An innovative pilot project from Kindred Home Care, in collaboration with the University of New Brunswick and VeroSource Solutions, aims to create a digital health solution for caregivers working with New Brunswick seniors.
Through the Wellness Check Initiative (WCI), caregivers sit down with their existing clients and ask them questions related to their physical, mental and relational health. The worker enters that data into a secure smartphone app.
The project is jointly funded by the provincial government and the Public Health Agency of Canada. It’s with the hope to create a better understanding of a patient’s health and identify potential issues sooner.
“We deeply believe in awareness as being a key to being healthy,” said Will Bernard, chief operating officer of Kindred Home Care. “The idea is, by the caregiver sitting down for a few minutes checking in, the client has a greater sense of awareness of how they’re doing.”
Bernard said Kindred Home Care first heard about the idea from UNB professor Dr. Erik Scheme, who had been working on a platform called PITCH, which uses a similar concept as the WCI. When Kindred met him and heard the idea, Bernard says they were instantly on board.
“We believe that we can get better at predicting and preventing hospitalizations, falls and other negative health outcomes in advance,” he said. “At the end of this year, there’ll be a report looking back on all the data and then the goal is to assess [if] there are things we could be doing to help people stay at home.”
Bernard said the program’s reception, which started with a smaller test group last year, has been well received by both clients and caregivers. One of the aspects of the pilot was a belief that clients would be interested in knowing their health differently.
“We’ve been thrilled with the response,” said Bernard. “We had this feeling that caregivers would appreciate an opportunity to be more involved with the care of the clients and checking in on them … right away, we had a couple of hundred caregivers that raised their hand.”
Given the current state of seniors’ care in the province, Bernard said having a project like this is crucial, calling it the key to health. He said looking into this data is “baked into the culture” at Kindred Home Care.
“We just have this deep belief that if we just collect the right information sooner, we can help people stay healthy and happy for longer,” he said. “Then there’s time for the care team to make whatever changes are necessary to get additional support in place long before there’s an emergency.”
Aaron Sousa is a summer intern for Huddle, an Acadia Broadcasting content partner.
