Is your strategy data-driven and insights led?

The Illawarra Retirement Trust is approached almost daily with opportunities to utilise new software, a new sensor or a gadget that will purportedly enhance our residents’ lives or help us be sustainable. One sensor pitch still stands out for me as it set us on the pathway to preparing ourselves for a ‘digital first’ future.

The sensor in question was the cutting edge in 2018, and if we implemented it across all our sites, it would return 1.3+ billion (yes, billion) data points in a single year. ?The data volume itself wasn’t the issue. Anyone can get a scalable cloud for cents on the dollar; the problem was that this was only one sensor, and we needed another 3-4 (or more) to enable accurate monitoring and decision support for our staff. ?

As Chief Executive of an aged care provider, I’ve participated in and observed a growing shift within our sector - the burgeoning interest in the possibility of data. The movement by aged care providers to a data-driven approach can be the catalyst for change, enhancing the lives of our residents, optimising our service provision, and fortifying our capacity to withstand the growing cybersecurity challenge. As a sector, we face challenges unique to our mission, but a robust data strategy may hold the keys to our most pressing issues. Consequently, I have pressed my team to embrace a data-driven and insights-led approach to our work. Many lessons have been gained, both positive and negative, in pursuing a strategy that includes a data strategy.

The vitality of data-driven insights cannot be overstated. There is a mandate for providers to leverage data to address our most daunting challenges: increasing care quality, maximising operational efficiency, and securing sensitive information. Our residents and customers, the heart of our mission, deserve nothing less. They deserve care guided by our expert staff but ably assisted and informed by robust data-based decision support.

It is natural now to say that Cybersecurity is a critical component of any data strategy. Aged care providers are custodians of sensitive personal data, and the potential cost of a breach is enormous financially and in terms of trust. By building cybersecurity into our data strategy from the outset, we safeguard our operations and uphold our commitment to our residents. With this as a precursor, we know that data can be used to improve aged care operations in several ways:

• Identifying trends and patterns
• Making predictions
• Measuring performance
• Improving efficiency
• Reducing costs

In a true data-led fashion, we needed to address an insight that there is the elephant in the room - balancing competing resources against the requirement to harness data better. Juggling the demands of a data strategy with a business that grew organically over 50+ years created its challenges, not to mention Business As Usual (BAU) and operating environment complexity. Nonetheless, in our experience, the two are not incompatible; the answer lies in strategic prioritisation and a phased approach.

Incorporating a strategy is not simply about maintaining our operations; it must empower them. Any successful strategy demands a clear vision and a commitment to invest time, resources, and personnel (Time, Treasure, Talent). The data strategy is similar, and this investment will yield returns in care quality, operational effectiveness, and cybersecurity. We are bolstering our resilience in a rapidly evolving landscape.

Launching this journey may appear daunting, but the first step is simple: acknowledge the value but also the rising risk of data. The hackers already know this; so much can be gained from recognising the latent power within our information to enable us to craft a data strategy that is not only aligned with our mission but brings that mission to life.

In 2018-19 we took stock of our current state. Although we had spent significant effort connecting our systems, the realisation that we could not fully ingest, let alone utilise, infer, or predict from the vast data repositories we held was sobering. This led us to consider not only our current usage of data but our future usage, where sensors, wearables, and various other data points would flood into systems. At that point, we decided on a framework to reset our view and begin realising a digital-first mindset for the business. The framework we used includes the following steps:

• We assessed our current data landscape. This involved identifying the data held, where it is stored, and how it is used.
• Did we have the correct data, or where were our information/data gaps? Should data be held temporarily or longer term?
• Define the data goals. What was our intention (see the dot points above), and how/when/where did we want to achieve these goals?
• Our ICT team then developed a data strategy. As a community-owned NFP, we must ensure that our data is used consistently and ethically. This needs to plan for collecting, storing, managing, and using your data. It is also vital to think about how you will govern the data.
• Strategy is easy, but implementing a strategy is not. We started putting our plan into action.
• Given that we are still executing, we are considering whether our original measures of success are still valid. Outside of the ICT function, you will always see pushback on time, cost and talent needed to resource such a plan. So ensuring your data strategy is working for the business is critical.

I was fortunate to have a CIO and team who understood that we needed a multi-disciplinary team of staff who could bring their expertise and perspectives to this assessment and subsequent stages of the process. The insights gleaned from this appraisal informed our tactical approach. At the outset, we knew that IRT must double down on ensuring that we could capture data safely but, more importantly, in an arrangement that would allow us to use it for our mission. It sounds simple, but it is not.

At this point, we are seeing those four years of hard work pay off in terms of business intelligence reporting (BI) and exciting machine learning programs that we can now see fulfilling our initial goals. These goals, whether improving resident satisfaction, streamlining service delivery or providing point of care (POC) decision support, have shown the business what is possible. However, it is inescapable that the goals of this work must be clearly defined, measurable, and linked to our overall mission. We haven’t always excelled at this aspect when seduced by the glitter and glamour of chasing a game-changing innovation.

Like all programs within aged care, we are brought to earth, sometimes with a hard landing, as we look to develop our data and insights action plan based on our resources (time, talent and treasure). This cyclical process demands continual reassessment and recalibration based on evolving needs and emerging technologies.

In an era when aged care is becoming increasingly complex and competitive, staying ahead means embracing change. A robust data strategy can lead the way to a brighter future. In this future, our care services are informed by insights, where our operations are efficient, and where our cybersecurity infrastructure is resilient.

We have the power to create this future. And the first step is understanding, embracing and leveraging data. It’s about navigating challenges and unveiling opportunities – to improve care, bolster security, and ultimately elevate our residents’ lives. Now is the time to act. Seize the power of data and let it guide our path towards enhanced aged care.