Background
With Australia’s ageing population driving a rapid increase in dementia, Australian digital health company Healthily has received funding to develop an innovative voice AI platform designed to identify cognitive decline earlier and support older people to remain well and independent for longer.
An estimated 446,500 Australians are living with dementia in 2026, a number projected to exceed one million by 2065 without significant intervention. Dementia is already the leading cause of death in Australia, and an estimated 1.7 million Australians are involved in caring for someone living with dementia.
The growing prevalence is also placing increasing pressure on health and aged care services. An estimated $6 billion was spent on health care, aged care and support programs attributable to dementia in 2023–24, including $4.2 billion in aged care.
Against this backdrop, there is an increasing need for scalable ways to identify cognitive changes earlier, monitor older people over time and enable health and aged care providers to intervene when additional assessment or support is required.
Healthily’s CareCalls platform is designed to address this challenge using conversational voice AI.
What is CareCalls
Unlike traditional cognitive assessment models that rely largely on face-to-face assessment, the platform uses AI-enabled telephone calls to conduct periodic validated cognitive assessments and regular wellbeing check-ins. By monitoring an individual over time, the technology has the potential to identify changes that may otherwise go unnoticed and alert health and care teams when follow-up may be required.
The telephone-based model is designed to be highly accessible and scalable, requiring no app or digital skills from the older person.
Healthily has been awarded the funding through the Australian Government’s Medical Research Future Fund (MRFF) CUREator+ Dementia & Cognitive Decline program, a national program focused on accelerating the development and commercialisation of Australian innovations with the potential to improve dementia diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and care.
Healthily is one of seven Australian companies selected in the program’s second round. The funding will support a two-year program to further develop, evaluate and prepare the platform for commercialisation, in partnership with St Vincent’s Health Australia, the National Ageing Research Institute (NARI) and Austin Health.
Healthily CEO and Managing Director Dr Tina Campbell said the combination of an ageing population and increasing pressure on the health and aged care workforce creates an urgent need for new models of support.
“Australia cannot meet the growing challenge of dementia simply by doing more of what we do today. As our population ages, we need scalable ways to identify changes earlier and support health and aged care teams to stay connected with a rapidly growing number of older Australians.”
“Our innovation is the ability to use conversational voice AI to make proactive, regular contact with older people, deliver cognitive assessments periodically, and monitor changes over time. Rather than relying on someone to recognise a problem and seek help, the technology creates an opportunity to identify meaningful changes earlier and connect people with appropriate assessment or support.”
“Importantly, we can do this using the telephone, technology that is already familiar to almost every older Australian. There is no app to download and no requirement for digital literacy.”
Dr Campbell said the CUREator+ funding would enable Healthily to build the clinical evidence and technology required to move from early pilots towards a commercially scalable solution.
“This funding is an important step in taking CareCalls from an innovative technology to an evidence-based solution capable of being deployed at scale.”