Uniting has launched a generative AI-powered digital assistant to provide its staff with information and support tools at the “point of care”.
The digital assistant is the NSW and ACT home care services provider’s first in-house AI platform.
In a LinkedIn post, digital, innovation and experience lead Ramesh Raghavan wrote that the “tool is now available for our 11,000-plus employees, marking a significant milestone in our digital transformation journey.”
Six firms co-designed the solution: Uniting NSW.ACT, Uniting Agewell, RSL Life, Catholic Healthcare, Baptist Care, and HammondCare.
Microsoft’s AI incubation lab for Aged Care and Aware also supported the technical development, as well as costs.
“The base solution is Microsoft-funded as part of the Tech for Social Impact division for not for profit aged care firms,” Raghavan said.
“Uniting is making additional investments to ensure it integrates seamlessly into our ecosystem.”
Raghavan told iTnews that given the way “technology has evolved in the last couple of years we had to look at new ways to solve the challenges faced by our staff.”
“Bringing in more and more mobile apps or large systems could not solve the problems of a fragmented/frictionless digital experience,” he said.
Raghavan said the “initiative came about through extensive co-design workshops with our employees” and will “reduce manual workload and time-consuming tasks to achieve operational efficiency through automations and capabilities such as voice to text and multi-language options”.
It will also enable “access to systems and key information at the point of care e.g. client information, policies, procedures or care information,” according to Raghavan.
“We just released the first capability from this solution, and there are multiple releases planned through the year,” he added.
The initiative is aligned to a key strategic pillar of Uniting’s digital strategy to ‘enable our people’.
This aims to simplify “day in a life of” Uniting staff “by ensuring technology is reliable, easy to use and gives access to data and systems when you want it and where you need it in a secure way.”
Potential future AI use cases
Key internal use cases for AI so far include care note capture and retrieval.
Raghavan said Cisco Webex enabled AI assistants could also play a role in automated customer support, information retrieval and actions such as scheduling or cancelling visits.
Other use cases include AI-enabled demand and supply mapping rostering, and the preparation of personalised care plans.
These would be able to “analyse individual health records to tailor care plans specifically suited to each person’s needs”.
Raghavan further explained that Uniting is looking to “analyse data from wearable devices and sensors to monitor vital signs and detect abnormalities or potential health issues early.
He said other use cases include “risk assessment and classification of pressure Injuries, including diagnostics and suggested treatments and chronological care history accessible at the point of care that covers care plans in PDFs and free-text case notes.”
These use cases are in various stages of development.
