Driving Better Outcomes in 2024

Better Outcomes is an opportunity for aged care and disability professionals, agency representatives, and visionary leaders to delve into healthcare technology that drives transformative client outcomes. 

Each year brings a huge amount of anticipation and expectation for the types of innovative, engaging and informative conversations we have, and this year did not disappoint. 

In September we focused on how we can lean into the power of new technology by driving change within our businesses and ourselves. 

Our theme, Innovate. Elevate. Transform., focused on exactly this; the emerging opportunities that can transform healthcare delivery, and the power of the people who drive these. 

We had an exceptional speaker lineup, hearing from leaders across the technology and healthcare space.  

The day truly felt like a step forward in embracing innovation, elevating businesses and transforming how we deliver care. 

Innovate. Elevate. Transform.

In her welcoming speech, General Manager of ANZ, Annette Hili, discussed the significant impact of the recommendations tabled by the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety. 

Specifically, she talked about the critical need for healthcare professionals to work together to achieve the recommendations, for us to embrace development and look toward innovation. 

To move forward, to progress, we must choose to innovate, to elevate our businesses, to transform how we deliver care. 

Keynote speaker, former Facebook ANZ CEO Stephen Scheeler, embodies this approach to business. 

In his address, he emphasised the opportunities that are presenting themselves as new technology is developed. He encouraged every participant to consider how they can make a significant change just by changing their mindset, and considering the energy they bring into the world. 

Interestingly, despite his intense immersion in the technology space, he urged us not to forget the people behind the tools. He reminded attendees that technology is important but imperfect, and the people who know how to harness it will be integral to the workforce in years to come.  

AlayaCare in 2025

As for AlayaCare, our business themes for 2025 are focused on harnessing change to provide the best value for our customers. 

This was the sentiment shared by AlayaCare Founder and CEO, Adrian Schauer, in his talk during Better Outcomes. 

In short, he emphasised AlayaCare’s focus on gentle releases, time-to-value projects, addressing issues upstream, and of course, innovation. 

These themes encompass our customer-centric focus for the next year and beyond. We are intent on delivering a product that works for our customers, and that solves the pressing problems people are facing. 

With this comes innovation, but the innovation is guided by feedback and a real consideration of how we can deliver a product that supports real change. 

What does this mean for AlayaCare products?

The focus for AlayaCare products will mirror our priorities. 

Chief Product and Technology Officer at AlayaCare, Andrew McDonald, emphasised the necessity of simplification for care workers with streamlined, efficient product developments. 

Andrew discussed: 

• The recent updates to notifications that prompt staff to clock out, ensuring accurate time tracking, 

• The expanded language options on the AlayaCare app that will make our platform accessible to more users, and 

• Automatic form calculations that will be implemented to save time and minimise errors, allowing care workers to focus more on client care. 

Andrew also highlighted new efficiencies for back-office staff, with scheduling to be tailored and streamlined, and Visit Optimiser to be further optimised for users. 

Our enhanced Family Portal will keep family members connected and informed, promoting transparency and peace of mind about their loved one’s care. Collaborative forms will allow multiple stakeholders to input information, streamlining the documentation process, and our new client messaging feature will facilitate better communication between care providers and clients.  

Lastly, Andrew shared that Layla, our AI-powered assistant, continues to evolve. It will offer smart support to care teams by automating tasks, providing reminders, and assisting with documentation, making the caregiving process more efficient and connected. 

What does this mean for residential care?

In the afternoon, participants broke into two groups: residential and home care. 

In the residential care breakout, VP Residential at AlayaCare, Arif Mohamed, shared more information about some exciting product updates: 

• Care statements: Monthly Care Statements is a user-centric approach to foster consistent and transparent communication between residential aged care homes and residents. This monthly summary ensures residents are well-informed about the care they receive, highlighting significant changes or events from the previous period. 

• Integration with My Health Record: AlayaCare Residential will integrate to the Australian Government’s My Health Record, ensuring a connected circle of care between healthcare providers and authorised residential aged care workers.  

• Dedicated Residential mobile application: AlayaCare Residential will produce its first dedicated mobile application, in addition to the web application already available across desktops and tablets. The app will enable clinicians and care workers to retrieve real-time information about residents, ensuring fast and efficient communication.  

• Interface redesign: AlayaCare Residential will undergo a redesign next year. Our goal is to enhance the visual appeal and user experience while aligning with AlayaCare brand’s identity and modern design standards. Users will also benefit from enhanced consistency between screens ensuring it’s easier to learn and remember how to perform key tasks. 

• New reporting platform / dashboard: We are enhancing our reporting capabilities by upgrading our reporting platform to offer new, customisable dashboards. This transition will build on our existing reporting functionalities, offering a more robust and user-friendly experience to better meet both operational and external reporting requirements.  

These were amongst some of the main updates shared, with other features to be announced in the next year. 

What does this mean for home care?

While Arif took attendees through the updates for residential care, Director of Product Management and Technical Services, Jon Middleton, led people through updates for home care in the other breakout session. 

Jon recapped the product roadmap, including: 

• Mandatory Group Validation: Enabling providers to remove risks of errors and improve staff confidence by validating group assignation on client, facility, and employee profiles when group association is enabled. 

• Intake Wizard: Administration staff will see an optimised workflow that facilitates client admission to billing processes thanks to automated authorisations synced to AlayaCare with the new Intake Wizard. 

• Intake and Demographic Fields and Address Validation: Data validation for demographics and address fields which minimises missing or faulty data entries that might impact an organisation’s revenue cycle. 

• AlayaCare Marketplace: AlayaCare Marketplace is a premium feature of AlayaCare Cloud that enables organisations to send and receive visit referrals between providers in a single system, eliminating the need to pick up the phone or fax referral information. 

• Secure Messaging: This premium feature simplifies communication between care team members and back-office administrators over a secure network. 

• New and Improved Tasks: The Tasks section will undergo a redesign to provide a more efficient, intuitive, and user-friendly experience, allowing providers to leverage the full potential of the Tasks section and improve workflows. 

• User Roles and Permissions In-App Documentation: Role administrations are simplified with intuitive in-app hints to help users quickly understand each ACL in the Roles and Permissions section of settings. 

• Trust This Device for User Authentication: This provides users with easier and faster logins with ‘Trust This Device’ – allowing users to seamlessly access AlayaCare Cloud platforms with enhanced security. 

• Visit Optimiser updates: Service codes for visit time window will easily configure time windows at the service code level, allowing staff to move visits with greater flexibility. Recurrence optimisation mode enhances scheduling efficiency and accuracy by running entire recurrences through Visit Optimiser for streamlined operations. Finally, multi-suggestion for assignments and offers enables providers to quickly view and assign multiple suggestions from Visit Optimiser for a comprehensive overview of available employees. 

• Notable: Notable enables providers to use state of the art Large Language Models to seamlessly extract crucial clinician information from AlayaCare Cloud notes, empowering proactive actions through timely alerts. 

• Revenue Cycle Management: New features including transaction reason code reporting which provides clear reporting and better insights into transaction details for more accurate financial management, transaction posting date enhancements that enables users to select the date for voiding and revising invoices and claims, and APIs/Claiming in NDIS Management (NDIS) which is an automated end-to-end NDIS eClaiming solution. 

Jon also flagged upcoming product announcements: 

• Travel time: This enables providers to plan travel time and mileage ahead of scheduling to streamline payroll processes and easily rearrange calendars to maximise travel efficiency and cost savings. This is currently in early access with general availability towards the end of the year. 

• NDIS claiming flow: Automating the end-to-end claiming of NDIA services, through automatic visit verification, templated automatic daily billing period creation, automatic billing and daily claiming and handling. 

Finally, a large unknown throughout Better Outcomes was the changes that would be implemented due to Support at Home. Since then, we have more clarity, which you can read about here.  

During the breakout session, Jon provided clarity about how AlayaCare is preparing for the impact of the new Support at Home program. 

The plan included: 

• Copying our NDIS Claiming Flow functionality noted above to enable daily billing and daily claiming for Support at HomeAPI Integration – potentially using the same partner we use for NDIS Claiming to fast-track development.

• Service catalogue changes to support the new Support at Home service catalogue changes.

Of course, there will be many more developments for Support at Home and AlayaCare over the next few months, especially considering the recent government announcements. 

We will continue to provide updates on the many ways we’re preparing for these significant changes, and the products and adaptations we are making in the lead up to Support at Home being implemented. 

Looking to the future

Looking beyond 2025, Adrian shared the wider priorities for the business from 2025 to 2035. 

Having just celebrated the 10 year anniversary of AlayaCare, we have been celebrating our past while considering how we can strengthen the company for the future. As Adrian said, “we’re a 10-year company, how can we become a 100-year company?” 

The answer? 

Build an enduring business, create a platform that can be built on, and focus on value-driven innovation. 

These three priorities are intended to guide us through the next 90 years and beyond as company. 

Underpinning all of these priorities is a consistent goal: continuing to build a platform that solves problems for our customers, streamlines processes, and supports them as they provide much-needed care. 

Click through more pictures from the day