Experts from the Caring Futures Institute (CFI) at Flinders University in South Australia are pioneering a new approach to better serve Australia’s aged care community suffering from dementia. In response to the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety’s appeal for improved aged care in Australia, they’ve integrated eye-tracking technology to amplify the voices of the elderly, ensuring their feedback drives positive and effective change and improvements in aged care.
Dr Rachel Milte, a senior research fellow at Matthew Flinders, emphasises the transformative impact of the new eye-tracking technology in improving the online assessment tools to enable a wider collection of self-reported quality of care and quality of life information from older people themselves.
‘Older adults living with a diagnosis of dementia in residential care can find it challenging to respond to traditional text-based questionnaires to rate the quality of life and quality of care they receive,’ says Dr. Rachel Milte in a new article published in Quality of Life Research.
‘By using eye-tracking technology, we can collect crucial information about how older people with dementia read and respond to questionnaires, helping to understand how we can better design and adapt these for their needs.’
In the face of the significant statistic that over 50% of residents in Australian aged care facilities have been diagnosed with dementia, aged care services worldwide are bracing for a surge in elderly populations. Predictions suggest that the number of individuals aged 65 and over is set to double within the next three decades.
The team at Flinders University has previously made notable advancements in the sector and is credited with the development of two revolutionary quality assessment tools—the Quality of Life-Aged Care Consumers (QOL-ACC) and the Quality of Care Experience-Aged Care Consumers (QCE-ACC)—which are now available and being used throughout the sector.
A study involving the technology had 41 residents with cognitive abilities ranging from none to mild or moderate impairment take a simple quality-of-life questionnaire. The installed eye-tracking system documented the participants’ eye movements in real time, capturing which sections they focused on and which they overlooked.
Dr Milte asserts, ‘This information helps us to design questionnaires which are easier for older people to complete, as well as understand whether they are reading all the key information to give high-quality data for use in assessing the quality of care in residential aged care homes.’
Building on this innovative initiative, Dr. Milte and her colleague Dr. Jyoti Khadka have secured funding through the Australian Association of Gerontology Strategic Innovation Grant to expand their research.
‘The next project will focus on maximising self-completion of questionnaires and reduce the need to rely on proxy assessments by family members or close friends, which will support the scalability and cost-effectiveness of the National Aged Care Mandatory Quality Indicator Program,” says Dr. Khadka.
‘To have an aged care system which truly meets the expectations of all Australians, we need to understand the quality of care of all older people from their own perspectives. This includes people with dementia,’ he says.
‘We know from research in the disability sector and aphasia (language disorder) research that people with communication difficulties can self-report their own quality of life if instruments are tailored to their needs and abilities,’ he says.
The research will draw together information from diverse research areas, including accessible communication, aged care research and health economics and bring it together for the first time to develop quality assessment tools that support the inclusion of self-reported quality of life and quality of care data from people living with dementia.
These accessible communication tools will be designed to be applied alongside traditional text-based questionnaires to enable a broad understanding of the quality of care experienced by older people in residential aged care.
‘Ultimately, the new tools will provide accurate information to policymakers and practitioners about which innovations in care should be funded to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of all older Australians,’ concludes Dr. Milte.
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