RAAFA Prepares for Digital Aged Care Future with Macquarie Telecom

Macquarie Telecom, part of Macquarie Telecom Group, has signed a deal with aged care provider RAAFA WA to provide SD-WAN technology and help the organisation prepare for the digital aged care future and enable more residents to be cared for at home.

RAAFA is a trusted retirement living and aged care provider in Western Australia operating six retirement villages comprising 1,420 living units and apartments, 19 assisted living units, 446 residential care places and 14 short stay accommodation units.

The organisation worked with Macquarie Telecom to deploy its SD-WAN service to two facilities burdened with poor bandwidth and internet connectivity in Erskine and Albany. This is part of RAAFA’s wider strategy with Macquarie to create a robust, fast, cloud-enabled network to enable increased home care technology services over time.

“One of the key terms of reference for the planned Royal Commission into aged care is how to ensure more people can remain at home as they age,” said Craig Burkett, General Manager - Information, Communication & Technology, RAAFA.

“Technology will play a huge role in that – through sensors in the home, virtual reality and more. We’re leveraging the full suite of Macquarie’s services, including SD-WAN and cloud, to build a network across all our facilities that will enable us to provide a higher standard of care for the elderly in WA.”

Macquarie is deploying SD-WAN to two ‘problem sites’ while also providing fibre, point-to-point, cloud and managing RAAFA’s router network to enable the organisation to gradually introduce more home care digital services.

Prior to the SD-WAN deployment, Erskine and Albany staff could not reliably access services such as security, CCTV monitoring and financial systems. The network also experienced a complete outage on a monthly basis.

The technology has increased speeds by five-fold, reduced outages to zero and given better control and visibility to RAAFA over its network, bringing it up to speed with other sites and giving the organisation a stronger, more intelligent network across all sites.

“RAAFA is putting its residents first by building a network capable of delivering home care technology our elderly need,” said Luke Clifton, Group Executive, Macquarie Telecom.

“A fast, robust and resilient network leveraging modern technology coupled with cloud services is vital to achieving that. Most businesses have one or two ‘problem sites’ and SD-WAN is the perfect solution to that – we’ve launched a free proof-of-concept trial to prove that and fix these sites for Australian businesses for free.”

Macquarie’s SD-WAN technology has increased speeds by five-fold, reduced outages to zero and given better control and visibility to RAAFA through the orchestrator, which can provide full visibility over up to 2,500 applications in real time.

Find out more about RAAFA WA.