Governments must guarantee older people timely care, value care workers, and keep technology accountable as populations age, according to Dr. Omer Shahab Khan, founder and CEO of Australian aged-care organization OSAN Ability.

“An assessed care need should create a service guarantee, not a place in a queue,” Khan said.

Khan noted that by 2030, 1 in 6 people worldwide will be 60 or older, and that public spending on long-term care in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries is projected to nearly double by 2050. He said Australia offers a useful case study. The country recently introduced a rights-based aged-care law, tougher quality rules and more funding for home care.

But Khan said law reform cannot replace timely services, a stable workforce and a clear funding plan.

“No country can claim to respect older people while making them wait months for support that has already been assessed as necessary,” he said.

He called on governments to set maximum wait times between assessment and the start of support, provide interim help and publish results by region, income and remoteness.

Khan said aging at home is often the right answer but warned that “home first” must never mean “home alone.” He said good residential care is not a policy failure.

He also called for a “workforce revolution,” saying aged-care workers are praised as essential while being paid as if their work were marginal.

He said care workers deserve predictable hours, paid travel time between visits, manageable workloads, training and real career paths.

Unpaid family caregivers need flexible respite, emergency options and training, Khan said.

“A system that saves money by exhausting carers is not efficient,” he said. “It is merely moving costs from public budgets into private lives.”

On funding, Khan said essential care based on need must be publicly guaranteed, while people with substantial means could reasonably contribute to accommodation and living costs, with strong hardship protections.

He said artificial intelligence can cut paperwork, but no algorithm should decide, without meaningful human review, that an older person should receive less care or lose services.

Khan urged governments to adopt 10-year plans with independently audited targets, saying long-term care should not be redesigned with every election cycle.

“The global challenge is not simply to finance more years of life,” he said. “It is to make those years worth living.”

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