The Indigo 4Ms

Indigo 4Ms Age-Friendly Health Care

Health and community services are an essential part of creating age-friendly communities. The Indigo 4Ms program of work is a collaborative approach to addressing the challenges of providing comprehensive, integrated care for older people living in rural northeast Victoria. Age-friendly health care ensures older people can live longer in better health.

To put the Indigo 4Ms Framework into practice, two tools were co-designed by older people and stakeholders from the health, aged care, and community sectors across northeast Victoria: the Indigo 4Ms Tool for Health Care Workers and An age friendly guide to living well. These tools offer conversation prompts and small actions to help older people and health care workers gain the knowledge and guidance needed to support healthy ageing

Indigo 4Ms Framework

The Indigo 4Ms Framework brings together evidence-based guidelines in four interconnected areas:

Action in these four areas can prevent, slow, or even reverse common age-related difficulties in hearing, seeing, moving, and remembering, enabling older people to continue to flourish and participate in community life.

This downloadable graphic shows the key action for each of the four core elements. These actions are the foundational assessments and evidence-based care that can prevent, slow or reverse functional decline associated with ageing.

Download the Full Framework

Indigo 4Ms Age-Friendly Health Care

Indigo 4Ms Guides

The Indigo 4Ms
An age friendly guide for living well

This downloadable guide provides communication prompts for the four core elements of the Indigo 4Ms: what matters, medications, mobility and mental wellbeing.

It is available in Italian as La Guida Indigo 4Ms per Anziani.

Access the Guide Access the Italian Guide

The Indigo 4Ms
Tool for primary health care workers

The Indigo 4Ms tool for primary health care workers guides health workers in conversations with older people through the Indigo 4Ms to address the commonly missed, essential areas of care. Together, the healthcare worker and an older person, can plan to improve and maintain an older person’s health as they age.

Access the Guide

About Indigo 4Ms

  • How was the Indigo 4Ms Framework developed?

    In 2018-20, Better Care Victoria funded older people and clinicians from across the Ovens and Murray region to collaborate using a co-design approach that assessed two best-practice models—the Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s 4Ms Framework and the World Health Organization’s Integrated Care for Older People guidelines—and academic findings to build a rural-specific approach to integrated care: the Indigo 4Ms Framework.

    An economic evaluation of the Indigo 4Ms Framework showed substantial cost savings if age-friendly care was delivered to older people living in north east Victoria.

  • Who was involved?

    The project was led by Beechworth Health Service, and involved the John Richards Centre for Rural Ageing Research at La Trobe University Albury Wodonga, older people, and health services from across north east Victoria including:

    • Albury Wodonga Aboriginal Health Service
    • Albury Wodonga Health
    • Alpine Health
    • Corryong Health
    • Gateway Health
    • Northeast Health Wangaratta
    • Tallangatta Health Service
    • Yackandandah Health

    Download Report

  • How were the Indigo 4Ms Tools developed?

    From 2021-23, the Australian Government funded a project to co-design new tools to assist people to use the Indigo 4Ms Framework. Over forty older people and health workers took part in the co-design workshops which produced two resources.

  • Want to know more about the work of Age-Friendly North East Victoria?

  • Contact Us