We speak to CEO of Resparke Alison Harrington ahead of the 2024 Women’s Health Summit on September 4, where she will appear on ‘The Entrepreneurs Changing Women’s Health’ panel. Find out more and get tickets for the Summit here.
The number one cause of death for women in Australia is dementia. It affects mothers, grandmothers and aunties, and touches everyone. Alison Harrington says the stigma associated with the disease still isn’t talked about enough.
“I think there is an opportunity to reframe this health issue,” Harrington tells Women’s Agenda.
“Even though it sometimes feels hopeless as there is no cure currently, I think we need to ask ourselves how we can use technology and new innovations to support those living with dementia and their carers.”
One of these new innovations is Resparke, an organisation Harrington founded in 2019 to improve the lives of seniors worldwide. Resparke educates people and their carers how to use music and reminiscence therapy.
Its program takes advantage of the fact that music bypasses the areas of the brain that are switched off from dementia. This enables patients to connect to memories of happier times.
Current solutions like music streaming sites offer limited customisation and often have licensing issues, so Respark has built a personalisation engine to make it easy for aged care staff to add criteria like language, nationality, religion and birth date to further enhance the experience.
Since its inception, Resparke has trained 5000 aged care workers and supported approximately 25,000 residents in Australia and New Zealand.
“We ideally want to shine a light on dementia and the amazing stories of people living with dementia and their carers who are able to live lives that are positive despite the many challenges,” she says.
Overcoming challenges
Resparke’s biggest challenge, Harrington says, has been “operationalising technology in the busy environment of an aged care home.”
“Whilst you can build technology, getting teams to use it as part of their daily work processes when many homes are often struggling with staff shortages and waves of regulatory change and covid has been challenging.”
“Fortunately we have worked closely with some great clients to codesign new ways of increasing engagement and making Resparke part of a care plan.”
Another challenge they’ve faced is simply educating staff on the power of music for dementia, as Harrington says staff often find it hard to believe the impact this therapy can have.
“We have found the best way to prove the benefit is to get them to work with just one person and to see how it can change things for them and then they go ‘wow’,” says Harrington.
At the moment, Resparke is working with key clients in New Zealand and doing homecare trials in Australia.
“We see that with the ‘silver Tsunami’ that is facing us, many more people will need support at home and we are working on the application of Resparke in that environment currently,” says Harrington.
Entrepreneurial awards
A pioneering digital executive, Harrington has extensive experience in law, new media and technology in Australia. She has worked across both strategy and implementation in start up and traditional corporate environments and has been honoured with various accolades.
In 2023, Resparke was the recipient of a government grant, through Ariia, to work on its evolution and complete a research project with ACU— due to be completed in July this year.
And most recently, Harrington was named as a 2024 fellow in the Cartier Women’s Initiative, an international entrepreneurship program supporting women.
Speaking to the program’s impact on Resparke’s worldfirst vision, Harrington says the global exposure of the Cartier awards will allow them to explore overseas markets, such as the UK where she says are “more advanced in social prescribing and their use of music in dementia care” and Asia, where markets “have already expressed an interest in the program”.
“Ultimately as we all age everyone would have a Resparke profile that is their ‘life story’ that could go with them on their care journey,” says Harrington.
Changing lives
And while awards are important recognition, Harrington says “the best thing is just hearing simple stories of the peoples lives we change”.
“When I started the business I met with my friend in a cafe and her mum was in aged care with dementia and was often anxious and upset but loved classical music and she wanted the staff to play it for her.”
“I told her that was my vision to build a platform so she can share the music her mum loved and the staff would have the technology and training to provide this experience for her when she couldnt be there. I knew there were so many pieces to this puzzle to make it happen,” says Harrington.
“I recently met with her and told her I had done it! Her mum had late stage dementia and was now in palliative care and we sat together and set up her mum’s profile on Resparke so they could play classical music to her in her final days.”
“That was really a proud moment for me, to know I had delivered on my promise to her.”
Alison Harrington is a speaker at the 2024 Women’s Health and Wellbeing Summit, an essential event dedicated to supporting the health and wellbeing of Australian women both at home and at work. The Summit will take place on September 4, 8:00AM-5:30PM AEST, and you can get tickets here.