Emerging stronger

From delivering over 500K vaccinations to disability and aged-care residents to achieving over five million completions for its online COVID-19 training platform for the federal Department of Health, global healthcare provider Aspen Medical has played a key role in Australia’s pandemic response.

As a certified Emergency Medical Team (EMT) with the World Health Organization (WHO) for infectious disease outbreaks we were well-placed to support the national and international pandemic response, but we had to rapidly scale technology solutions, employ bigger teams and adopt new operational priorities, said Sanja Marais, General Manager, Technology and Innovation, Aspen Medical.

The company started delivering new services, including technology development, advisory services and PPE manufacturing — all in the middle of the pandemic. “We started a mask manufacturing facility in Queensland, Australia; developed an online COVID-19 training platform for the Department of Health with now over 5 million completions in training; supported multiple government and sporting agencies with hotel quarantine including the Australian Open tennis championship; stood up a telehealth service line to support Healthdirect; and supported the set-up of over 150 general practitioner-led respiratory clinics and developed the clinical software they use to record tests and vaccinations,” Marais said.

Since many respiratory clinics are in regional, rural or remote areas, Aspen Medical chose technology provider Cradlepoint for mobility solutions that deliver the security and robustness of a fixed connection for sensitive patient data, telephony and printing services.

“We had to ensure we maintained quality and focus for our existing clients while expanding our offerings to cater to the growing market requirements. We used technology to digitise training, created remote networks with Cradlepoint for instance. Rapid scaling of technology hardware where the demand was much bigger than the supply required us to leverage our relationships with providers including procurement of mobility solutions as we rolled them out across the country.

“The ability to set up a remote clinic that is fully connected to our network and getting clinicians up and running immediately without having an onsite IT team present was a big game changer for us.” These secure network hubs meant that Aspen Medical’s teams had connectivity, phones, computers and printers while travelling. “Even when we sent out mobile vans, we had connectivity for staff.”

The company could deploy teams faster and get them working without delays. “We can now run online applications where it was previously not possible enabling real-time access to important information like sending vaccination data to our national immunisation register.

“Our key learning from the various projects we ran is that a strong project management capability and technology backbone is crucial in delivering with agility and confidence,” Marais concluded.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/1981 Rustic Studio