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 first in a series unpacking the ideas and conversations shaping the future of ageing in Australia.

Professor Kathy Eagar AM is a health services academic and clinician who is Adjunct Professor at UNSW Faculty of Medicine and Health and QUT. Credit: AM Visuals

Australia is on the brink of a care crisis, with governments and communities unprepared for the surge in Australians aged over 80 who will need home or aged care in the coming decade, the NSW Smart Sensing Network’s 4th Ageing Forum heard last week.

“The baby boomers are coming, ready or not,” health services academic and clinician Professor Kathy Eagar AM said.

“We have to stop a conversation which talks about ‘them’ and ‘us, because we either are the baby boomers or we are the children or the grandchildren of the baby boomers and we have to stop thinking of old age as ‘their problem’ and understand that it’s our issue as a society, community and as a family.”

The Adjunct Professor at UNSW Faculty of Medicine and Health said in a decade “there are going to be more than 2 million people over 80 in Australia, and 700,000 of those are going to be in New South Wales”.

The Professor warned that Australia, which is already facing a waiting list of over 200,000 for homecare packages, could see that waiting list double within a decade.

“We’ve had 80 years to prepare for this moment,” Professor Eagar said. “Neither the Commonwealth nor the states are ready, and I wonder how much longer they think they need.”

The audience at the forum included experts from health, government, industry and research. Credit: AM Visuals

She described 80 as the “magical number” when most Australians begin to require support to live independently at home and warned the federal Support at Home reforms, which took effect on Saturday (1 November), fall well short of what is needed.

She said government modelling still appears to focus on the 65+ population, a cohort that typically has some superannuation, rather than the 80+ group, where the real demand lies and where most people have none.

“The population growth for people 80 and over is double that of 65 and over.”

She described the aged care reforms, which rely on increased consumer payments, following revelations in the forward estimates of $18.8 billion in aged care budget cuts, as “madness,” “uneconomical” and “unethical.”

“The myth underpinning much of the aged care system is that all baby boomers are cashed up and able to self-fund their retirement,” she said.

“In reality, our most vulnerable older people aren’t those with self-funded retirement schemes: it’s everyone else (who doesn’t have that financial security).”

The health policy researcher was critical of the bureaucratic division between Commonwealth-funded aged care and state-run health services, saying the result was older people falling through the cracks, ending up in hospitals where they decondition and lose independence.

She said ageism was rife in the health system and “every old person” was the job of every health professional.

The forum was opened by NSSN Human Health Lead Catherine Oates Smith. Credit: AM Visuals

“Aged care is a Commonwealth responsibility, but we need to understand that every failure in Commonwealth systems — be they in aged care, disability, or childcare — ends up being the responsibility of the state government, because the state is always the safety net under the Commonwealth.”

The 80 plus cohort is mostly women, she said, many with little or no superannuation, making them more vulnerable to poverty, housing stress and homelessness.

In her keynote speech on the direction of sensor care, Professor Eagar called for urgent collaboration across all levels of government and the private sector to create technology-enabled care systems which keep people healthy, safe and connected at home.

“There are going to be an extra three-quarters of a million people over 80 in the next decade, and we don’t have the systems in place,” she said.

“Smart sensing has to be part of our solution. We do not have the workforce, and certainly government doesn’t have the tax to pay for it all.”

But she also warned against smart sensing making loneliness and social isolation, “the single biggest issue confronting older people”, worse.

“We are not helping if we create lots of devices that make people even more socially isolated, while we treat them as a subject to be monitored rather than a human to be engaged with,” Professor Eagar said.

Professor Eagar’s address set the tone for a forum which brought together experts from health, government, industry and research to explore how sensing, data and digital innovation can support Australians to age with dignity and independence.

Experts call for radical rethink of aged care

(L-R) The Sensor Care Direction - Who Pays? panel was moderated by Dr Jill Freyne, NSSN Board Deputy Chair. Panellists included Prof Kathy Eagar AM; Glenda Gartrell, consumer representative for SPHERE; Richard Taggart, Chief Executive of eHealth NSW and CIO of NSW Health; and Chris White, Senior Staff Specialist, Prince of Wales Hospital and Conjoint Prof at UNSW. Credit: AM Visuals

A subsequent panel discussion exposed the deep fractures and opportunities in Australia’s health and aged-care systems and examined how better data, technology and policy integration could help older Australians live safely and independently at home.

Senior Staff Specialist, Prince of Wales Hospital and Conjoint Professor, UNSW and UTS, Professor Chris White, said after years of working in hospitals he realised “the tsunami is coming”.

He said emergency departments had effectively become “the default front door” for many older Australians who could have been supported at home if community care and technology systems were stronger.

“We’ve got to find a way to give them care without them having to come through the ED, because that’s not what should be happening,” he said.

Chief Executive, eHealth NSW and CIO, NSW Health, Richard Taggart described eHealth NSW’s progress toward a secure, interoperable digital health ecosystem across the state, which enabled patient information to flow seamlessly between hospitals, GPs and aged-care providers.

He said consumers increasingly expect their information to follow them, not sit in disconnected systems, and that achieving true person-centred care will require integrating health and aged-care data so clinicians can see the full picture.

“It’s about how we provide care when you come into hospital, how we provide care when you go home, and making sure it’s consistent and high quality,” Mr Taggart said.

The gendered reality of ageing

Glenda Gartrell is a consumer representative for the Sydney Partnership for Health, Education, Research and Enterprise. Credit: AM Visuals

Consumer representative Glenda Gartrell (86) urged policymakers to recognise ageing as a women’s health issue, noting that mothers and daughters carry the bulk of unpaid care work, often at great personal cost.

She said women live longer with fewer financial resources yet remain under-represented in decisions shaping health and aged-care policy.

Ms Gartrell also challenged what she described as a damaging narrative that meeting the needs of older Australians comes at the expense of younger generations.

She said policymakers must stop framing ageing as “an old people’s problem” and instead recognise it as a community issue, noting that ageing affects everyone.

“We all have mothers, brothers, sisters, children, grandchildren, and we really have to challenge this issue,” Ms Gartrell said.

Professor White said the Healthy@Home initiative showed how government, academia and community could work together to help older people remain well and independent at home.

He said sensors could now detect when people were becoming unhealthy at home, both physically and mentally, yet the system still lacked the “feedback loop” needed to trigger a timely response.

He said the model already had the right structure, linking policy, research and service delivery, but lacked sustained funding.

Technology must be human-centred

Senior Staff Specialist, Prince of Wales Hospital and Conjoint Professor, UNSW and UTS, Professor Chris White. Credit: AM Visuals

While panellists agreed that technologies such as fall-detection devices, smartwatches and remote monitoring could transform home-based care, they warned against a one-size-fits-all approach.

Ms Gartrell said many older Australians, particularly women, remain hesitant to adopt new technologies and called for better education and design that “meet people where they are.”

Professor White said technology should enhance, not replace, human connection.

He said humans are social beings and that isolation is itself a health risk, and any digital solution must strengthen rather than erode community ties.

The panellists said lasting aged-care reform requires closer collaboration between federal and state systems, as well as a cultural shift in how Australians view ageing.

They called for a move toward preventative, community-based models of care that blend medical, social and digital support.

Richard Taggart, Chief Executive, eHealth NSW; CIO, NSW Health. Credit: AM Visuals.

The speakers criticised the disconnect between Commonwealth-funded aged care and state-run health services.

The audience heard how aged care would benefit from a systems thinking approach which reconnected what already exists rather than continually reinventing new programs, citing community health centres and local service networks as proven models that need revitalising.

Professor Eagar warned that governments have neglected proven community models of care.

“You only have to look at community mental health to see how little of it there is now,” she said. “We know what works, but we just don’t do it.”

Professor White said aged-care services must be designed around local communities, not centralised systems.

“All healthcare is local,” he said. “Care should begin and remain in the community.”

Click the photo gallery to view highlights of the 4th Ageing Forum