Meet Lookout: The digital platform revolutionising in-home care
Lookout is the world’s first digital care management platform designed with lived expertise and the customer’s perspective front of mind.
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The world’s first digital care management platform designed with the customer front of mind is set to revolutionise the provision and delivery of in-home care solutions.
In a series of four articles, we will explore the benefits, technology and innovation behind Lookout, an end-to-end ‘software as a service’ digital care management platform which is the groundbreaking result of more than four years of research, development and engineering by home care service provider, Five Good Friends.
Innovative and intuitive, Lookout can transform care organisations of all types and sizes into technology-enabled and data-driven providers that offer transparency, efficiency, coordination and oversight of care in a community setting.
Lookout’s app provides clients and their loved ones transparency and control. The app allows clients to view who is scheduled to visit, when they arrive and depart, and the most up to date version of care plans, funding details, budgets and health and wellbeing surveys.
Experience leads the way
Simon Lockyer is Lookout Way’s CEO and co-founder and CEO of sister company Five Good Friends. Lockyer has built a career in science, marketing and social innovation with strong knowledge and experience in peer-to-peer ‘software as a service’ technology.
Together with lifelong friend Nathan Betteridge, Lockyer co-founded Everydayhero, a pioneering peer-to-peer fundraising platform. He was also the inaugural CEO of not-for-profit Youngcare, which built Australia’s first nursing home for young people with high care needs.
In 2017, Betteridge and Lockyer co-founded Five Good Friends. In 2021 the pair repurposed the proprietary digital care management platform powering Five Good Friends to a white label SaaS solution they call Lookout.
“We spent four years building the technology to power Five Good Friends,” Lockyer says. “By releasing Lookout to other care providers, we hope to make a real difference to an industry that desperately needs it. It can be used by home care providers, NDIS providers and increasingly, retirement villages, so it’s very versatile and flexible.”
A broken system in need of fixing
“As we dug deeper and deeper and deeper, we started to look at the home care category,” Lockyer says.
“We started to have personal experiences with parents and friend’s parents who needed support in the home and we saw just how broken that sector was — we knew that technology could start to solve a lot of the problems and challenges.”
Lockyer says the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety outlined the issues facing the sector.
Among its many recommendations, the Royal Commission highlights the need for the adoption of technology to improve the provision and monitoring of care. Recommendation 68 specifically calls for approved home care providers who deliver personal or clinical care to use a digital care management system by July 2022.
“We have an ageing population who need more services and have an increasing desire to grow old well at home and take more control of their care.
“At the same time we have a skills shortage.
“The only way we’re going to address the Royal Commission recommendations is by truly enabling care providers with technology that improves and makes the service delivery more efficient — and that is what Lookout does.”
Lookout’s three key pillars
In engineering the tech that would drive the platform, Lookout’s engineers focused on three key pillars critical to the success of every care business.
- Remote care monitoring: Providing unparalleled transparency of both the micro and macro insights to attract, service and retain customers.
- Collaboration: Giving staff the right information at the right time to solve inefficiencies and promote collaboration.
- Support: Lookout’s dedicated solutions team and administration tools support care businesses from set-up to ongoing usage.
“The care workers at the front line are the most powerful influence on an experience and on an organisation’s brand,” Lockyer says.
“Lookout is designed to augment and enhance their skills as well — everything that they need to know is at their fingertips which ultimately creates a better experience.”
Machine learning offers an edge
Lookout’s machine learning capabilities allow care workers’ notes to be analysed, and draws care staff’s attention to changes in behaviour or health. Care workers can then respond quickly to investigate and intervene if necessary, allowing them to operate ahead of the curve.
“For the care provider, there’s a whole suite of tools that can be mapped to workflows and processes and keeps everyone informed as to what’s happening in the care of that individual,” Lockyer says.
“For them to be able to know the goals, the background and the interests of the person they’re caring for, as well as the tasks that need to be completed during care visits, are all pivotal to providing the best possible care.
“We want that experience to be as genuine and empathetic as possible. And that’s where Lookout, and all the information it provides, can really make the difference.”
