr Ping Yu from the School of Information Technology and Computer Science has prepared the report in collaboration with Professor Patrick Crookes from the School of Nursing and Uniting Care Ageing. The research will serve to encourage the uptake of information technology in the aged care sector.

Federal Minister for Ageing, Julie Bishop, visited the Illawarra recently to officially launch the report titled Residential Aged Care Workers’ Computer Skill Sets and Attitudes Toward Using Information System To Manage Care. The report shows that most aged care workers are willing to replace paper-based nursing records with electronic systems.

“Last month the Australian Government provided one-off payments of $1,000 per resident to all aged care homes, totalling $152 million to help aged care providers take advantage of new technology, improve their business practices and increase staff training,” said Ms Bishop.

Dr Yu’s report identifies the barriers to the implementation of IT systems and details the breadth of opportunities to use IT in advancing the standard of care in the industry. It also reveals the impediments that need to be addressed and dispels some of the myths surrounding the existing level of IT skill sets of these care workers, showing that they boast significantly greater knowledge than anticipated.

The report found that only 29% of workers surveyed had received computer training and emphasised the time-consuming nature of paper-based record systems, the large storage space required, the lack of legibility, the difficulty of retrieving previous records, difficulty of updating resident information and the misuse of resident information.

The report also revealed that the major challenges for implementing computer-based nursing documentation practice were resistance to change, computer skill training, technical issues and costs, however almost 90% of survey respondents fully supported the strategy of introducing IT to manage care information with 71% agreeing that paper-based records were a concern because of the amount of time it took to keep them up to date.

Federal Member for Gilmore, Joanna Gash, said the report would assist United Care South Eastern Region to push ahead with IT implementation to improve the care of residents in the local community.

“Greater use of technology can mean less paperwork, giving local aged care workers more time to spend caring for residents rather than doing administration,” she said.

The report is available on-line at: www.uow.edu.au/~ping/

For further information contact Dr Ping Yu on 4221 5412

-RP

For more information, contact:

media@uow.edu.au
University of Wollongong
Ph: (02) 4221 5942; fax (02) 4221 3128