Jeannie-Marie Noyce
Founder & CEO
About Brenna
Why I started Brenna
Brenna is very personal for me. My sweet mum, Robyn, had very advanced Parkinson's disease and lived in residential aged care for four and a half years.
Mum received exceptional care at her aged care home, particularly as her Parkinson's progressed and her physical needs became greater and greater. I was incredibly grateful for the wonderful nurses and carers who looked after her.
But getting clear information about how Mum was doing wasn't always easy.
Sometimes the home would call me directly, and other times they would call my sister. With my brother in London and the two of us in Sydney, keeping all three of us informed was difficult.
And when Mum, whom I loved dearly, became increasingly frail, not knowing felt very stressful.
I could also see how busy the nurses were and how difficult it was for them to find time to call multiple family members, alongside everything else they needed to do.
This situation was the inspiration for Brenna.
Co-designed with the people who use Brenna every day
Brenna was co-designed over 12 months with seven residential aged care homes, working closely with nurses, care teams, managers and family members.
The reason Brenna works so well is that it was designed, tested and refined by the people who use it every day. Their experience shaped everything from the guided updates and family notifications to the way Brenna fits into existing care workflows.
Co-design continues to be at the heart of how Brenna evolves. We work closely with our customers, with new features and enhancements shaped by their ideas, feedback and suggestions.
Our new Forms & e-Signing Module is a recent example of this approach. We invited aged care providers to share their challenges and suggestions through questionnaires, followed by collaborative workshops and hands-on testing sessions. Their feedback helped shape the module to make collecting signatures, managing consent forms and tracking their completion easier for care teams.
Our goal has always been simple: to make Brenna genuinely useful for the people providing care and the families who rely on them.
Why better communication matters more than ever
Expectations of aged care have never been higher, from families and regulators alike. The Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards place greater emphasis on communication, consultation and having clear evidence that these have occurred.
For many families, particularly those in the sandwich generation juggling children, careers and ageing parents, life is already incredibly busy. Clear, timely updates about a loved one's care and wellbeing can make an enormous difference, providing reassurance, reducing worry and helping families feel informed and involved, even when they can't be there in person.
At the same time, aged care providers face ongoing workforce shortages, making every minute of nursing time increasingly valuable.
Brenna helps address these challenges together: keeping families informed and reassured, making communication easier for care teams, giving nurses more time for care and providing clear records of what has been communicated.