Australia’s aged care sector spent 2025 preparing for the most sweeping set of reforms in more than a decade.
As the new Aged Care Act and Support at Home program drew closer to a November 1 commencement date, providers, vendors and policymakers moved towards digital implementations and innovation to make for a smooth transition.
Through the first half of 2025, providers were still wrestling with the fundamentals: interpreting technical requirements, preparing for Notice of Intent (NOI) certification and figuring out which platforms could support new funding and invoicing rules.
Sector leaders repeatedly emphasised that aged care’s digital foundations, particularly interoperability, were a major challenge.
Early in the year, calls for up to $600 million in ICT investment underscored the scale of what providers would need to lift themselves into compliance.
Peak body Ageing Australia commented: “While technology has the potential to create efficiencies (e.g. streamlining reporting), there is significant variation in digital maturity across the sector and many providers are experiencing financial viability challenges. Consequently, it is unlikely that providers will be able to harness the opportunities technology offers without financial support.”
The Act’s deferral to November 1 provided temporary breathing space, but it didn’t slow the digital push. Instead, it put laser focus on what would be required to go live smoothly: Realtime data capture, transparent reporting and the ability for systems to speak to each other.
By late 2025, early NOI certifications and positive first weeks of Support at Home invoicing signalled a degree of readiness among proactive providers. AlayaCare General Manager ANZ Annette Hili said: “The successful submission demonstrates the power of collaboration between industry and government to deliver a more efficient, transparent, and reliable system for care providers and recipients.”
New Act driving major digital overhaul
Australia’s new rights-based, person-centred Aged Care Act 2024 came into force on November 1 2025, replacing the 1997 legislation and aligning with the launch of the new Support at Home program.
The implementation of the Act marked the start of a significant uplift in aged care digital systems. The Department of Health, Disability and Ageing said ongoing digital reform was needed to support the new Act and Support at Home, with digital systems already delivering services to more than 1.5 million older people and underpinning business processes for providers and assessors.
Minister for Aged Care and Seniors Sam Rae said it was vital aged care stayed connected to the health system, not siloed from it. “As our population ages, the lines between health, housing and aged care will continue to blur – and our system has to be ready for that.”
Key system changes went live on day one. These included the new Government Provider Management System (GPMS) Registered Provider Portal for maintaining organisation information and completing mandatory reporting under the Act, improvements to how supporter relationships are registered and managed in My Aged Care and new functions for assessors to record client preferences for assistive technology, home modifications and end-of-life services.
The Integrated Assessment Tool classification algorithm is now mandatory in all assessments, and residential aged care place allocations are recorded in My Aged Care to align with the new “Places to People” approach.
The Act sits alongside the Aged Care Data and Digital Strategy and Action Plan 2024–2029, which sets the direction for a “digitally connected aged care system” and aims to use data and digital innovation to improve care quality, reduce administrative burden and give older people better access to information and services.
The new Act also underpins changes to data standards and oversight, with national aged care data collections being updated to align with the new legislation.
Data, digital maturity and interoperability
Government agencies, peak bodies and digital health collaboratives repeatedly stressed the sector could not deliver safer, higher-quality or more person-centred care without a functioning data backbone.
The Australian Aged Care Data Landscape Report, a collaboration between the Digital Health CRC and CSIRO’s Australian e-Health Research Centre, said: “One of the ways CSIRO is championing this is through the Sparked FHIR Accelerator, which together with our partners HL7 Australia, Department of Health and Aged Care and the Australian Digital Health Agency, is working with the community to create data standards for Australia.”
A National Centre for Healthy Ageing-led project team at Monash University developed and tested a new co-designed Digital Health Summary tool. A trial conducted by Peninsula Health and the National Centre for Healthy Ageing (NCHA), in partnership with South Eastern Melbourne Primary Health Network, Outcome Health, Ambulance Victoria and aged care providers, integrated the Digital Health Summary into three aged care sites in the Frankston and Mornington Peninsula Region in Victoria.
In November, the publication of the final report of the My Aged Care review by the Inspector General of Aged Care Natalie Siegel-Brown shed light on the many issues confronting the digital front door to aged care. My Aged Care was meant to be accessible to all, and yet it is “onerously complex” the report says.
Artificial intelligence and advanced technologies
Virtual care maintained a strong footing in 2025. While residential settings continued to adopt digital clinical systems at varied speeds, home and community care experimented with trials focused on access, workforce efficiency and early intervention.
Conversational AI and virtual assistants showed promise for home-care workflows, training and medication support. Silverchain piloted a conversational assistant specifically for the in-home sector. While virtual nursing care was not intended to replace face-to-face services, it aimed to extend clinical expertise to homes in need, improving care continuity for residents.
Silverchain Executive Director, Research & Innovation Tamra Bridges said it was designed to improve the client’s care experience at Silverchain by resolving common client concerns around the scheduling and communication of their appointments.
“This pilot is about using AI in an innovative way that puts people receiving care in the home in control of their care, while simultaneously freeing up our teams to focus on what matters most – providing the best care, to every person, every time,” Ms Bridges said.
The year saw a clear lift in the sophistication of aged-care technology. Deployments focused on targeted problems: falls prevention, medication safety, gait abnormalities, cognitive support and workflow assistance. There was also inspiration from vendors using virtual reality for aged care residents to enhance their quality of life with travel and other personalised experiences.
Successful pilot projects by national not-for-profit organisation iLA trialed assistive technology placement using augmented reality. iLA Manager Research and Community Impact Eleanor Kennett-Smith said: “When the opportunity came to leverage advanced technology, the iLA team knew the pain points impacting the aged care sector, particularly difficulty implementing reablement, which is now embedded in aged care quality standards. The AI tool was designed to embed reablement in care plans, help providers meet quality standards, streamline workflows, and improve client outcomes.”
AI-enabled pain-assessment tools, falls-risk dashboards, and sensor-driven monitoring systems continued to gain traction. AI for dementia diagnostics and early detection drew strong interest, backed by new research collaborations. Perx Health, the NSW developer of a digital care management program, was one of seven innovative companies to receive a share of nearly $16 million funding from the CUREator + Dementia and Cognitive Decline BioMedTech Incubator.
The World Alzheimer’s Report 2025 released in the lead up to World Alzheimer’s Day (September 21) had a list of recommendations including embracing rehabilitation as part of ‘precision care’. It said recent scientific innovations, such as blood-based biomarkers, had enabled the dementia community to focus more on precision medicine and personalised care. “The new dialogue is around ‘precision diagnosis’, ‘precision treatment’, and ‘precision risk reduction’.
The narrative across the year was less about AI replacing clinicians and more about augmenting an overstretched workforce. Providers were seeking tools to save time, reduce cognitive burden and offer early warning signals.
Vendors continued to consolidate, with acquisitions aimed at building end-to-end capability across assessment, scheduling, billing, medication management and analytics.
Cloud-native platforms gained ground as providers moved away from on-premise systems that couldn’t keep pace with reform requirements.
Research bodies and CRCs injected new momentum into workforce development, dementia innovation and data-driven care. Providers themselves became more active participants in trials and pilots, seeking tools that aligned with both their reform obligations and their operational pain points.
In December the national Care Economy Cooperative Research Centre, headquartered at La Trobe University, started on its mission to transform the $327 billion care economy.
“We will improve how care is delivered in Australia by enabling sector-wide transformation, boosting productivity, and delivering fit-for-purpose, people-centred solutions that meet the evolving needs of Australians,” said Care Economy CRC Chair Deena Shiff.
In 2026, as the new Act beds down, we can expect to hear more about technology innovations supporting providers in the most practical sense
Aged care & community thought leadership
What if aged care had a black box? By Rallas Buttriss, Chi Youssef and Theo Kotze from DB Results.
The digital future of residential aged care in Australia by Sanjiv Verma, Vice President, Asia Pacific, Ruckus Networks, CommScope
Failing the frontline, by Sylvia Vasas, Chief Marketing Officer at Humanforce
New Aged Care Act, a series by Annette Hili, ANZ General Manager, AlayaCare
Part One: How residential and home care providers can navigate the Aged Care Act in 2025
Part Two: Residential care, digital transformation & a focus on security
Part Three: The future of home care
Compliance with heart: How AI brings sonder to aged care, By Perry De Silva, Director of Governa.ai
Aged care sector overcoming challenges, by Dr George Margelis, chief technology advisor Ageing Australia
*Note to our readers: With the wealth of innovation and development across the digital health ecosystem, our year-in-review articles are highly curated and written to reflect some of the key themes and milestones for the year and are not intended to be a comprehensive summary.
