Tunstall Cognitive Care® – AI in practice

By Lyn Davies

Managing Director

Tunstall Australasia Pty Ltd

The future of Cognitive Care

In the next decade, 1 in 5 Australians will be aged over 65. A growing aging population adds mounting pressure to an already overburdened health and social care system, which forces providers to evolve and adapt to continue providing quality care and support for end-users. This article explores Tunstall's concept of Cognitive Care, a predictive digitally-enabled care model that will allow health and social care providers deeper insight into end users’ health and wellbeing through improved data accessibility.

Technology, health and care – the current state of things

Assistive technology already enables people to live more safely and independently than ever before.  Additionally, advancements in technology have helped the healthcare industry in dozens of new ways, improving patient outcomes while providing impressive financial returns and cost savings.

However, one problem that has not yet been adequately solved across the sectors of healthcare and community care, is the availability of end-user data, leading to a fractured care model being delivered. Having end-user data distributed across many disparate sources can lead to delays, potential oversights, inefficiencies, and the risk of inaccurate/incomplete information. Without a complete picture of a person’s health and wellbeing through trend and predictive analysis, opportunities to intervene with alternative models of care and the benefits these models deliver go unrecognised and unrealised.

The vision of Cognitive Care

Connected Healthcare solutions, such as personal alarms and fall detectors, are currently empowering thousands of Tunstall clients to live safe, independent lives by knowing help is just the press of a button away. We can respond to alerts using intelligent sensors that actively communicate with clients and their circle of carers.  Our services include not only the provisioning of these essential 24/7 Monitoring Centres, but also full scale patient management services with support from our team of Registered Nurses.

To expand beyond this, into a truly predictive and personalised solution, Cognitive Care is our vision for an integrated health and care system that will make a robust and scalable health and social care model possible. Making healthcare more accessible, efficient, and sustainable through digitally-enabled solutions is a key component of Tunstall's mission.

Cognitive Care is an intelligent solution that collects and analyses data from different sources – from sensors to smart watches, through to systems that capture health metrics and integrate with third-party databases and electronic health records – and then uses advanced AI to generate alerts if it detects an end user’s condition has signs it may worsen.

This holistic approach to data management and analysis will allow caregivers and health professionals to form a detailed picture of end users’ wellbeing, including changes, risk factors and other previously unseen trends, which will all lead to more informed decision-making.

 The benefits of Cognitive Care

By collecting and disseminating health and care data, Cognitive Care offers a centralised hub of information for care providers to actively track, monitor and plan for end users’ health and wellbeing.

Through advanced AI and machine learning that create predictive health alerts and recommendations based on an end user’s data, data-driven alerts and recommendations allow care providers to create personalised health and care plans for end users, optimise resources, control budgets, and potentially avoid adverse events.

By tracking demographic health trends and comparing the risk factors from groups that match the user, Cognitive Care will be able to leverage the power of data to draw on the lived experiences of others and apply those insights on an individual basis. For example, Cognitive Care™ may compare risk indicators in a certain region with the average indicators in similar towns. This will help healthcare providers and government offices to make informed decisions on health and social care policies.

Cognitive Care would also help create a more intuitive and highly personalised service. An individual’s data tells a story about them and the life they live. Cognitive Care™ provides the means to understand this story, identify the central themes and tailor the service to the individual.

In essence, Cognitive Care focuses on advancing the current health and care sectors by integrating provider-based health data with public health data. The end result would be a fully-integrated healthcare system that creates an accessible and holistic health and care model.

Cognitive Care will enable providers to deliver accessible, value-based health and social care. Tunstall's customers will be able to use data-driven insights to personalise high-quality care programmes and effectively allocate resources, making sure those in need have the right levels of support.

The ‘Transformational Potential of Telecare’ whitepaper developed by Tunstall highlights the benefits, efficiencies and savings that reactive, predictive and personalised digitally-enabled care could offer health and care providers.

As the development of Cognitive Care progresses, we will continue to communicate and articulate the benefits for both providers and end-users.