IP Telephony Solution Breaks New Ground in Aged Care Service

Dimension Data IP Telephony Solution Breaks New Ground in Aged Care Services in New Zealand
The Selwyn Foundation to benefit from unprecedented connectivity, enabling faster, better coordinated services to independent residents of their retirement villages

New Zealand, 23 May 2011 – Dimension Data New Zealand, the country's leading IT solutions and services company, has been appointed by The Selwyn Foundation, one of New Zealand's largest charitable providers of aged care services, to implement an upgraded IP telephony, switching and routing solution. The deal, which marks Dimension Data New Zealand's first 'connected healthcare' project in New Zealand, will see upgrades at two of The Selwyn Foundation's eight retirement villages, with plans for further upgrades at other sites in the future.

Communications technology is transforming the aged care sector, and the improved connectivity will mean that essential services such as emergency nurse calls will be better supported than ever before, enabling residents to call nurses any time of the day or night using a single touch button, and allowing calls to be monitored and prioritised with greater speed and ease.

"The opportunities for modern IT to benefit older people is often overlooked, but improving connectivity is an important component of improving retirees’ quality of life," said Tracey Leyston, ICT Manager of The Selwyn Foundation. "Anything that we can do to facilitate better services to our residents is imperative for us, and this upgrade will improve the reporting of incidents, meaning they can be tracked by room number, day, time and nature, giving us an efficient way to gather the business intelligence that allows us to improve service delivery."

The upgrades took place within two relatively new independent living apartment buildings (comprising 60 apartments in total) at the Foundation’s Selwyn Village and Selwyn Heights retirement villages in Auckland. The project involved the installation of large screen touch phones and a unified communications solution consisting of Cisco Communications Manager, Unity Connection for voicemail, analogue integration for fax, modems, EFTPOS and analogue telephones as well as a number of other applications and services

“While only some of the capacity we have put in place is currently being used, Selwyn has future-proofed its residences with the help of Dimension Data and plans to deploy a number of services such as smart monitoring of appliances as well as other hardware and devices. The upgrade also provides a platform for a host of new services including telephone and internet provision and, in the future, telemedicine, remote health monitoring and video conferencing for independent residents,” added Leyston.

With the over-65 population expected to increase by 84% by 2026, ‘connected healthcare’ solutions will become increasingly important both for healthcare service users and providers.

"We invested the time to become fully familiar with the client's existing resources and future requirements," said Robin Hartendorp, CEO of Dimension Data New Zealand "We needed to leverage the best of what they already had, integrate the benefits they were looking for and then ensure that the services were performing at their best for their residents. This was Dimension Data's first healthcare sector project in New Zealand, and we hope it has demonstrated our capabilities and paved the way for future opportunities in the field."

ENDS

About Dimension Data New Zealand
(formerly known as Datacraft (NZ) Limited and Integral Axon)
Dimension Data New Zealand, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Dimension Data plc, operates in over 60 offices across 49 countries around the world. Dimension Data helps clients plan, build, support, manage, improve and innovate their ICT infrastructures. It combines an expertise in networking, business applications, security, data centre solutions, Microsoft solutions and converged communications & contact centre technologies, with advanced skills in consulting, integration, training and managed services to design ICT solutions to accelerate the business ambitions of its clients. Dimension Data is a member of the NTT Group. www.dimensiondata.com/nz

About Selwyn Foundation
The Selwyn Foundation is one of New Zealand’s largest, not-for-profit providers of services to the elderly and has been serving older people in New Zealand with integrity and respect for over fifty years. With its head office in Auckland, the Foundation provides residential care, independent retirement living and community services for the aged, and owns or manages a total of eight retirement villages across the upper North Island.

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