Media

By Francesca Newby

Bart Williams, MBA (MGSM) General Manager, Questek

When it comes to talking about Questek with Bart Williams, things quickly get personal. Not just because he heads a flourishing family business, but also because the experiences gained through his long-term involvement in the aged care sector. “When I first started off as a project manager, there was a resident in one of the sites with no limbs,” remembers Bart. “There was no system in place he could operate. All he could do was yell, which he found frustrating and undignified. He asked us to develop an alternative so we came up with a blow tube. When we came to install it, he was in tears and he said, “Mate, you’ve given me a voice”. That’s great stuff, giving somebody a voice, that’s when you know you’re doing something that delivers a real human benefit.”

It’s clear that Bart takes a lot of pride in knowing that Questek is at the front of the field when it comes to assistive technology in the aged care sector. “We were the first company to do it, and still the best,” he states. “There are some other systems out there, some of them are ok, some are just plain bad, but nobody can do it like we do.” As far as Bart is aware, Questek was the first company to produce a system specifically geared to benefit patients with dementia. In 1993, Trish Shields and Bob Price of Alzheimer’s Education (part of the Alzheimer’s Association of Australia) came to Questek to create a system that was “world’s best practice” for dementia care. “They said, ‘we have a problem, when we give residents a button they either press it all day and annoy the staff or they don’t press it when they need help.” This was just the kind of problem the Questek team relished. “We sat down and came up with a modelling system that tracked the patient everywhere they went in their room, that could recognize the pattern of a normal day and that would ring an alarm at any unusual behaviour.”

Breaking new ground is a business method that Bart has made his own. “It’s all about convergence now, and the catch cry is IP,” explains Bart. IP, or Internet Protocol, is considered by many to be the future of all the systems installed in hospitals and aged care facilities. “What we’re looking at is a situation of taking lots of different systems and making sure that they can talk to each other seamlessly,” says Bart. “Access control, CCTV, MATV and nurse call systems historically all sat on their own network doing their own thing, now the future is to link them up but it needs to be done properly.”

As well as taking Questek into the networked future, Bart is looking to build the company overseas while maintaining the growth they’ve achieved here in Australia. When we met, Bart was just a few weeks away from his forthcoming wedding to his fiancé, Donna. After the honeymoon, he’s due to hit the road for six months building Questek’s profile and contracts through South East Asia and the Middle East. “ We’re in talks with a whole load of distributors and outlets,” says Bart. “We’re looking at expanding in Dubai, Brunei, Singapore, Malaysia, India, Indonesia, Vietnam and Laos.”

It’s a big step forward, and a long way from the beginning of the Questek story. “Over the past 13 years we’ve grown to a company of 30 employees,” says Bart. “We provide excellent solutions for our clients and a great working environment for our staff. We’ve just moved into new premises that are four times the size of the old one, but we’re still a family run company and we’re very proud of that.”