The gulf arises due to the extra expenses incurred by rural Australians when travelling to treatment centres. It also wants to give all family members and carers the ability to be nearby hospitalised loved ones so they can support them through their recovery process.
The website puts patients and carers who live in rural areas into contact with people who live near hospitals who have a spare room. This massively reduces the financial burden on carers of the severely ill, who otherwise would rack up large hotel bills.
Casey is studying for her Edith Cowan MBA and is majoring in project management. The idea for Rooms2Recovery came to her in class one day when she was learning about some research that had been done into the stresses of treatment on cancer patients in urban and rural areas.
The added burden of travel costs on rural patients resonated with Casey, and she started to think of possible solutions. She was ultimately inspired by the backpacker’s paradise that is CouchSurfing, which functions through people being willing to offer up spare beds for free.
As Casey says: “accommodation costs can mount up when you need to travel to a treatment centre every week or every few days. I had heard of people having to rent apartments in metropolitan areas for an entire six months to get through their treatment.
“I thought about the fact that for a lot of people, renting an apartment or staying in a hotel would be a great stretch on top of treatment costs. I wondered what other options were out there, and the idea that people could donate their spare rooms to help these patients.
“Through my research, I discovered there wasn’t already a service that could facilitate people either donating or seeking a room specifically for this purpose.”
Her idea was to create a non-monetary way for people to give back to the community, and all at the click of a button. Individuals can log on and advertise their spare room or seek a spare room to stay in. “It’s really not much of an inconvenience to offer a spare bed, but to patients under financial stress it could mean the world,” she said.
The idea to create a website to aid these people came after taking a module called Information System Challenges in Management, Casey said “I had a great lecturer who helped to build my confidence online, so when I came to create and manage the website I found I had the skills I needed".
Casey told me the ways her Edith Cowan MBA had helped get Rooms2Recovery off the ground, "The research and assignments I have completed and the grades I received, really boosted my confidence in my ability to take chances on projects like this. Also the tools that I have learnt through my MBA enabled me to create, launch and manage the site. What I've learn't while studying has been useful since my first class and will continue to help me for the rest of my career".
Casey completes her MBA at the end of this year and will to continue building Rooms2Recovery, we wish her lots of luck!
The original article can be found on the Edith Cowan website here.
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