With new aged care standards set to take effect in July 2025, Deakin University researchers are building an artificial intelligence assistant designed to improve the experience of dying, death and grieving for older Australians and their families.
Dr Marcus Sellars from Deakin’s Institute for Health Transformation has received a three‑year, $420,000 grant from the Wicking Trust to develop the tool within Touchstone Life Care’s fully digital advance care planning (ACP) platform.
Advance care planning allows people to spell out the medical and personal decisions they want respected if they lose capacity, yet it remains rare in Australia. Roughly 88 per cent of deaths occur without an advance care directive on file, and most older people have no documentation at all.
“We’re rethinking how ACP works by recognising that it’s not just a document — it’s a dynamic process that needs to adapt to evolving patient needs, cultural contexts and family dynamics,” Dr Sellars said.
The planned “adaptive ACP assistant” will draw on machine‑learning techniques and a complex adaptive‑systems framework to prompt residents, families and clinicians through conversations, surface the implications of different choices and keep everyone’s understanding aligned as circumstances change.
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“Our project, in collaboration with Deakin’s Applied Artificial Intelligence Initiative and Touchstone Life Care, will use artificial intelligence and a complex adaptive systems approach to create an adaptive ACP assistant. This will support people, their families and care providers to engage in more meaningful and responsive planning conversations that reflect their values and preferences,” Dr Sellar said.
Researchers will begin by interviewing aged care residents and carers to shape an early prototype, then refine it through cycles of testing in facilities across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland. The pilot will measure how well the assistant improves the quality and uptake of advance care plans and whether it helps providers demonstrate compliance with the forthcoming standards.
The Wicking Trust’s national grant round, “Bringing Death Back into Life – Developing Solutions,” funds initiatives that improve the experience of dying, death and grieving for older Australians. Dr Sellars said the AI‑enabled approach is timely because the new standards explicitly require aged care services to show evidence of effective advance care planning.
If successful, the assistant could give residents clearer control over their final months while offering aged care operators a practical path to meeting the 2025 regulatory deadline.
Original content from Deakin University. Note: Content has been edited for style and length.
