mecwacare partners with Cognizant to overhaul technology and support human-centred care
The transformation represents a foundational shift in how mecwacare delivers care and support.
mecwacare has partnered with Cognizant on a multi-year transformation to modernise fragmented systems and establish an integrated technology foundation.
“The transformation represents a foundational shift in how mecwacare delivers care and support,” said Anne McCormack, CEO, mecwacare.
The aim is to harness digital tools to improve operations, staff experience and person-centred care delivery.
The transformation spans service design, operations, IT architecture, culture and ways of working – more than simply a technology refresh.
Taking a person-centered approach to transformation
The 65-year-old aged care provider was grappling with multiple legacy systems, inconsistent processes and increasing pressures on costs, workforce and regulatory compliance.
As part of the transformation, mecwacare is introducing a “hub-style model” where technology, data and services align around the person receiving care – whether that’s a resident, someone in home care or a community client.
“Our person-centered approach means we are delivering personalised and seamless experiences, which is enabling better outcomes across clients, families and colleagues,” said McCormack.
At the outset, the team used persona-based thinking, creating typical client scenarios to consider their needs, challenges and perspectives.
This drove the design of workflows, UI/UX, data flows and service models to ensure the system, processes and technology deliver improved experiences, rather than being driven by the technology.
“Importantly, it’s not a one-off exercise, every decision big and small is anchored back to whether it will bring benefits to the end user, it is what unites the entire program,” said Jessica Finn, public sector, health and education ANZ market lead, Cognizant.
Staff, clients and families were involved in the process, which included iterative prototyping, feedback loops and change management to ensure the technology supports human needs, not just administrative or cost-driven objectives.
“The aim is to reduce the burden of administration on care teams so they can focus on ‘warm care’ — building meaningful relationships rather than getting bogged down in admin and systems,” said Finn.
Embedding data-driven decision making and re-designing service models
It was a priority to unite service, client, workforce, financial and operational data into one unified platform, while embedding analytics and AI into ways of working across the organisation
“We needed to transition away from legacy models where many processes were offline, heavily manual or spreadsheet-based – that simply don’t scale for the future,” McCormack said.
The transformation has synchronised how mecwacare delivers care — removing workforce allocation, scheduling, equipment, clinical outreach, in-home support and retirement living siloes.
“Data and the unified platform allow us to see the ecosystem of care — client, family, staff — in one place and make decisions together,” she added.
Fine tuning care not technology
The project started with the retirement-living division to establish proof-points before extending into other units.
Cognizant found that breaking the transformation into incremental releases with early, tangible wins built trust, momentum and readiness for the broader rollout.
Finn has found that many organisations underestimate the depth of cultural, operational, and mindset shifts required for a transformation of this scale.
“Success depends on early usability work, robust training, iterative delivery and continuous stakeholder feedback loops to ensure smooth transitions,” she said.
For mecwacare, the new platform has already shown promising results. It has reduced manual financial processing efforts from two days to a matter of seconds through automation.
It has also consolidated 20 paper-based client onboarding documents into one online questionnaire completed in minutes and reduced 15 hours of manual reporting per month for occupancy reports reduced to real-time dashboards.
“We’ve seen great success and we’re learning and iterating in preparation for the next phases in home care and other services,” said Anne McCormack mecwacare.