Application to reconnect older people with their community in development

Researchers from University of Technology, Sydney are seeking partners from the aged care and retirement living sectors to test a new digital platform that aims to reconnect older people and build community resilience.

Researchers from University of Technology, Sydney are developing a digital platform to bring older people together online in order to help each other face-to-face and build community resilience.

Le bon Samaritain, or SAM for short, is a community-based care model supported by technology that integrates health, wellbeing, community and emergency services.

It is designed to create an online community for people who live geographically close to each other either in their own homes or in a residential aged care or retirement village environment.

However, the primary aim is to empower and reconnect people who have been disconnected, said Valerie Gay, who is developing the platform with Peter Leijdekkers and their team at the UTS mhealth lab.

Peter Leijdekkers and Valerie Gay
Peter Leijdekkers and Valerie Gay. Photo: Joanne Saad

“The goal is to get people to meet face-to-face eventually,” Ms Gay told Technology Review.

“By reconnecting communities you can get back resilience so that people are happy to stay living in some area… They feel better and they might tend not to move as quickly.”

When a person in the community makes a request for assistance, it will be ranked it according to six levels of severity “okay” through to “immediate: life threatening”.

“We have a system in place to triage the request, such as whether someone just needs a chat versus someone who doesn’t feel too well and would like to have company while waiting for the ambulance,” Ms Gay said.

On the social side, SAM can also facilitate people looking for something to do or a way to be useful.

“If you put a system in place where people can say I would be happy to teach you how to knit, then the other person might say ‘I can help you with the computer if you teach me that.’ They help each other and they both feel happy because they have done something, [and have] a sense of purpose and belonging,” Ms Gay said.

Providers sought for trial

The prototype will be ready by the end of the year and the team is keen to collaborate with aged care and retirement village operators to tailor the application to their needs and trial it, Ms Gay said.

“We are looking for an aged care example; a place where elderly people who have moved would go. When they get older they might move to a village and they want to meet people or to try to build a community there.”

On its use in aged care, Ms Gay said the platform could facilitate social engagement and remove the burden of a nurse talking to residents who felt lonely because they would talk to each other, for example.

“If the community gets stronger and they do things together, you will probably get less people hanging around next to the nurse saying ‘I need your help; I need your attention.’”

She said the platform could also offer a point of difference for clients who might be inclined to choose a provider that offered a better social agenda.

To get involved or find out more, email Valerie Gay at Valerie.Gay@uts.edu.au.

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Tags: community-resilience, news-tr-2, Peter-Leijdekkers, UTS, valerie-gay,

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