Beyond the algorithm – seniors don’t come in boxes, neither should their systems

Lynda Henderson was part of the expert group that helped design the federal government’s aged care assessment tool. She contributed to what was intended to be a thoughtful, nuanced framework capable of holding the complexity of people, their needs and the realities of their lives.

When that work was later overlaid with what she describes as a “black box” algorithm, her response was immediate and visceral.

“Fury and betrayal.”

But it’s beyond the headlines and immediate reaction that her story offers something more enduring than critique. From teen years to being in her 70s, Henderson has routinely stepped out of her comfort zone, not into discomfort but into the different. This ‘different’ has evolved into lessons and then into possibilities.

For Henderson, resisting the constriction of uniformity by the algorithm isn’t only due to its reductive results but an awareness of how many possibilities it shuts out.

Seniors are as varied and nuanced as any demographic, the system which tackles their care must be too.

A life that doesn’t fit boxes

Henderson’s perspective is not only grounded in professional expertise — it is deeply shaped by personal experience and a life that has consistently resisted rigid categorisation.

After leaving an Australian university where she felt constrained by conservative teaching methods, “I was so bored, really, terribly bored. It was all about Pavlov and his dogs”, she made the unconventional decision to move to France and enroll in university there, navigating both language and cultural barriers in pursuit of a broader and more expansive education.

“Towards the curriculum in Australia, I thought, I’m not interested in this at all, why couldn’t I go over there and learn differently?”

She recalls writing at the top of her assignments, “foreign language student”, and engaging in ongoing conversations with her professors to clarify meaning — not simply to be marked, but to be understood.

“They would ask, ‘did you mean this?’ And I’d say yes. But then they’d say, ‘the way I read it was this…’”

What followed was not correction, but dialogue — a process of unpacking intent, interpretation and meaning until both sides reached a shared understanding.

The person she was trying to understand, and was trying to understand her was an old-time member of the French Communist Party. They couldn’t have come from more different backgrounds but through her thesis project she grew from his ideas and he from hers.

It is precisely this willingness to question, to interpret and to engage with nuance that Henderson brought into the design of the assessment tool. The inclusion of text fields, notes and assessor discretion was not incidental — it was essential to capturing the complexity of human experience.

Removing that, she argues, fundamentally weakens the system’s ability to understand people as they are, rather than as they appear within predefined categories.

What lived experience reveals

Henderson’s understanding of aged care is not theoretical. It is informed by lived experience — by caring for partners with significant and evolving needs, including her late partner Veda, who was diagnosed with a rare form of dementia.

Reflecting on that time, she speaks to how easily early symptoms can be missed, even by those closest to the person.

“Looking back on it, I realised she had symptoms before I met her… none of us understood much at the time.”

This is where her concern with algorithmic assessment becomes sharper and more urgent.

If nuance, subtle change and early signs can be missed within close, personal relationships, how much more easily can they be missed within systems that rely on rigid inputs and predefined scoring?

Driving home after Veda’s diagnosis, Henderson recalls a moment that has stayed with her.

“Veda said to me, ‘I’ve got dementia and people need to know what it’s like, so I don’t give a damn who knows’.”

Despite the progression of her condition, Veda continued to create — writing music, recording and ultimately contributing to a Royal Commission submission that moved one of the commissioners to tears.

“He said, ‘I had no idea that that was the reality of early onset dementia.’”

For Henderson, this moment highlights the critical gap between lived experience and policy design.

“Policymakers need to know what it’s actually like — not theory, not legislation, what it is.”

And that “what it is” will always be varied from case to case. Need fluctuates and evolves. 

If even those closest to those can miss signs, a distilled algorithm, feeding into an even more distilled funding structure, will miss out on providing space for nuance.

What this means for the sector

Henderson’s story extends beyond a single tool or policy decision. It speaks to a broader and increasingly urgent tension within the sector.

How do we design systems that are efficient, scalable and consistent, while still respecting the inherent complexity of human lives?

Older Australians are not static, simple or uniform. They are, as Henderson’s own story illustrates, intelligent, varied, proud and constantly evolving, moulded and enriched by different cultures, ideologies and solutions.

Henderson has never been afraid to grapple with ideas outside her comfort zone. From a Communist-member thesis supervisor in 1970s France, to a Jewish-American host family in 1960s USA, to people of all faiths and ideologies, she has seen the benefits of listening to those different from herself.

Seniors carry histories, contradictions and changing needs that cannot be fully captured through standardised inputs alone.

The tools and funding used to assess and support them must be capable of holding that complexity — not flattening it in pursuit of efficiency.

Because when nuance is removed, the consequences extend far beyond assessment accuracy and funding efficacy.

They affect dignity.
They affect access to care.
They influence how resources are allocated across the system.

And ultimately, they shape trust — in the system, in providers and in the broader promise of care.

Where it lands

For leaders across aged care and retirement living, the message is both clear and confronting.

Systems matter. Structure matters. Data matters. So does difference, dynamism and ‘dangerous’ ideas.

Henderson recognises the challenge of assessing and funding aged care. She wishes for an emboldened space to have the out-of-comfort-zone conversations surrounding solutions like aged care levies, “the royal commission did recommend the levy”.

“We should also be able to have conversations about an insurance scheme, which is sort of like a levy, even though it’s not popular.”

Stepping out of her comfort zone, Henderson routinely entered into difference. Far from fearful, seeing solutions from different angles was fruitful, “could we step into a national conversation to fund dynamic and varied aged care by changing tax laws on minerals?”

Navigating the varied and complex will take professional judgement, lived experience and the diverse-depth of human understanding, to truly assess dynamic need and how to pay for it.

As reform continues, and as pressure builds to create scalable and efficient models, the sector is approaching a defining moment.

A choice between simplifying complexity for the sake of efficiency — or designing systems that are capable of holding it, even when that is harder.

Because seniors do not come in neat boxes.

And the systems that assess and fund them should not either.