New Zealand-based aged care provider Third Age Health has set up its internal communications in partnership with HIPAA-compliant messaging platform Celo Health.

Third Age Health runs over 50 residential aged care facilities, as well as some primary healthcare services across New Zealand. 

Its partner offers a messaging system that enables seamless and secure collaboration among healthcare teams. One notable feature of its app is On-Call, which allows staff to instantly reach one another. Another feature is a reporting dashboard which provides insights for improvements in resource allocation and other processes. 

Celo Health currently partners with around 800 healthcare organisations in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand.

WHY IT MATTERS

Third Age Health is setting up measures to prepare itself for a new surge of COVID-19 cases caused by the highly transmissible Omicron variant. As part of its preparation, the provider aims to ensure uninterrupted collaboration among its staff via one secure app. "Celo will enable all our clinicians to communicate in a secure way if they need to discuss a patient’s needs or provide handover," said Dr Peter Zink, the hospital's medical director. 

Being able to quickly connect with a colleague without needing to open a laptop to read e-mails is one benefit that Celo will provide to their team, according to Zink, who hopes that the system will help them to operate "seamlessly when we are under pressure".

THE LARGER CONTEXT

New Zealand is now facing an early outbreak of the hyper infectious Omicron variant. On Thursday, it logged in 34 new cases of the variant, bringing the total to 90. Last week, the government announced a phased approach in dealing with the new COVID-19 surge with testing and isolation policies changing each time cases grow.

In other news, Celo Health has recently entered the American market after setting up its headquarters in Seattle early last year. The company said it is close to signing in its first client and is eyeing six more prospects. 

ON THE RECORD

"We’ve committed to being as innovative as we can in finding technology solutions to help our clinician’s feel supported and safe in their work. Celo was an obvious choice because it’s ready to go as a complete solution, it doesn’t require any lengthy development or set up, it’s locally owned and we could implement it quickly," Third Aged Health CEO Tony Wai said about setting up their internal communications.