Australians who need care because of age or disability shouldn’t be reduced to an algorithm |
A quiet transformation is taking place across Australia’s care systems. Every day, hundreds of elders and people living with disability are assessed for essential supports, such as home care, mobility aids, home modifications and therapies that help them live safely with dignity at home and in their communities.
Once the domain of health professionals, these decisions used to rely on a combination of clinical expertise and the basic human ability to recognise and respond to the needs of others. Computers have neither of these qualities. Yet in the current era of AI hype and the fetishisation of all things automated, we are increasingly turning to computers for guidance on fundamentally human questions of care, vulnerability and need.
The shift towards algorithmic decision-making, as Guardian Australia revealed in February, can be seen in the new Integrated Assessment Tool (IAT), introduced on 1 November 2025 under the Albanese government’s Aged Care Act. The IAT is a rules-based algorithm that sorts aged care applicants into one of eight funding levels, determining both the amount of home care they receive and where they are placed in the queue for services.
The tool was intended to enable a faster, fairer and more consistent process for determining eligibility for subsidised aged care. It works like a computerised questionnaire, using scored questions and rules to place applicants into categories of need. The assessments are conducted........