With the help of a young man called Jayden Caelli (pictured with Balance Mat Chair Sylvia Tulloch [both in Balance Mat blue] at the 2018 COTA ACT Seniors Expo), the Balance Mat score information system or “SIS” was born.

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Balance Mat was awarded a $30,000 Innovation Connect (or ICon grant) by the ACT Government in June 2017 to develop a data management system.

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Balance Mat General Manager Ian Bergman said, “I’m excited to report that not only do we now have a beautiful product that’s working perfectly, but we also have a data management system – our SIS – that records and stores the results in ‘the cloud’ and allows healthcare professionals to access the results electronically.”

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The SIS supersedes an earlier iteration of the Balance Mat, which relied on healthcare professionals having to record and store data manually.

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Mr Bergman said, “Eventually, as more and more data is uploaded, SIS will provide a benchmark of good and poor balance for healthcare professionals to refer to.”

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“That will give them enormous confidence in predicting who may be at risk of falling, since we know that poor balance is correlated with the majority of falls in older people.”

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“Having this breakthrough product and information system available will make it so much easier for healthcare providers to fulfill their duty of care obligations to their older clients under the Falls Guidelines and do their bit towards ending the preventable falls crisis across Australia,” Mr Bergman said.