Health: Tchnology helping older people

Paulin is the co-ordinator of older persons and residential aged care at Inner East Melbourne Medicare Local and looks after online and remote health initiatives.

She co-ordinates a small team responsible for addressing local healthcare needs and service gaps through e-health and telehealth initiatives. A big part of her role involves adopting e-health and telehealth technologies (such as video conferencing software) to facilitate remote consultations between aged care providers and healthcare practitioners (such as GPs and specialists).

Paulin says one of the recent remote consultations she facilitated, between a dementia patient – supported by their next of kin and a residential aged care nurse – and a doctor, significantly benefited the patient's well-being. It spared the patient, who had a skin cancer on her back that was causing discomfort, a trip to hospital. The trip would have been a costly one, adds Paulin, involving the patient's sedation, placement on a trolley, transportation by ambulance and hours of waiting in a holding bay – all for a quick appointment.

"It's rewarding when I'm able to see someone getting access to medical care that they would not have had otherwise," Paulin says. "You see how grateful people are that you've made something that can be very traumatic so much easier."

Paulin has certificate IV qualifications in frontline management and workplace training and assessment.

Although she began her career in hospitality, the event management skills she developed were transferable enough to lead her to a job organising GP education events. She has since worked in a variety of healthcare roles in areas such as business development, quality improvement and service co-ordination.

Having joined IEMML in mid-2012, her main job focus now is IEMML's telehealth program. She's engaging a growing number of aged care providers and healthcare practitioners with tablet devices and video conferencing software, signalling the advance of broader treatment options for patients with mobility issues and dementia.

Paulin says it's rewarding to have a career that allows her to take ownership of a variety of diverse projects for their duration.

"It's really satisfying to see a project through from having written a grant application through to implementing the project through to the conclusion of the project. It's really rewarding when you follow the whole process and you can see where you have achieved things."