There are 617 million people who are 65 years or older, representing 8.5% of the global population. By 2050, that number is expected to reach 1.6 billion, nearly 17% of the world's inhabitants.^[1]

With a rapidly growing population of elderly people and the increasing rate of chronic illness among them, the aged care industry is under significant strain. Unless action is taken on a number of fronts, the entire industry could soon reach a breaking point.

Here in Australia, for example, a Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety has laid out several recommendations for restructuring the country's aged care system. Chief among them is greater investment in IT, including assistive technologies and other digital innovations that improve the care, safety, and independence of aging individuals.

But before state-of-the-art solutions can be effectively deployed, a number of glaring deficiencies must be addressed. According to the Royal Commission[2], these include:

• Disconnected business processes
• Lack of data collection and sharing
• Poor interoperability
• Obsolete technology
• A fundamental lack of standardization

In other words, the entire industry needs to shore up its technology foundations in order to increase operational efficiency, drive innovation, and improve care for a rapidly growing population of elderly people.

We've been helping our customers in the aged care sector do just that.

One example is Calvary Health Care, which operates 17 retirement facilities, 14 hospitals, and a network of community care centers in Australia. With only four full-time IT specialists, they were struggling with infrastructure management and needed to dramatically simplify their operations.

They did so with Cisco HyperFlex Edge, which is designed for edge locations and can be managed centrally. The platform has accelerated Calvary's server deployments from minutes to days, improved technology redundancy and resiliency, and prepared the company for future growth and innovation.

According to the Royal Commission, these are the types of foundational improvements that are necessary for enhancing the care, support, and wellbeing of aging populations.

"Over the years, the role of information and communications technology (ICT) as a simple support function has evolved into that of a key enabler," the Royal Commission concluded in its ICT Strategy and Architecture Review Report[3]. "Organizations have recognized the scale of impact to their services when poor ICT solutions are delivered and implemented. As a result, organizations are looking for robust and scalable ICT solutions, including architecture approaches, future state roadmaps, and models to ensure long-term effectiveness of their business strategies."

Read the full case study to learn more about Calvary's edge-oriented, cloud-managed infrastructure.

Additional resources

• Transforming Aged Care
• Cloud and compute customer stories
• Cisco data center and hybrid cloud solutions

Footnotes:

[1] https://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/elder-care-market.html

[2] & [3] https://agedcare.royalcommission.gov.au/sites/default/files/2020-12/ict-strategy-and-architecture-report_1_0.pdf