Reuben Jacob, CEO of ARIIA, on Taking Research to Real Impact

In this episode of The Care Exchange, host April De Silva sits down with Reuben Jacob, CEO of ARIIA (Aged Care Research & Industry Innovation Australia), to explore how innovation, technology, and evidence-based practice are reshaping Australia's aged care sector.

Reuben shares his journey from biotechnology into aged care leadership, unpacks what ARIIA does and why it was created, and offers a grounded take on where providers currently stand with digital transformation and AI adoption. From hearing assessment tools to hydration diagnostics to a communal dining shift in Tasmania that moved a resident to get himself dressed and show up for breakfast - the conversation is full of real-world examples that show what's possible when the sector collaborates.

Whether you're a provider, a researcher, or a tech company looking to make an impact in aged care, this episode is packed with practical insight and genuine inspiration.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hello, and thank you for tuning in. This is the Care Exchange, where we dive into the latest conversations, insights, and stories shaping aged care and beyond. I'm your host, April DeSilva. Today we have a very exciting guest, Ruben Jacobs. Ruben leads one of the key organizations driving innovation and evidence-based improvement across Australia's aged care sector. With experience banning the private, public, and not-for-profit worlds, he brings a really unique perspective on how research, industry, and policy can work together to create a meaningful change. Ruben, it's great to have you with us today. Welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Thank you for having me, April. Look forward to the chat.

SPEAKER_00 0:48

Awesome. Well, to start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Sure can. So I've had a bit of an interesting background, not a very linear path. So I started life as a uh geneticist and a biotechnologist, and then realized that the bat lab may not be the best place for me. Um I then looked at what I could do, and uh commercialization of research and technology really appealed to me. Um, because you're taking research um and technology that's got potential closer to the end users. Um so sort of pivoted to that, did that for a number of years, and then from there I uh pivoted to another organization looking at um uh um working on the internal innovation function um in the clinical trial space, and then sort of was the two IC to the CEO there, and then um saw this opportunity come up at ARIA, um, this newly established thing called ARIA. And I actually um came into ARIA as the chief operating officer, and uh uh shortly after I joined uh my interim CEO, then uh moved on for personal reasons, and then um yeah, I took over then, and yeah, it's been a one heck of a ride. It's been uh very rewarding and uh uh uh such a fulfilling uh ride. So yeah, that's sort of been my career journey that brought me to ARIA and to HK.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

So you've been with ARIA since uh inception, is that right?

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Shortly after inception. So Professor Sue Gordon and Camela Sergi, they are the um original architects of ARIA, and I joined a few months after it was uh uh set up.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Were you much in the aged care space before that, or this was sort of the first in in aged care?

SPEAKER_01 2:43

This is my first foray into aged care, and uh um you know um I was largely come from the biomed tech space and largely biomed tech commercialization space, and that's that's my background. And when I saw a uh an ad come up and I went and I sort of clicked into it and read it, I thought, oh, this is quite interesting. Um, and and uh you know, reading through why ARIA was set up and what it was intending to do and uh the sorts of things it wanted to achieve, and um I could quickly see that the impact that something like an organization like ARIA could make would be phenomenal. So yeah, threw my hat in and uh was very blessed to actually get the gig.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Awesome. And speaking of ARIA, for those who may not know, what is ARIA and what do they do?

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Sure, so I'll give you a little bit of a history um tour. Um rewinding back to 2018, the Agedcare Workforce Task Force then set up, uh they basically set out a strategy to not only attract but also retain and grow the aged care workforce. One of the recommendations was to um you know set up an organization like ARIA, which entirely focused on um uh bringing innovation, bringing technology, as well as uh bringing best practice and evidence into practice as a way of um you know supporting the HK workforce. Um and that was then again uh supported by the Royal Commission. Um and a tender bid went out, and uh Professor Sue Gordon and Camela Sergi then uh basically went and spoke with the sector and said, Look, this has come out. What would you want? Would what would you like to do with this? And essentially co-designed and co-developed the concept of ARIA with the sector, and that became Flinders University's submission uh to the Commonwealth in response to that tender. Um obviously we were successful and got the funding, and uh uh I came in um um sort of a few months in and then yeah, worked with uh with Sue and Camilla and the team to really then build it out. What does ARIEA do? So our mission is to improve um aged care workforce capability through the use of best practice and evidence, through the use of innovation, and through the use of technology, and thereby improve the care quality for older Australians. So that was the original intent of why ARIA came into being, and that's still our North Star that we are guided by. Um how do we go about doing so? We have a number of programs and services that sort of help us address our mission. So we are a national organization, so we work across the country and we are a charity. Um all of our programs seek to make sure that um impact is created and may seek to make sure that we meet people, workforce providers, and other organizations where they are. Um so our programs, so we have a suite of education and training programs that um help aged care organizations with change management, project management, um, leadership, workforce retention, etc. Um, and again, we have a very uh flexible approach. So we have completely online versions through to completely face-to-face versions and everything in between. And again, it then ties back to our mission and it ties back to meeting the sector where they're at rather than us telling, oh, this is how we do things, you come to us kind of thing. Um we already know that the sector is quite stretched and we want to be supportive rather than otherwise. So again, having the um I guess education is great. You build the capability of the workforce to be more innovative, more uh embracing of change. But then how do you then support projects uh out of all of that and actually solve some of those issues? So that's where our HK incubator comes into comes into play. We've got a number of different programs inside of that, but essentially, if you're an HK provider, if you're a researcher, if you're an older person, if you're a tech company, you can come to us with anything from an idea at one end of the spectrum through to uh uh uh like a proper, properly developed MVP or a technology that's in market. Um and we will work with you where you're at on whatever you're going through and whatever help you need. Um, a couple of key pieces that we're really proud of the way we operate. One is we absolutely drill co-design and co-development into the way we work. That's because um it's got it's proven over and over again that it's got the best chance of succeeding, and more so that means whatever is developed is actually more fit for purpose rather than otherwise. So, to that extent, we um make sure that an older person as well as uh uh a provider representative is part of those conversations. So, for example, if you're developing a piece of technology that's gonna affect an older person as well as a provider, you want to make sure they are they are your two key stakeholders, and you want to make sure that during your development you take into account um um how they want it to be. So you genuinely want to co-design and co-develop it. So that one, the older person can use it or the workforce worker can use it, and also you know, more often than not, it's the uh provider that's gonna pay for it. So, you know, you want to make sure that that's uh taken into account. So that's something that we then support, um, and we can be quite hands-on or quite quite hands-off, then that really comes down to where the organization is is at and what they want out of us. So uh so that's that suite of programs. We then have uh uh uh grants, so we give away grant funding to support some of these projects. It doesn't have to come through any of our programs, it can be completely random and outside, and we most of the projects we have received actually are outside of the some of the programs we have supported. But um, you know, we had a we've had a number of different topics where we've called for uh applications on, and you know, it's essentially grant funding to test something in an HCare setting. So we want to make sure that something that's got evidence of succeeding, um, we then want to pilot it in H care with the hope that it then can scale in HCare. Um, if it's a um you know new model of care, uh then that's a very different thing to um um um a technology, right? So what we then do is you know, the model is if if a new model of care is successful, we then disseminate it through our events, through conferences, so our webinars, so that that gets out there, so that that information is accessible. But also, uh, especially in a tech play, um you then you're re de-risking an asset so that um investors can then put money into it and then really scale it. So that's the thinking behind all of that. What happened as the program um evolved, the grant program, is we found we were hearing that through all the reporting that scaling was still a bit hard in in HK. I mean, we all know that HK is uh uh uh going through a reform agenda, everyone's slammed. Um so we thought, okay, what can we do here to help? So, therefore, what we then did is unashamedly copy uh the cotton industry from the 70s. So they had a pest problem back then, and the sector came together. Not everyone chipped money, not everyone took the outcomes, but that's the first time they came together as a sector, and um they sort of solved a problem, and then they continue to use that to solve other problems that existed, and then now that's become the Cotton Development Authority. So we've sort of taken that model, copied it to 2025-2026, and copied it for HCAR, and essentially work on a model of co-opetition. So you uh um you you collaborate and compete at the same time. Um, and we're going through the first couple of projects at the moment where again you were really helping to scale projects. So one's focused around uh a leadership and retention model, and another one are projects focused on uh use of data to enable decision making. And again, we've got um home care, residential, we've got regional, rural, and remote, metro, we've got for-profit, not-for-profit, so we've got the whole mix. Um, and what we're going through is about 14 organizations are going through that with us at the moment. They're in the final phase, which is where they're implementing things for themselves, where they're at. So there's a model, but then we work with individual organizations on where they're at and where they want to move the needle to, and it's been a very rewarding um project. Also, along the way, what we've been hearing from the participants in this in this program is that as much as uh this program is supporting them to grow and progress what they want to do, the other piece is they're speaking with like-minded individuals, they're sharing information with like-minded individuals across the country, which then means they're saying our provider A can say, Oh, look, I'm struggling with this, and uh not sure we've we've got these two different options to go down, but really tossing up how to go. And provider D might go, actually, we've been there six months ago, and this is what we did, do this because it works, and don't do A, B, and C because it doesn't work. And that's so rich because that's the sector collaborating genuinely to support each other and grow. And I think that's the power of it. Overarching all of that is our knowledge and implementation hub. So across all of our programs, um, as an evidence-based organization, what we do is we put out evidence-based information that's in lay language for everyone to use, and you can, depending on who you are, you can filter and use that. But then what we also do is constantly add more to it, more topics like dementia or clinical governance or socialization and whatnot. But we also feed back what we hear from the sector through our projects that we do, through where the grants we give out, etc., so that that feeds to the knowledge base, so that it's one place where you can come to to pick up what's happening, what works in contemporary aged care. So that sort of ties in with all of that. And as you can imagine, as an organization that does this kind of work, uh, we sort of also then um started getting asked to do can you do this sort of consulting work for us? Can you do, can you help us implement this in our aged care organization? Or can you help us with our technology with this problem solving this problem for these set of aged care providers? Can you evaluate this for us? So we started doing all of that on a on a cost recovery basis for the sector. And finally, we became a charity last year, which means that along the way we've picked up areas where there hasn't been a lot of effort in. Um, so you know, First Nations is one area that's we've been really pushing the boundaries on, and we are an absolute ally supporter of uh a First Nations governance group. So they're leaders, uh First Nation leaders that then tell us what to do, and we then support them. As an example, then we're now looking at you know LGBTIQ plus care as another area, regional, rural, and remote as another area, and culturally and linguistically diverse populations as another area. So that's sort of a mesh of what we do, but overall, what we do is make sure that at the end of the day we stay through to our mission, which is again empowering the workforce and making sure that all the people receive the best there that they can.

SPEAKER_00 15:11

Wow, that's amazing. I I love that. It's like ARIA is doing so much for the sector and they're working within the sector and really um listening to what providers need, which I think is awesome. Where do you think providers stand with technology? Do you think um what do you think about the appetite for digital transformation at the moment?

SPEAKER_01 15:37

As you can imagine, it's a bell curve. Um there are providers at the front end and at the at the l at the uh uh latter end and as well as in the middle. Um and aged care is no uh exception to that. But what I find very interesting is passion. So coming from outside of aged care into aged care, something that you pick up relatively quickly is how passionate people are, how driven people are in a very tough environment. Whether it's the CEO of an organization or whether it's a personal care worker on the front line, you could see that passion across the board. Uh, and that's been phenomenal. How does that then work with um um you know innovation and transformation? Because of that passion, everyone's working towards wanting to make a difference, they want to make uh um their workforce culture uh and the organization well and and and therefore obviously, and most importantly, care for the individual as much as they can in a more person-centered way. So that's sort of the overall lens. Um obviously, um, if you look at sort of the mid to bigger end of age care, obviously they have scale, which then helps them to try different things. Um and they have a lot more appetite because they have that scale to then do things. In saying all of that, um I have equally seen smaller organizations do quite innovative and transformative things. And uh the other uh interesting thing uh which I love is there's a lot of groups of age care providers around the country that have formed themselves into small groups and they then work together to support each other and solve problems together, which is phenomenal. And what it also then says is um on the flip side, if you are a tech company um or if you if you've got an innovative solution to something like this, if you're approaching these groups or if you're approaching these bigger organizations, you suddenly, if you can if you've got enough evidence to show that whatever you're working on works, then you can scale relatively quickly as well, um, which is fantastic. Now I'm not gonna pretend that uh it's hunky-dory. I mean, of course, we're in an environment where you know you often hear compliance costs have tripled, um, at least that's what I'm hearing. Um, work for worker shortage hasn't gone away. Um but um you can definitely see that everyone's trying to be more innovative and everyone's trying to transform their organizations and themselves. So that most important thing is that by using efficiencies, whether through AI or tech or whatever, that that then frees up the time for workers to do the most important bit, which is caring for the older person.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

Yeah, awesome. Um, obviously, over the past couple of years, AI has become a very hot topic. How do you think the sector is responding to AI specifically? Do you think there is a lot of interest in that space?

SPEAKER_01 18:58

Look, again, it's a it's a spectrum, right? And you've got um early adopters who want to be on the front end of the curve. There are a number of providers at that end, um, and equally others who are quite scared and and uh quite skeptical about it, and you know that's no different to general society, right? Um but then if you look at it a bit more holistically and take a step back, AI is yeah, AI is something that's not coming, it's here, and it's here to stay. Um, so it's about then how do you embrace it? And obviously, with anything new, you there's fear of my, you know, is there gonna be workforce cuts? Is there gonna be um is the will it actually do what it says? Uh there's privacy concerns, um, and there's all sorts of things, right? But mostly from my perspective, but also from what I'm hearing across the ecosystem, is this that AI is going to simplify and make things a lot more efficient. Um, rather than you know, spending a lot of time doing um things that can be quite made more uh efficient, AI is gonna take that away. So some examples. I mean, uh you know, I know of uh HK providers who have uh AI built into their whole operating system, um, and it can tell them how they're sitting in terms of compliance, how staff are feeling, how KPIs are being met, etc. etc. I mean, your platform, again, as an example, you know, uses that against uh all the different info that you capture from an organization that based on different levels you can see what exactly is going on and you get a snapshot. The power of it is it can chew through a lot of data and give you meaningful insights. Now, again, there's there's a the there's an asterisk always. Of course, you need to make sure that you set it up the right way, that the data is contained within your organization and there's privacy is uh adequately looked after. Um, obviously, in my opinion, AI is not quite there yet. You need to always take it with a grain of salt and sort of not rely completely on it, but rather use your judgment to see if it's actually makes sense. Um but the future looks very interesting and very promising because I mean, I'd you know, you tell me, right? I mean, I'd much rather um uh look at data and tell me what it think about what it means rather than doing the analysis over and over again to make sure that and then get to an analysis uh or an outcome in in in a few hours' time. If I go into a dashboard and I can see what's going on, that then enables me to start from a very different position rather than doing the analysis myself. And you know, uh whether whether you're a CEO, whether you're an analyst or whoever in the organization, right? Practically, what does that mean? Um Regardless of who you are, and again there's a journey to go through as as RA itself. We internally use AI and we're going on a journey ourselves, and it's about working out what best works for you, and there may be initial pilots that you can do that you can um jump on and sort of get comfortable with it, and then there's gonna be more complicated pieces that come in, but equally making making sure along the way that you know there's a good co-design, core development piece going on, there's a good change management piece going on so that the team are coming along for the ride, they comp they understand what they uh need to understand, they support when they need it. Um, you know, your typical implementation things that you want to make sure that it's done well. Um, but then what what what we're already starting to see happen um is that you know uh uh it's gonna free up people's times regardless of where you are in the hierarchy, so that you can then focus your time on caring for the older person. I mean in a home care setting, if you um if you look at it like that, I mean there's a lot of sensors around that have been around for some time, but then you overlap that with AI, what that means is if person A living in suburb um X suddenly isn't very mobile or active, then the person going and visiting them can go in armed with that information and actually then tailor and personalize their time with them so that the best care happens. So, no, very excited by what AI can do and uh yeah, look forward to how this all unfolds.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Absolutely. You mentioned that it's very much a bell curve when it comes to how keen providers are on technology and AI. What do you think is the biggest misconception for those providers who are a bit skeptical or hesitant to adopt new technology?

SPEAKER_01 24:02

Look, it's uh it's nothing groundbreaking uh uh to sort of really break that bubble, but it's it's like with anything else, you know. Um as I said before, you know, we're all HCAR has been operating on way for thin margins and with compliance costs going through the roof at the moment. Um, everyone's watching their financial health, and rightly so. Um, as one of my board members uh always tells me, you need to exist first to make impact. Um so if you're not there, if you're not financially there, well, you're gone, you can't support people. Um so that's one key criteria. Um so you want to use whatever funds you do have quite wisely, um, and um it's that apprehension of just making sure that where you do spend actually makes a difference. Secondly, um workforce shortages. So again, I'm not telling you anything that you don't already know, but everyone's you know struggling with work, you know, having enough workforce. Of course, there are organizations that are um and doing well and others not so much. But the reality is anything new means that there's going to be a disruption. Um, but some of this you sort of slowly do need to know, otherwise you're gonna get left out. So it's it's it's that apprehension of okay, so we've got the the new act coming in, then that's come in, you've got the new standards that we're all working, making sure working to make sure that it's um making sure that it you're complying, uh in amongst all of that, you're making sure that the person at the center of it receives the best care. So, in amongst all of that, where does this sit as a priority? So, again, as I said before, if you're a much larger organization that has scale, perhaps the opportunity for you to do this, but also the other uh uh model that's been quite successfully working across the country is where organizations big and small come together, they collaborate as a as a hub of different sorts and they you know um together they tried things together, and that way the cost and the and the resource implications are shared across them, and you know, it can be an opt-in or opt-out mechanism depending on the different group. Um that way it means that whatever you learn, if you have capacity to do something, then you share that across the others in that um group, which is another great way to sort of do that, and we're working with a number of different groups across the country on that, including other national groups. And finally, there are, don't get me wrong, there's some incredible small organizations across the country that do great work. Um and it's really about that leadership and where they're in and what they can do. Now, it's not a quite a straightforward um black and white thing, but rather there's it depends on a whole number of factors on where an organization can be and where they're wanting to go. So there's there's really good examples across the board, but yeah, that would be some of my takes on it.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

Can you share an example of a project that they're currently working on or has happened in the past?

SPEAKER_01 27:14

Sure, look, I'll give you a few different examples just to give you a bit of a flavor of what's going on across the innovation and tech um spectrum. Um I guess at the more techy end, look, there's been a couple of projects that we funded, one called Sound Scouts. Um, again, what's happened there is you know, um the team there developed a uh a technology for um assessing hearing for kids, and then they uh found again an opportunity in aged care as well. Um and again our teams worked with them, connected with them with uh uh uh and provided some input into that too. But again, they're now working in the aged care um space. Again, what's what they wanted to do essentially was have a very easy-to-use uh headphone and tablet system that can assess um someone's hearing capabilities where they are. Um and if someone needs then intervention are following that, and they can then refer them to the uh appropriate pathways. And we all know that picking this up early means that someone's not gonna be socially isolated because they can hear, or sorry, because they can't hear, um, but also you know uh hearing loss could be a precursor to a whole different heap of things, including dementia, etc. So it's been a phenomenal uh uh uh uh technology that's worked really well. Um they've now got a couple of grants from us. The first one was more testing it, now they're really then uh co-designing and co-developing it for regional and rural Australia, which again is massive, and uh in the the problems are even more exacerbated there because of distance. Um, so that's one example. Another one is uh MX3 Diagnostics, which again is um it's of a point-of-care hydration testing device. So again, um an H care provider, helping hand, they came to us and said, Look, we have this problem, and through our connections, we heard about this company called MX3 Diagnostics that have developed this point-of-care hydration testing system. Initially, they developed it for mining and defense and elite athletes where hydration is a pretty big deal, uh, but then this was another market for them. So we funded a project where they co-designed and developed it for H care essentially and tested it, and wanted to make sure since the product actually works on osmolarity, they want to make sure that the osmolarity uh of the saliva actually works in works the same way in an older person as in a much younger person as well, that the product was designed for, and it did, and uh you know that's another uh fantastic project that's been tested and growing. Um so that's more at the techie end. Um so if you then look at the innovation and um one of the projects we funded and now is one of is part of the base for the flagship project, one of our flagship projects, the sector-wide scaling project is St Basil's um in South Australia, worked with uh researchers from Griffith University, and they developed a dyad leadership model where um you have a clinical leadership and you have uh non-clinical leadership. And what that means is that in practice there was clear division of labor. Everyone knew where the reporting lines were and communication had to be, and how it had to be, and how the interactions between the two had to be. Um and what what that meant was as a result, uh there was obviously, as you can expect, initially some um, I guess, skepticism about how it might work, but uh Michel Church um drove it and um it's it's um operationalized really well and they found that um workers were much happier because they knew what to do, who to go to for various things, and what the communication up and down was. But also um, you know, the people receiving care were very happy because um, you know, if it's something clinical, they know who to go to, and if it's something non-clinical, they know who to go to. And because of the clarity uh of this, what's what also happened was that people receiving care and their families also felt very empowered that they were the care overall improved, which is a fantastic outcome. But also from a workforce lens, not only was there good communication, there was career, people can see where they can grow into and that sort of thing, but they saw retention grow up go up as well, which is fantastic. So we've now taken that model. We sort of still working with them both in Basil's as well as uh uh Griffith University, but then we're working with six other organizations across the country and working with them on where they're at and how that model can work for them. So it's not a one-size fits all, but rather how can this model work for you over here? Uh, and that's been fantastic. And you know, hopefully in about six months' time we'll have a clear picture of how that's worked and a model of how something that can be um, you know, that was sort of tested and piloted in one organization can be scaled up across the country. So very excited and look forward to that. Um, another one is this is more of a project thing that we did with Booper. Um they wanted to uh go from a very reactive model to a more proactive wellness hub model. So we worked with their teams on um um how that might look like, and we sort of uh again helped them co-design and co-develop that. Um, and then they sort of piloted it, they then um tested it and then operationalized it, and then we went back and evaluated that and it had fantastic outcomes, and that's now across BUPA used that across the country, um, which is uh a fantastic um outcome. And I've heard from them the last time that I checked that others were um very keen on uh tapping into BUPA's model as well, which is again uh going above that dissemination um piece that if you if we can work out how it might work, then then that sort of core model can then then be translated outside as well.

SPEAKER_00 33:38

That's awesome, that's all very exciting. It sounds like there's a lot of innovation within different aspects of aged care, which is amazing to see. Do you feel like there's a particular part of aged care or a particular aspect that could benefit the most from innovation?

SPEAKER_01 33:59

Um wouldn't wouldn't really put one part or other uh that could benefit. I think across the board, and I I think of uh tend to think of uh uh innovation as more of a rising tide that rises everyone up rather than helps its people in uh in different um separately. I mean think of it like that, right? When innovation sometimes gets thought about as some this crazy whizbag thing that you know makes a big, big difference. But it does that's well, that is also innovation, it's more disruptive, but it can also be something quite simple. So one project that we worked on um um in Tasmania was uh with the provider was uh we worked with them on uh a new um um way where um their dining experience works. Um and initially the staff were a bit apprehensive, as you would imagine, uh, because you know that means that what they were used to is different, and that means there's a whole heap of things that need to be reset to that. But essentially what that meant is rather than breakfast getting delivered to someone's room, you have the the dining hall was open, and uh you know there's more community, uh uh there's a communal feeling where people come together, they have a chat, and all of that can happen, and they wanted to trial that. And we supported them with the evidence and how it might work, and we sort of uh uh helped them with that. But the outcomes were phenomenal, where and I'll quote a particular story rather than going boring you with the the data. Um so this there one morning there was a bit of a panic because one person was missing from his room, and um and you know everyone was going, what's going on? So what had happened is this person he had um got gotten up early, got himself dressed, and came to have um breakfast with his friends. Normally, you know, the team usually go go there, help him to do all of that, but he, because of that uh um communal piece and the way because of it was co-designed well and it was based out of other evidence-based models, meant that it had a stronger chance of success. But to see then that actually happen in practice, such a small thing, but it's made a world of difference to that person and others. But also imagine the staff, they would have gone home with their hearts filled that day.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

That's amazing, that's awesome. Is that would you say that's the most rewarding part of your role, seeing these massive changes within the aged care themselves?

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Oh, absolutely. Um part of what keeps me going and uh um um uh my entire team going is that. I'm really blessed with a fantastic team of uh very committed people across the country. Um we now have big teams in SA, in in in Melbourne, in Canberra, and in Sydney. Um, all of them, if you go speak to any of them, this is what keeps us going because the chance to see something um happen, the impact happen on the ground is what keeps us all going.

SPEAKER_00 37:19

That's awesome. Uh finally, my final question for you, Ruben, is what advice would you give to technology companies who want to design solutions for the aged care sector?

SPEAKER_01 37:33

Um I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but what we've seen and uh what our team have seen um um over and over again is a few different things. Firstly, if you co-design and co-develop your technology solution well, you have a much better chance of succeeding. Um it's obvious, but often doesn't get followed. Um secondly, um if you use evidence as your base to then do whatever you're doing, it goes a long way. And again, it's quite simple, but doesn't always happen. Thirdly, there's a lot of help out there. Um, you know, reach out to us. We will, if we can help you directly through our programs, we will. If we are not the experts, we'll say, Have you spoken to that person or that person? And we're very happy to make that connection. HCare is such a wonderful um ecosystem to be a part of where everyone exists, everyone supports each other. So don't be afraid to reach out to others in the ecosystem and actually uh um share where you're coming from, what you're trying to do, and they will quite genuinely give back what they uh things that um um that sort of happened from their view of the world, and through all of that, you have a very rich um experience that you get. So it's quite basic what I'm saying, but there's quite a lot of uh uh um help out there. So, yeah, to summarize that again, you know, do your core design and core development properly. Um make sure it's based on evidence and and be connected with the ecosystem. And if you need help with any all of that, please reach out to Aria, our wonderful team. Um we'll be very, very happy to help you where you are at with whatever you're doing.

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Thank you, Ruben. That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here today and sharing your wealth of knowledge with us. Sounds like there's a lot happening in the aged care sector right now, and the few the next few months and the next few years will really be quite interesting to see what happens. But thank you to everyone for listening and for being part of the Care Exchange. We appreciate you tuning in and being part of the broader conversation shaping our sector. Thank you, Ruben.

SPEAKER_01 39:56

Thank you, well, it was a great chat. Thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_00 39:58

Thank you.