For the first time, in-home care providers will be able to use and contribute to the same technology, under an announcement made by a handful of reformist meals on wheels providers.
Future Fit Collective utilises software called Open Care Tech. It supports the basic operations of meal providers who deliver fresh and/or frozen meals to older Australians, National Disability Insurance Scheme participants or private clients.
Vendors in the aged care sector, designers and developers have offered to contribute to the software to help in-home care providers improve useability and functionality. It marks a new era in how software can be used to provide essential infrastructure to government-funded in-home care providers.
Two care providers have already committed to using the software and investing in its development, with more expected to follow.
The licensing arrangement means anyone can use the software on the condition that any improvements made in alternate versions of the program also be open-source.
Providing open-source software to anyone who wants it, will not only save taxpayers money, but will help all care providers improve the quality of their services through modern infrastructure, its founders say. It's thought of as the 'new meals on wheels', and signals a way of embracing more innovative ways of working within the sector.
Manager of Sutherland Food Services and Founding Director of Future Fit Collective says the project emphasises innovation. "Building a community of users and ecosystem of paid and volunteer developers is not dissimilar to what each of us does in running a meal service," she said.
"Anyone who has managed a volunteer-driven organisation knows that being able to point to the public good is critical in being able to recruit people to your cause - and this is a unique opportunity for the IT sector to show some love, albeit in-directly, to their grand-parent's generation."
Sutherland Food Services is the major meal service in the Sutherland Shire. Their service delivers between 65,000 - 70,000 meals per year. Sutherland Food Services' model was used as the test case for the Future Fit campaign.
