Aged Care Leader Shares Lessons from Major Security Tech Overhaul

Amana Living, a not-for-profit aged care provider founded by the Anglican Church in 1962, operates 15 residential facilities across Western Australia serving around 1,200 residents. Like many large-scale care operations, the organisation had accumulated a complex patchwork of security and monitoring technologies over time. Neil Mullally, General Manager of Technology at Amana Living, recently shared insights into how the organisation tackled a critical pain point: managing security infrastructure across multiple sites without overwhelming already stretched care staff.

The problem wasn't just fragmentation—it was vendor overload. Amana Living had relationships with 59 different technology partners, each adding layers of complexity to daily operations. For a team focused on resident care and safety, managing that many separate systems pulled attention away from their core mission.

Rather than bolting on more point solutions, Amana Living made a strategic decision to consolidate. The organisation brought together its monitoring, security, and compliance tools under a unified platform, reducing technology partners from 59 down to 6. A key part of that shift was deploying over 400 CCTV cameras across the 15 facilities and integrating them into a single, centrally managed system.

Mullally emphasized the importance of clarity when making such a move. Staff don't have time to juggle multiple CCTV tools and vendor relationships—their focus needs to stay on caring for residents. By centralizing the infrastructure, Amana Living gave its teams one dashboard to work from and one vendor to support them, rather than dozens of disconnected systems.

The platform now handles falls detection, general facility monitoring, and compliance recording. It also includes geofencing and facial recognition capabilities that help safeguard residents with dementia, enabling staff to monitor high-risk individuals without placing cameras in private spaces like bedrooms.

Six months after implementing geofencing and facial recognition for dementia residents, Amana Living recorded zero incidents involving high-risk residents—a meaningful safety benchmark. The system also helped the organisation manage the day-to-day flow of visitors; one facility alone processes around 1,600 visitors per month, a volume that would be difficult to track manually.

From a compliance standpoint, having one unified system made it easier to enforce a consistent CCTV policy across all sites. Mullally stressed the importance of defining where cameras are placed and sticking to that policy. That consistency protects both residents and the organisation, reducing ambiguity about what is and isn't monitored.

Speaking at the VerkadaOne event in Sydney in June 2026, Mullally highlighted a broader principle relevant to any organisation managing multiple locations and many residents or clients. Technology sprawl creates friction, increases training burden, and dilutes accountability. When you can see your entire operation through one lens, decision-making becomes faster and staff can focus on their actual jobs.

For aged care in particular, where staffing is already stretched and regulatory requirements are strict, simplification isn't a luxury—it's a survival strategy.

Amana Living's story illustrates a pattern we see across Australian mid-market businesses: once you consolidate data and operations onto a single platform, you unlock not just efficiency gains, but the foundation for smarter decisions. When security cameras feed into one system alongside visitor logs, incident reports, and compliance records, you're no longer just monitoring—you're building a unified data picture.

That's where AI and automation become possible. You can't automate response protocols, predict trends, or train AI models on fragmented data. But when your operational data lives in one place—whether it's aged care facilities, retail sites, construction projects, or healthcare clinics—you can analyse patterns, spot risks earlier, and make decisions faster. Amana Living's move from 59 vendors to 6, and from many disconnected systems to one, is a practical reminder: consolidation isn't about technology for its own sake. It's about building a unified, AI-ready foundation that lets your business operate smarter and safer.