Ask a care manager in Singapore when the workday ends and the honest answer is: some time after the last visit, once the roster is patched, the visit notes are filed and the calls to anxious families about a missed shift are done.
Homage, the Singapore-founded home care company, thinks that unglamorous back office is a business in its own right. On Wednesday it launched Esteem AI, care management software for home care, aged care and disability support providers, and set it up as a standalone regional business alongside its care services. A global rollout, the company says, will follow.
Also Read: When a slot opens, let the AI agent act – within limits
The software itself is not new. Homage built it to run its own operations in Singapore, Malaysia and Australia, and more than 50 care organisations already use it, including Home Nursing Foundation (HNF), a charity that has sent nurses into Singaporean homes since 1976. What is new is the name, the separate business line and a layer of AI agents meant to take the paperwork off care managers’ plates.
The timing is no accident. Singapore became a super-aged society this year, with more than one in five citizens aged 65 or older, and the Ministry of Health expects a million seniors by 2030. Every one of them brings care needs, and every care visit brings forms, audits and rosters.
From three tools to one record
Esteem folds client intake, rostering, workforce management, incident reporting, customer support, billing, reporting and compliance into a single system, keeping each client’s history on one record. Homage’s argument is that most agencies still run on a rostering tool, a spreadsheet and a shared inbox that were never designed to talk to one another.
The AI layer is where the launch gets its headline, and also where the fine print matters. Most of the agentic features in the release are described in the future tense. Homage says it is building agents that will draft a visit note from what a care worker recorded, suggest a replacement carer when a shift opens up based on skills, location and whether the client already knows them, chase workers whose certifications are about to lapse, and answer routine questions from families using the record, passing anything that needs judgement to a human.
How much of that runs in production today is not spelt out. What Homage does stress is the guardrail: nothing that affects a client’s care or a worker’s schedule happens without a person’s approval, and every action is logged.
“Care will always be about people,” said Gillian Tee, co-founder and CEO of Homage. “Our AI agents prepare the work, but the decisions stay with care teams, as they always have.”
Also Read: Agentic AI is Singapore’s hottest job skill, and that should worry the people it replaces
That human-in-the-loop framing fits the regional mood. Southeast Asian tech leaders are learning to trust AI agents, but not with production, and regulated sectors want someone clearly accountable when an agent acts. In care, the bigger risk is quieter than a rogue agent: an exhausted care manager approving an AI-drafted note at 10pm without reading it closely. A sign-off button is only a safeguard if people treat it as one.
Six years in the making
Homage has flagged this move for a long time. As early as 2020, it set out plans for platforms other care providers could use. Tee says the push came from inside the company. “What surprised me was that everything around the care was just as hard: the notes, the rosters, the forms, the calls to families,” she said.
The traction figures are respectable rather than spectacular. More than 90 per cent of the 50-plus organisations use Esteem as their everyday care management system, and over 300 care managers use it in an average month, roughly six per organisation. HNF, the marquee customer, runs its home personal care operations on the platform and serves more than 1,000 care recipients a month. Its CEO, Dr Christina Tiong, said the platform is especially valuable outside office hours, helping the charity deliver continuous care “without adding administrative strain”.
Homage did not disclose revenue, pricing, or how many of those organisations pay commercial rates.
There is also an awkward structural question. Homage remains a care provider, and some of the agencies it now courts as software customers compete with it for clients and carers. The release does not say how customer data will be walled off from Homage’s own care business, or whether one agency’s records will help train agents used by another. In a sector handling sensitive health information, those are the first questions a procurement team will ask.
Rivals with a head start
Esteem walks into a crowded market. In Australia, one of Homage’s own markets, Canada-based AlayaCare and homegrown ShiftCare, which claims more than 6,500 care provider businesses as users, already sell all-in-one platforms covering rostering, compliance and billing for aged care and disability providers.
At home, Homage still competes on the services side with players such as Jaga-Me. Its pitch is that Esteem was built by an operator for operators. That is a real edge if the agents deliver, and a thin one if they stay on the roadmap.
A second story for investors
The spin-out also hints at how Homage wants to be valued. Founded in 2016, the company has raised more than US$45 million, including a US$30 million (S$40 million) Series C led by Temasek-owned Sheares Healthcare in 2021, and reportedly reached financial breakeven in early 2025. Software margins look far more attractive than labour-heavy care services, and a standalone Esteem gives Homage a second story to tell.
Also Read: The hidden economics of autonomous AI agents
Its track record on expansion counsels caution. In 2020, Homage said it planned to enter five more countries within two years, and announced a push into Japan with backing from Infocom. Neither has visibly materialised, and the company’s own boilerplate now lists only Singapore and Australia as markets for its care services. “Global rollout” will need a map before it means much.
Still, the problem Esteem targets is real and growing. Southeast Asia’s next healthtech winners will be built around workflows, not just AI, and Japan, further along the ageing curve, is already turning to physical AI to keep eldercare running. If Esteem gives care managers back a few hours a week, families will feel the difference. If it mainly lets agencies do more with fewer people, carers will feel it too.
Esteem AI is available to care providers in Singapore from today.
The post Homage turns its in-house care software into a business as Singapore turns super-aged appeared first on e27.