Wellington-based Healthcare NZ is on the verge of securing a major contract to provide nursing and home support services for ageing people in China.
It is about to start a pilot programme in the Chinese city of Tianjin demonstrating how support services can help people in their homes and cut the amount of time they need to stay in hospital.
Healthcare managing director Peter Hausmann said there was a huge potential for such a service in China where the elderly typically stayed in hospital for up to 40 days at a time.
They had to stay in hospital that long because there was no community support systems to allow them to be discharged earlier.
"We're looking at a programme to trial how to discharge earlier and get nursing and personal care at home. Tianjin is also very keen to trial tele-health technology where people can be monitored by electronic devices in their home."
Healthcare was finalising joint venture contracts with with Tianjin Elderly Investment, a company established by six Chinese Government agencies.
Funding had now been offered to start a pilot programme and staff would be travelling to China in the next six weeks to start work on designing that.
The pilot would start small, providing services for between 1000 and 2000 people, but the plan was to roll it out after that.
"There's over 12 million people in Tianjin and we estimate there's 170,000 people who need this support, so the market in that one city is bigger than New Zealand," Mr Hausman said.
"And because it's a central Government policy to replicate this all over China, if we can be successful in the first city, the ability to replicate that in other parts of China are very high.
