innovAGE winners aim to help older Australians live well

innovAGE1 The winners of this weekend's inaugural, aged care innovation event were announced yesterday afternoon.

Held over two weekends, the radical format brings together innovators in aged care, technology, data and design.

The aim is to encourage entrepreneurial thinking to develop, build or launch age related solutions to improve the lives of older Australians and their families.

The wide range of ideas was a reflection of the diversity of participants which ranged from students to developers, designers, engineers and entrepreneurs.

"As a mentor I found the diversity of ideas was impressive as was the commitment to help older Australian's live will," said Kay Richards from Leading Age Services Australia (LASA).

Jim Quick an older Australia and carer participated as one of the judges and added, "I was impressed with the young people's initiatives and their passion to find solutions for so many varied problems older people in general face".

Participants were given access to untapped data relating to the sector, products and API's to play with as well as interaction with real customers, service providers and industry based mentors to inform their ideas.

"A real strength of innovAGE has been the quality of the ideas provided from those inside the industry along with insights and application of concepts unknown to aged care before this event," said Patrick Reid, National CEO of LASA.

Dale Pattison, Senior Associate NAB Health one of the Corporate Sponsors added, "It was great to see so many different ideas and actually seeing people doing something tangible with the idea."

Judging criteria looked at the quality and impressiveness of the idea; its usefulness and practicality; the creative use of technology; potential for further development and it had to be in the spirit of helping older Australians live well.

Anna Pino from Lighthouse Business Innovation Centre, one of the mentors at the event, stressed the importance of collaboration, "The quality and innovative nature of ideas we see emerge from these events is always astounding. But we know that you can't achieve innovation and change in a sector as diverse as Aged Care without strong collaboration and partnerships. We look forward to continuing our work with LASA and helping some of the winning teams go on to commercialise their ideas".