Virtual retirement village on offer
Co-founder of Ryman Healthcare John Ryder and partners are launching a new video communications and healthcare monitoring system for retirement village residents and older people wanting to stay in their own homes.
The video communications system is being introduced by Qestral Corporation to its retirement villages, at the upper end of the market, as a communications and social tool for residents to talk to each other and to management. It is free.
Its other purpose is to offer a subscription-based health monitoring service to village residents and in about a year’s time to people living in the community who want to be connected to a village’s care facilities, creating a ‘‘virtual retirement village’’, but don’t want to move into a village.
Qestral Corporation, whose executive chairman is Ryder, is a new developer of retirement villages and has been working in a joint venture with healthcare monitoring company Spritely on the video communications system.
Qestral, half owner of Spritely, will offer the healthcare monitoring by subscription to the 230 residents of its Alpine View village in east Christchurch and will do the same for the other villages it has under construction and in planning in New Zealand – in Nelson, Hamilton, Whᾱngᾱrei and Christchurch. Ryder declined to reveal the subscription price.
It intends to offer the systems to other retirement village operators about June.
The obvious potential was to offer health monitoring subscriptions to people in the community, creating a ‘‘virtual retirement village’’, Ryder said.
These were people who wanted to keep living in their own homes and avoid going into a village or rest home but be connected to care facilities at the retirement village. The service could offer emergency monitoring as well.
Spritely was likely to offer the services by the end of the year.
‘‘The next revolution in aged care will be by fully utilising technology,’’ Ryder said.
‘‘It is a fast-moving but important opportunity. As an innovative group we are positioning ourselves to be at the forefront of new developments,’’ Ryder said.
The health monitoring included taking blood pressure, pulse rate and weight. It also incorporated an emergency alarm and sensors that monitored lack of movement (due to falls), as well as medication management.and recorded other factors or symptoms that a resident wanted to monitor.
They saw this service as ‘‘revolutionary’’, Ryder said, because it meant residents could remain independent for longer, which residents appreciated, and could delay needing to go into institutional care like a rest home.
The systems developer is Chris Dawson, chief executive of Spritely, set up three years ago.
Qestral has about $750 million of retirement villages in the pipeline.
It has completed the development of Alpine View, is constructing another village, Burlington, in Redwood in Christchurch, and has just started the construction of a rest home and care facility for the $190 million Coastal View village in Nelson.
It shifted 600,000 cubic metres of earth to create a flat piece of land in the Tahunanui Hills overlooking Tasman Bay for the village. That took four years.
The construction of all of Coastal View to also include 200 houses, 40 apartments and a dementia centre would take five to six years.
Qestral also has developments planned for Hamilton and Whᾱngᾱrei and in Halswell in Christchurch.
Ryder and Simon and Jeremy O’Dowd and their families, along with private equity investor Direct Capital, are major shareholders in Qestral.
Ryder is no longer a shareholder in Ryman Healthcare. He sold his shares in 2002.