A spatial informatics for aged care

Population ageing is the demographic process that characterises the first half of the twenty-first century. Australia's population is already ageing and the states and territories are ageing at different rates. Our understanding of the dementias remains limited and diagnosis in primary care settings is poor. Locating where older people with dementia are and how they are coping is an emerging need in health information management. In this paper we discuss how a spatially informed health information management system could support population ageing and the disconnected systems that address ageing. We illustrate this with examples from our work to show how spatial informatics can advance our understanding of and response to the implications of population ageing. © 2013 The authors and IOS Press. All rights reserved