Copilot success stories: BaptistCare

For more than 24,000 people in need BaptistCare provide support through in-home care, retirement living, community housing and aged care across Australia, as well as providing support to other vulnerable people living through difficult circumstances. Working in a sector that supports aging Australians and those who live with disadvantage, it can be tough to keep up with the demand of a growing client base, with both an aging population and a growing number of individuals facing vulnerabilities.

To help boost productivity, BaptistCare were keen to integrate AI into their workflow. When Microsoft 365 Copilot was made available in Australia, BaptistCare were quick to jump on board.

“We signed up literally on day one. We already see Copilot saving a lot of time and empowering our staff,” explains Daniel Pettman Chief Digital Information Officer at BaptistCare. “Technology is playing a key role in addressing a mismatch between demographic trends in aged care and workforce shortages.”

As the not-for-profit grows, more tasks and challenges are faced by their employees. With Microsoft 365 Copilot, users can pull the relevant, must-know information from their inboxes, take notes during Teams meetings with AI assistants, and compose emails on their behalf, all with the power of an AI. This leaves BaptistCare employees with more time to spend with clients and aged care residents, saving on average two to eight hours per week in admin time.

“Using Copilot as a starting point eases a lot of cognitive load,” Pettman says. “By using really good technology, our employees can focus more on transforming the lives of people we work with.”

Copilot’s ability to summarise dense material has also been a boon to BaptistCare’s productivity. Instead of reading through a long government report or piece of legislation full of jargon and hard to understand material, users can instruct Copilot to read through and summarise the entire document, pulling out the relevant, important information related to the aged care sector, or chat with the organisation’s custom chatbot. Built using Azure Generative AI, this chatbot can answer questions related to policy documentation and combine this information with insights from multiple sources, creating a more holistic overview of an issue or policy document.

With a client base that includes a wide range of people, some of whom that may have sensitive medical conditions, difficult histories or vulnerable circumstances, BaptistCare have been very careful to build a culture of responsibility around AI use. Each employee with a Copilot licence undergoes training to understand how to safely use the AI assistant, including ongoing training and access to Microsoft training.

“We care for people, and that includes caring for their information,” Pettman says. “With Copilot, our rigorous security review satisfied us to protect our clients’ security and privacy. Our data is staying private to us and our environment; it’s not leaking out into the public domain.”

You can read the full story at the Microsoft website.