Tablet donation program making a difference at Ozanam house

A Melbourne GP clinic is calling on people to donate their unused iPads and tablets to residents of North Melbourne’s Ozanam House. 

Australians produce around 25kg of electronic waste each per year, but tablets donated to Atticus Health will have a second life helping Melbourne’s most vulnerable people to access telehealth and stay connected to their communities. 

“So many people have iPads and phones. They buy new ones, and the other ones just sit and lie around,” Atticus Health project manager Brett Tiedeman said. 

“There must be people who would like to donate them.”

Atticus Health has been running a mobile GP clinic at the Ozanam House homeless centre since July 2023. 

The program provides older homeless people access to appointments with GPs, a geriatrician, a mental health social worker and a physiotherapist. 

A nurse is there as well to act as a patient advocate.

As project manager, Mr Thiedeman brings a laptop to Ozanam House every Thursday so patients can access video appointments with Atticus Health GPs from a familiar environment. 

It was his idea to give patients tablets, empowering them to access healthcare in their own time. 

“It was always the vision to help as many people as we could,” he told North West City News.

“[The mobile GP clinic] has very much been about the nurse being the advocate and us sort of like holding [the patients’] hands through that process.”

“But what we want to do is ... start allowing these people to book their own appointments and basically to be able to see people wherever they are,” he said. 

The first Ozanam House resident to receive a tablet was Tracey, whose past experience with healthcare had been “one of disconnection and dismissal”. 

Mr Thiedeman said Tracey’s life had been transformed by the mobile GP clinic and it was the first time a doctor had “treated her like a human”.

“She just finished an alcohol rehab program, and she was 60 days sober,” Mr Thiedeman said. 

“She was just doing really well. She was coming to the clinic, and her health was improving.”

Tracey has now moved from Ozanam House into public housing. Mr Thiedeman decided to give her an iPad so she didn’t have to keep travelling to Ozanam House to access her telehealth appointments. 

Mr Thiedeman, who has worked at Atticus Health for four years, has seen how access to technology can change lives. 

Atticus Health’s sister company, Mark and Sylvie's Homecare, has donated used tablets and laptops to about ten of its clients, empowering them to access online government services like Medicare and My Aged Care, as well as apply for government assistance programs like the Home Care Package. 

“There are a number of people that would say ‘oh, no, I don't know anything about that, but that's okay, I'll just get my son to help me or my daughter to help me,’” Mr Thiedeman said. 

“But then there are others who don't have a son or a daughter to help them. They don't have a family, so they just get stuck, and they go, ‘it's all too hard. I can't do it,’” he said. 

Many clients have also used the tablets to write emails, read e-books and have video calls with loved ones.

Mr Thiedeman said he had several people already lined up at Ozanam House to receive a tablet and learn how to access online services. 

They’re just waiting on donations from the community. 

To donate an unused tablet to the program, simply take it – including cables and chargers – to Atticus Health’s clinic at Hardware Lane, and they will ensure it gets into the hands of someone at Ozanam House. Tablets can be any brand and any age but should be reset to factory settings. •