AAA March-April 2019 Cover Story

MAR-APR 19

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Adapt and align to new thinking

Health Metrics World Conference shows you how

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FEATURE

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Adapt and align to

new thinking

Emerging trends in data science, quality and compliance, as well as workforce technologies, are presenting providers with the opportunity to adapt and align to the changing consumer and legislative landscapes. These challenges will be in focus at the 2019 Health Metrics World Conference.

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he Health Metrics World Conference is gearing up to deliver two days of outstanding content in August to help those working in aged, disability, health and social care organisations respond to changes in technology, standards, reporting, practice and more. The annual event hits the mark when it comes to opening the door to a future vision for providers of all shapes and sizes.

The conference venue is the Crown Conference Centre in Melbourne and the conference days are 29 and 30 August 2019.

The conference, now in its third year, is getting more and more traction and has been designed to have broad appeal, says Steven Strange, CEO of Health Metrics. “It is fundamentally an industry technology event, however we interlace a number of industry components that create a broad church of content,” said Steven.

“Those who work in primary health, residential aged care, retirement living, home care or disability services would benefit from this event,” Strange tells Australian Ageing Agenda.

The 2019 Health Metrics World Conference will be the first in the series to include a large cohort from the disability and primary health sectors. The theme of the two-day event is ‘Adapt and Align to New Thinking.’

“In a climate where scrutiny and competition 34 | MARCH – APRIL 2019

“In a climate where scrutiny and competition are on the rise, providers need to ensure that they have their secure, reliable and insightful enterprise data at their fingertips.”

are on the rise, providers need to ensure that they have their secure, reliable and insightful enterprise data at their fingertips. Providers owning and operating health and social care services have honourable intentions. They truly have a higher purpose.

“In order to meet that higher purpose, providers must increase efficiency and lower operational risk. They must adapt and align. Providers and leaders must be open to lateral and new thinking.

We will have the latest in thought leadership from the industry, as well as practical workshops for professional development,” says Strange.

Last year’s event included more than 400 delegates, 30 speakers, many interactive workshops and several networking activities.

Growing year on year, this year’s conference is set to once again provide delegates with valuable industry information, well-informed topics and engaging speakers including industry influencers, policy makers, government representatives, researchers and suppliers.

The event will showcase key advances in technology that are relevant to the health and social care sectors. For the first time, this year Health Metrics welcomes disability-based organisations. The conference will pay special attention to disability services and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

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Steven Strange, CEO of Health Metrics

Delegates can view live software demonstrations

TECHNOLOGY The 2019 Health Metrics World Conference will also showcase key advances in technology relevant to: • residential aged care • independent living units • home care • primary healthcare • community healthcare • disability services

On the reason behind the now annual event, Strange says health, aged and social care conferences provide important content, but they continually miss the mark in regards to technology.

“There’s an ongoing trend to isolate technology as a topic, whereas technology is relevant to all aspects of care provision. It has a ubiquity about it. There is an ongoing disconnect between trendy technology and technologies that are truly valuable, practical and applicable.”

“As a leader in the field of health and social care, several years ago, Health Metrics decided to open up our annual conference to the broader industry to provide access to the topics that we see as important. This is our third open conference, and each year it gets bigger and better,” says Strange.

Health Metrics has experienced rapid growth over the past five years including expanding into New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

During this journey, Strange says they discovered how strong Australia is in terms of high quality models of care.

“Our company’s annual conference brings together senior leaders in the health, aged and social care sectors. Our clients have extensive expertise in all facets of care and as such, we want to provide a broader platform to share ideas and thought leadership. It’s a great networking event.”

“There’s an ongoing trend to isolate technology as a topic, whereas technology is relevant to all aspects of care provision.”

This year’s conference will identify and respond to key issues and concerns for the sector. A big theme for this year will be workforce, workforce management, workforce data and interoperability.

It will have content that addresses the “gig economy” as well as disruptive technologies.

“Current-state is where we’re at and futurestate is where we want to be,” says Strange. “The conference will address and discuss the challenges of supply and demand for the sector. Where will the labour force come from and how will participants be managed? What sort of systems will be needed to be in place?

“Beyond operational execution, what management information systems are available

Andrew Denton’s closing keynote at the 2018 Health Metrics Conference

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This year’s conference will once again feature an evening cocktail event at Crown Towers in Melbourne

Nicholas Gruen, Chair of Health Metrics, at the 2018 Conference

BREAKOUT STREAMS The program includes morning and afternoon breakout sessions on both days focused on: • Workforce and training • Technology and innovation • Leadership and management • Quality and standards • Analytics and reporting • Government, policy and royal commission

that will provide data insights, via visualisation for example, that enable providers to confidently make data driven decisions?”

Conference snapshot The 2019 Health Metrics World Conference will explore a range of topics pertinent to all areas of aged and disability care operation and delivery from customer relationship management (CRM), through to clinical support, medication, catering, finance and everything in between. Among the focus areas are:

Delegates at the Health Metrics World Conference 2018

“Technology when properly applied is about problem solving.

Defining the actual problem and solution is where insight is key.”

Tim Ferguson is a regular speaker at the conference

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• Technology: The event will pinpoint the latest in innovative developments in technology for the health and social care sector. It will showcase examples of innovation and technology making a difference in the sector from wearables and monitoring through to data centres, blockchain and more.

• Management: Sessions will identify what’s new in leadership and management, how to survive and thrive in an increasingly competitive and demanding sector along with best practice examples for the sector.

• Quality standards: Experts will discuss and critique the education and experiential engagement surrounding the new Aged Care Quality Standards coming into force on 1 July Standards along with their associated audit processes. The conference will also cover how to best prepare for audits.

• Analytics: The conference will show how better metrics in the health and social care sector can be reported via the use of better and newer visualisation tools that operate online and provide feedback in real-time.

• Government: With the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety well underway, there’s plenty to talk about. Key discussion areas will include the strengths and weaknesses of new and developing frameworks and policy.

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Maxine McKew (right) hosts 2018’s Health Metrics World Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS Operational and delivery challenges Strange says that thought leadership is among emerging trends that aged care operators need to be aware of.

“We need thought leadership from outside government to innovate, create and fund solutions. We need technology for those solutions and to provide ongoing efficiencies.

Diet and wellbeing, for example, are of key importance to the consumer, who is central to all that we do. Elsewhere, the available workforce as we know it is dwindling and will continue to do so,” he says.

“It’s a very different future we are facing and we, as an industry, need to start understanding what it will look like, and how to adequately plan for it. The conference will discuss these issues as well as new concepts around interconnectedness.”

Consolidation and alignment are among other key challenges in aged care that need to be addressed, says Strange. “We’ve all been through the digital transformation, now it’s about now

400 delegates

30

Health Metrics World Conference is inviting abstracts for potential contributions to the program to present: • sector or industry case studies • workshops or masterclasses • academic and scientific papers including white papers Go to bit.ly/2tU5ba9 for more details.

speakers

6

breakout streams

4

masterclass workshops The Health Metrics team is on hand at the conference for eCase clients

making sure that all of our transformation and assets we have created and deployed are fit for purpose and working together.

“It’s about the ecosystem and interoperability and interconnectivity. We need to sit back and think about how we can use the data we are collecting to serve our higher purpose and deliver the quality of care that people receiving home residential, primary and disability deserve and expect.”

These issues, concerns and challenges are just a few among the many that this year’s Health Metrics World Conference will respond to, says Strange.

“Technology when properly applied is about problem solving. Defining the actual problem and solution is where insight is key. That’s why we have both technologists and thinkers as speakers. We need to consider new concepts as we can’t keep doing the same thing expecting it to work in a rapidly changing world.” n

Crown Conference Centre, Melbourne W: healthmetrics.com.au/health-metrics-worldconference-2019

Contact Health Metrics: T : 1800 810 081 or 03 9558 1634 E: enquiries@healthmetrics.com.au W: healthmetrics.com.au

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