Last week we attended our first ever BCCPA Conference as an exhibitor, and we are sure glad we did! The BC Care Providers Association is “the leading industry association representing non-government care providers” in BC, committed to helping its members provide the best possible care for seniors, so the conference was full of great people doing great things in the long term care industry. Not a bad crowd to spend a couple of days in Whistler with. There may even have been golf. Suffice to say, we had a blast.

One of the best things about working in IT is finding ways to use technology to make people’s lives simpler and better, wherever that may be, which is especially rewarding in the long term care context, since you are impacting not just your clients’ lives, but those of the people they care for. One of the biggest challenges in the care industry at the moment, and one that is only going to get bigger as our population ages, is caring for seniors with dementia, which, according to Dementia Canada is currently almost fifteen percent of all seniors. As the disease progresses, people with dementia need increasing levels of care and supervision, which in a care facility, typically means less and less freedom. But it doesn’t have to be like that. We were privileged and inspired to hear about one delegate’s vision, based on the amazing concept seen in Holland, for bringing an alternative to locked down wings to BC, and the ways that technology could make it a reality. Ways that we could help make it a reality. Talk about having opportunities to improve people’s lives.