Sandra Cook, Branch Manager of the Digital Solutions Division at the Australian Digital Health Agency. Credit: AM Visuals

The NSW Smart Sensing Network hosted its 4th Ageing Forum at NSW Parliament House on 30 October 2025, bringing together leaders from health, government and technology to explore how innovation can support Australians to age well. This article is the second in a series unpacking the ideas and conversations shaping the future of ageing in Australia.

Australia is making strong progress toward a digitally connected healthcare system, the NSSN’s 4th Ageing Forum heard last month.

In her keynote address, Sandra Cook, Branch Manager of the Digital Solutions Division at the Australian Digital Health Agency (the Agency), said the five-year National Digital Health Strategy (2023–2028) aims to connect data across the entire health-care ecosystem.

This would link hospitals, aged care, primary care, allied health and other sectors so information can flow where it is needed.

“Part of what we're doing at the Agency is designing our systems to be able to be ready to take information from all layers of this healthcare ecosystem, to help people with their health and wellbeing,” she said.

The federal government is also working to modernise My Health Record by shifting to structured, machine-readable data, integrating medication management and electronic prescriptions, and enabling real-time information sharing, she said.

A Swedish university study recently ranked Australia’s digital health strategy, alongside Estonia’s, as among the strongest globally due to its broad, system-wide approach.

But Ms Cook stressed that significant work remains to turn the strategy into action.

She warned that many specialists still rely on paper records, leaving important information inaccessible and reinforcing an episodic rather than holistic view of patients.

There was also a need for sector-wide collaboration to develop consistent data standards and improve interoperability across health and aged care.

The panellists on the Sensor Care Data panel (L-R): Moderator Professor Ian Oppermann, NSSN Board Member and Commonwealth Data Standards Chair; Harry Iles Man, consumer representative for Department of Health & Ageing; Dr Jill Freyne, NSSN Board Deputy Chair and Healthcare Industry Lead at AWS; Sandra Cook; Sheila FitzPatrick, International expert in data privacy.

“What we have today (in our healthcare sector) was delivered in 2012,” she said.

“It met the need at a certain point, but I'm sure you have probably even heard (Health Minister) Mark Butler call it a shoebox of PDFs: flat files of information that is difficult to go through…we need to modernise our national infrastructure.”

A subsequent panel of experts urged Australia to seize the momentum in digital health and sensor technology while strengthening protections around privacy, consent and data use, warning that innovation must not come at the expense of dignity or public trust.

Sandra Cook said while endless data can be collected from wearables or smart homes, the real task is analysing the data and using it to deliver better outcomes.

“(For example) My 80-year-old dad uses my Apple Watch, and it regularly tells him that his stability is declining,” she said.

“He realised it was because he’d put on a few kilos and wasn’t as steady as before.

Dr Jill Freyne, NSSN Board Deputy Chair and Healthcare Industry Lead at Amazon Web Services.

“He used that information to make changes: he improved his diet and started walking every morning again to build up his balance.”

On the topic of informed consent of the use of data, NSSN Deputy Board Chair and AWS Healthcare Industry Lead, Dr Jill Freyne, said some people are willing to have more monitoring in exchange for safety.

“For example, there’s an aged care centre in Western Australia with video CCTV in every room, and residents are comfortable with it because no human is watching the footage,” she said.

“Artificial Intelligence detects anomalies, and only if something looks wrong does a human review a short clip.”

International expert in data privacy laws, Sheila FitzPatrick, said that while technology can do extraordinary things, it must never be forgotten that the data belongs to the individual and that “when there's a technology project, we must not forget the human is the central part of it.”

Sheila FitzPatrick, International expert in data privacy.

She said people can’t give real consent about their data unless technology companies are fully transparent about where it goes and how it’s used, and most individuals are not equipped to make informed choices because they don’t know what they can refuse to share or why the information is being requested in the first place.

“There are huge opportunities with technology, but people need choices and they need to understand the consequences,” Ms FitzPatrick said.

“I don’t want a camera in my dad’s room, for example. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice dignity for privacy or safety; it should always be a real choice.”

Consumer representative at the Department of Health & Ageing, Harry Iles Mann, said true health reform requires social, economic and structural integration.

“If we’re going to align around health, then we also need to bridge into education, finance, housing, the economy: all the places that shape a person’s life, otherwise, health will continue to operate as a silo, even if we collaborate well within it.”

Harry Iles Man, consumer representative for Department of Health & Ageing.

He said technology can support safety, but true dignity comes from giving people real choice and respecting the context of their lives.

“As a young man, I didn’t especially want to be showered by a female carer, but the alternative was not showering at all. In that moment, I made a conscious trade-off — and that made the experience dignified, not demeaning.”

He said everyday settings, from nightclubs to shopping centres, use surveillance without real consent, and only broader legislation, regulation and societal digital literacy can address the problem.

The panel was moderated by Professor Ian Oppermann, NSSN Board Member and Commonwealth Data Standards Chair.

How Australia is building a connected, person-centred, data-driven health system