eQALY, an integrated tech platform built to empower elderly people to live the highest quality of life possible in their own homes, is posed to solve some of the biggest challenges Australia faces amid the growing ageing population.
After recently being invested in by Antler, a global early-stage venture capital firm, the startup is positioning itself to take on aged care in Australia head on.
“eQALY is a proactive care solution to enable people to stay at home with a good quality of life for longer,” says co-founder Andy Laws.
“From the interim royal commission report, we have learned that the aged care policy and systems are broken and there is urgency to solve for them.
“We are using technology as a way to help. Our integrated platform signals what’s going on with someone’s health and wellness, and detects any problems early on.”
The startup, which launched in 2020, uses a number of ways to gauge the health and safety of elderly people facing frailty, loneliness, dementia and chronic disease.
“Using multiple data sources including in-home activity and biometric data, feedback from the elderly person, their family and carers eQALY enables proactive identification of concerning trends both short and long-term,” Laws says.
“That data informs a proactive model of care, managed through the eQALY dashboard which care workers and family members can talk through to prioritise care for the day. It assists them with decision support.”
Laws is a domain expert having worked for several years at GenesisCare in healthcare operational transformation roles, along with that solving the problem is close to his heart, having had a personal experience dealing with the aged care sector.
“I worked at Genesis Care in cardiology, so am familiar with the business challenges of traditional, team-based models. The process and workloads are reduced so there are no barriers and information can be input everyday,” he says.
“My mum in the United Kingdom passed away, prior to which her health deteriorated a lot in the last six months. If she’d had this platform, we would have understood more and got her the right care.”
The eQALY team is moving fast to capture the market and expand operations.
“We are all very motivated. I have experience in business development and design; and my co-founder and Chief Operating Officer, Kelly Tagalan, has operations and go to market experience,” says Laws.
“We’re leveraging a very experienced local software development team who have already added a lot of value around flexible data structure and scalability. They also give us flexibility to match the pace of development to the pace of our growth.”
To date, eQALY pilot has launched with an innovative community care strategic partner helping to design the system with care management and clinical advice in mind.
“We have a pilot with an aged care organisation with 100 patients, and we co-designed the platform with them to make sure it was useable,” says Laws
“We feel that the Care Manager, who has a trusted relationship with the elderly person, is in the best position to recommend a proactive care solution like ours so we expect strong uptake in the Pilot.
“We are not driven solely by the technology, but by the patient’s needs. It’s a way for aged care organisations to be effective, proactively care for patients and keep them well.”
- eQALY was built with and invested in by Antler, the world’s largest early-stage investment platform. If you want to build your next company with Antler, applications for the next cohort can be made here.
- Read more about their recent cohort here.
- StartupDaily is the official media partner of Antler Australia’s Demo Day.
Trending
Daily startup news and insights, delivered to your inbox.