One window onto care: what Checked In Care does, and who actually uses it

Ask most people whether an 88 year old receiving aged care will use an app and you will get a confident no. The assumption is so widely held that it shapes what providers bother to offer.

Bree Wyatt, Head of Customer Growth at Checked In Care, has the numbers to challenge this belief. In home care, more than half of the platform’s users are the care recipient themselves rather than a family member. In residential aged care, where providers only started making the platform available to residents last year, uptake at some sites has passed 15% in a short space of time.

Her point is not that older people are secretly digital natives. It is that the assumption they will not engage has never really been tested.

What the platform is

Checked In Care is a resident experience and self-service platform. Bree describes it as a single window into everything a person needs to manage their own care or support someone in care.

It was founded in 2015 by John Perkins, who also co-founded the Ethan Group. John has spoken publicly about how the experience of his aunt entering care shaped his conviction that technology has a role in improving quality of life for people needing support. The original frustration was a mundane one. Aged care still ran on telephone calls and office hours, at a point in time when almost no other sector expected consumers to wait until 9am to ask a question, or solve a problem.

The platform has grown well beyond that starting point. It now covers family communication, schedule visibility and changes, service requests and, more recently, the purchase of goods and services from third party providers.

In June 2026, following a major investment from Accel-KKR, Checked In Care joined Evaran, which supports more than 1,100 providers and 170,000 care recipients across 2,200 locations in seven countries. Perkins said the move would help the business expand globally and accelerate its vision of people living their best lives with choice and dignity. Importantly for existing customers, Checked In Care continues to operate an open integration model and will remain connected with platforms and partners across the sector, including those outside Evaran.

Are older people actually online?

The honest picture on digital adoption among older people is mixed.

The 2025 Australian Digital Inclusion Index found that 66.5% of Australians aged 75 and over are digitally excluded or highly excluded, the highest rate of any group measured. Read on its own, that number supports the stereotype.

Other research points the other way. The Benetas Digital Inclusion and Cyber Safety Among Australian Seniors study, which surveyed just over 1,000 Australians aged 65 and over, found that eight in ten describe technology as very or somewhat important in helping them keep in touch with family and friends. Mobile phone use sits at 94%, email at 98% and text messaging at 93%. Video calls, at 48%, have now overtaken landline use at 45%. Social media use runs at 76% among women and 62% among men, with one in two older Australians on it every day. Overall, 85% say they enjoy using the internet.

National Seniors Australia has documented the same pattern over a longer period, finding that digital uptake among older Australians accelerated through the pandemic and that older people have diverse and complex relationships with technology rather than a uniformly low level of engagement.

Where the Benetas research becomes genuinely useful is in identifying what actually holds people back. Privacy and security concerns, not physical or technical difficulty, were the most common limitation on technology use. Eight in ten are worried about the security of their personal information online. Only 10% feel very confident in their ability to stay safe online, and 17% have lost money to an online, email or text message scam. Just 10% had received any cyber safety training, while 58% said they wanted to learn how to identify and avoid scams.

So the barrier is real, but it is not indifference. Fear of getting it wrong, and fear of being scammed, is doing much of the work.

This is a barrier Checked In Care has encountered directly during rollouts, and it shapes how the platform is introduced. The data and Bree’s experience implementing the platform both suggest this is a skills and confidence problem rather than an unwillingness to engage.

How are older people engaging with Checked In Care?

So, how are older people utilising Checked In Care? It depends on where they are in their aged care journey:

• Home care users focus on convenience and information – who is coming, when, why, changing appointments and requesting extra sessions, such as an additional clean for the week
• Retirement living is all about independence and community connection – maintenance requests, plus communicating between residents, and organising social events
• Residential aged care helps keep families informed and provides peace of mind through sharing photos and stories with family, and oversight of what is happening in the home regardless of how far away a family member is

White labelling matters more here than it might sound. Branding the app to the provider is partly a marketing asset, but with an older demographic performs a useful function that increases adoption. It lowers the trust barrier, because the person is engaging with an organisation they already know rather than an unfamiliar third party. A trusted, familiar brand is also likely to lesson the fear associated with being scammed online.

Where it goes next

Checked In Care already has a North American presence and is now stepping into the UK market, where the similarities in how home care providers are structured and what functionality they need are closer than you might expect. For CareLineLive customers in particular, the comparison Bree and our own team keep landing on is that Checked In Care is CareLineLive’s Friends and Family Portal with considerably more behind it: richer information, finance platform connections, document sharing, and photographs.

Checked In Care is software agnostic so care providers can be working with any management software and enjoy integration – they don’t have to be an Evaran or CareLineLive customer to benefit.

Checked In Care is also looking to expand the platform’s commercial functions to assist providers with financial sustainability. Providers can use the platform to surface services people did not know were available, take payment for private pay services, and increasingly connect to a marketplace of vetted third party suppliers. In residential care, Bree describes it as an extension of the hospital kiosk concept, where you once picked up flowers and a balloon on the way in. Families buy for birthdays and Mother’s Day, and residents can access things the facility does not itself offer.

The most exciting part is the richness of data that comes with a connected care platform that includes a client and family interface. Checked In Care often acts as the single window into four or more separate systems for one provider. Bringing those systems together provides continuity for the consumer, and also turns a communication tool into something that can produce insights for the provider. When combined with the capability of eCase, MOA Benchmarking, and CareLineLive and the tight integrations offered by a connected care platform, the Evaran software suite will offer data that will enable providers to deliver optimal client experiences and elevated care.

Watch the full interview with Bree below.

Checked In Care explained: service user self-service across the care journey from Evaran on Vimeo