John Perkins, Founder, CheckedIn Care
Making the world a better place through technology is a common rhetoric that most tech entrepreneurs use while launching a business. John Perkins, the founder of CheckedIn Care has the vision to make the world a better place, too, but his inspiration comes from his personal experiences. John has been working in health and aged care technology for 27 years and he is one of the owners of Ethan Group, Australia’s largest privately-owned IT Company with revenues exceeding $200 M/annum. During this journey, he has always been a huge believer that technology has a major role to play in helping to address the issues faced by the global aging population.
However, it was a tragic incident that first evoked a vision in his mind to create a better quality of life for those needing support through the effective use of technology. In 2006, John lost his daughter Olivia to a rare disease. While coping with unrelenting grief, John and his wife decided to start Touched by Olivia Foundation to bring hope to others through their loss. Today, the foundation is achieving its vision of enabling all kids to play regardless of their ability through an inclusive playground network. During this phase, John realized — “It is not the disability that causes the inability to play, it is the lack of the designed environment, meaning that a proper design can minimize the impact of any ailment.”
This realization was further reinforced in 2014 when John’s father had a fall and broke his hip and went into an aged care home. He lost his independence and social connections, and the designed environment of the care home only exacerbated his depressive decline. This unfortunate incident propelled John to found CheckedIn Care (CIC) in 2015.
Connecting the Aged Care Ecosystem into a Single Service App
CIC is a leading CareTech innovator in Australia that offers optimal and cost-effective aged care telehealth and technology solutions to improve the overall quality of life for the elderly with a better “designed virtual environment. It has developed an award-winning CONNECT app that easily connects the support circle of providers, clients, families, allied health, and the community to share important content, maintain a connection, and deliver services.The companyalso offers a free app called“I Am OK”for families to connect with those who need care in an innovative way. With this app-based technology, those caring for older relatives can start the day knowing their loved ones are OK.
“It has been shown that the use of this platform reduces depression, by reducing loneliness, social isolation, a sense of a lack of independence, and a sense of self-worth. Also, by providing families with all the information they need to know about the care of their loved ones, the family are becoming active participants in the overall care of the seniors,” asserts John.
Enabling Care Providers to Improve Operational Efficiency
Today, the market-leading self-service app platform is utilised across a wide range of health care organizations, homecare, and disability care facilities, and Residential Aged Care Facilities operations. The innovative platform enables care providers to meet the increasing expectations of their staff, clients, and families by offering access to everything they need to in one simple mobile app. It helps the organization to increase revenue and sales by maximizing the ability to spend the full Government allocated budget. This is achieved by giving the client and the family visibility of the budget available, and what items are approved to spend the budget against, all via the self-service app.
“Our sales app is helping care providers increase the occupancy of their care homes. A 1 % occupancy increase per home is worth $120,000 per annum per care home, on average. Also, by allowing clients and their families to have 24×7 self-service via the app, of their appointment setting, care plans, health, and wellness information, statements, and invoices, we have helped reduce call center costs by up to 40%,” affirms John.
The innovative platform reduces paperwork, automates workflows, and makes it simple and easy for staff to get the right information at the right time. It also increases overall compliance, by helping to standardize information and workflows across all sites, but still maintaining the flexibility to provide customized information at a personal level.
Enhancing the User Experience through Excellence and Innovation
CheckedIn Care’s core values revolve around its vision of improving the quality of life by providing a more holistic support approach. Keeping these values as the cornerstone, the company develops convenient, interactive, and cost-effective solutions to help care providers deliver on the new aged and disability care quality standard. It has redesigned the phone and tablet interfaces to make the app simple and easy for the first time user, and those with sight and cognitive impairments, whilst also allowing the senior to seamlessly appoint alternate navigators (usually family Next of Kin) to remotely navigate the app platform on their behalf.
“The overall wellness of a senior is a combination of social, emotional, spiritual, financial, and clinical/care conditions. We track all these inputs through our platform, and use AI to do overall wellness and predictive care analysis to highlight and predict seniors at risk of decline,” explains John. This value-centric approach is what makes CIC unique and truly distinct from its counterpart in the industry.
Aspires To Become the Health Hub for Aged and Disability Care
Over the years, CIC has been awarded on multiple occasions for its innovative aged care solutions combined with its value-centric approach. In 2017, it was honoured with the ITAC (Australian IT in Aged Care award) for the best product for promoting consumer independence. In 2018, it received the award for the best product for reducing depression, based on the study at Uniting Care which showed a 100% correlation to the use of the technology and a reduction in depressive statistics. Currently, a full academic study is ongoing by the Queensland University of Technology highlighting which aspects of its platform have the biggest impact on reducing depression. Moving ahead, CIC aims to continue its innovation with AI models to enable predictive care while expanding its global footprint to reach more people.
“Our roadmap is around predictive care, and being ‘THE health hub for aged and disability care,’ by proving that our platform reduces depression and improves the overall quality of life while enabling organizations to do this at a lower operational cost,” sums up John on a concluding note.