Advancing innovation and productivity in the care sector
10.11.2025 - 03:31
Our latest research commissioned by Kismet Healthcare examines opportunities to advance innovation and productivity in Australia's care sector through targeted technological solutions. We identify four high-impact, low-risk opportunities that could deliver over $2 billion in annual productivity gains in the NDIS alone. This study highlights the need for governments to establish a strong digital care ecosystem to preserve the benefits of quality care while addressing rising demand from Australia's aging population.
Australia’s care system is facing significant structural challenges and solving them is essential for long-term economic performance.
There is rising demand from an ageing population with a higher chronic disease burden. There is also a drive to lift the quality of care for the disability, aged, and early childhood sectors to improve outcomes.
Improving sector productivity is a key priority for policymakers because it is essential to the Australian system’s ability to deliver world-leading outcomes.
We find four high-impact, low-risk tech opportunities that could generate over $2 billion in productivity gains in the NDIS alone, or over $13 billion if rolled out across the care sector.
We focused on four innovations in the NDIS that are feasible today, impactful, and able to safeguard against downside harm risks:
- Optimising NDIS matching and scheduling through digital care marketplaces, to make it easier for participants to get the care they need
- Automated NDIS invoice generation and processing, to help service providers generate invoices and plan managers process invoices faster
- Streamlining NDIS specialist and allied health referral pathways through a specialist platform, to improve the efficiency of connections between primary and secondary care
- Improving the efficiency of data exchange between NDIS service providers to make it easier for providers to communicate and reduce the burden on participants in retelling their story
Achieving this mission will require governments to develop four strong pillars in the care sector:
- Reliable digital infrastructure will provide the foundations on which providers can build innovative consumer-facing products that improve care outcomes
- An ingrained culture of innovation in care will create the comfort and social license for providers to introduce new digital tools into care settings
- Coordination between actors, including governments, innovators, care providers, community partners, and educators, to ensure alignment in priorities and actions across the sector
- Sophisticated public sector capability, to ensure the public sector has the skills and resources to deliver on the mission
Read and download the full report here.
Read our latest posts
Unlocking a Virtuous Cycle: Overcoming Barriers to AI in Australian Energy Systems
Mandala's latest research, developed in partnership with Microsoft, examines the barriers to transformative AI adoption in Australia's electricity system. The research finds that AI is one of the few tools able to unlock capacity and efficiency from the existing grid without waiting on new transmission and generation capacity, yet adoption today remains incremental. Three soft barriers, a lack of shared strategy, weak investment incentives and siloed data, are constraining Australia's ability to capture this potential. Overcoming them will require joint action from government, the technology industry and energy utilities to prove AI's value, align policy settings and fund pilots through to deployment.
8 Jul, 2026
Demonstrating the local benefits of AI infrastructure in Wisconsin
Mandala's latest research, prepared for Microsoft, examines the economic impact of hyperscale data center investment on Wisconsin's communities, businesses, and workforce. The research finds that committed data center projects will channel $16.5 billion to local suppliers, support more than 9,000 jobs during construction, and generate lasting economic activity across every county in the state, thereby extending Wisconsin's long tradition of industrial leadership into the AI era.
1 Jul, 2026
The essential infrastructure: How Australian banks power the economy
Mandala's latest research, prepared for the Australian Banking Association, examines the often-hidden role Australian banks play in supporting households, businesses and the broader economy. The research finds that banks are deeply embedded in the financial lives of Australians - as lenders, as community investors, through the jobs they generate and increasingly as assets owned by Australians themselves through shares and superannuation. From financing homes and small businesses to supporting regional communities through hardship and disaster, the report builds a picture of a sector whose success is broadly shared across the Australian population.
17 Jun, 2026
The threat of climate change to the US insurance industry
This joint report by the Coalition for an Insurable Future and Mandala Partners examines how climate change is undermining the stability of the US home insurance market. Homeowners insurance premiums have risen 38% since 2021, outpacing both inflation and wage growth, while 1 in 7 owner-occupied homes are now uninsured. Climate risk could push national premiums 35–107% higher by 2050, leave an additional 1.5–2.5 million households without cover by 2035, and cost the broader economy $1 trillion. The aggregate cost could rise to over $3 trillion by 2050. A preliminary assessment of state-level policy responses across California, Florida, Louisiana, New York and Colorado finds that effectiveness is mixed, and that the burden of costs falls primarily on homeowners, insurers and taxpayers, rather than on the sources of the underlying climate risk.
10 Jun, 2026