Designing Aged Care Products With Dementia Patients and Workforce in Mind

Why It Matters

Putting patients and frontline workers at the center of design improves uptake, effectiveness, and quality of care while avoiding additional workforce strain that would undermine innovations.

Summary

Designing products and services for aged care requires centering the needs of the most vulnerable — including people with dementia whose cognitive decline and altered communication raise unique challenges. Effective design must incorporate direct feedback from care recipients and a full understanding of care delivery workflows so solutions address real problems without adding burdens on staff. If workforce impacts are ignored, well-intentioned products will see poor uptake and fail to improve outcomes. Early, cross-stakeholder co-design and open discussion of care delivery are essential to practical, adoptable innovations.

Original Description

When designing products and services for aged care, how do we ensure the needs of people living with dementia stay front and centre? 🧠

In this episode, the discussion focuses on the importance of inclusive and human-centred design in dementia and aged care innovation. Carmela Sergi from Care Economy CRC, explores why designing for vulnerable populations requires a deeper understanding of communication challenges, cognitive decline, and the realities of care delivery.

Carmela highlights the importance of bringing together people receiving care, caregivers, and the healthcare workforce early in the product development process to create solutions that are practical, effective, and widely adopted.

🩺 Key takeaways:

- Why dementia care requires a unique approach to product and service design

- The importance of co-design with patients, carers, and frontline staff

- Balancing patient outcomes with workforce needs

- Avoiding solutions that unintentionally create extra pressure for healthcare teams

- How collaboration improves adoption and long-term success in healthcare innovation

The discussion also explores how understanding real-world care delivery can lead to more meaningful and sustainable health technology solutions across aged care settings.

🎧 Check out the episode 586 for the full discussions via the Talking HealthTech website, YouTube or your favourite audio podcast player.

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