Raising Tech

Matt Reiners: Welcome back. Today we meet with Checked In Care, a SaaS company based out of Australia who’s changing the landscape of customer and staff experience in the care industry We’ll meet with founder and CEO of Checked In Care, John Perkins from Australia today.

And we also have on this interview, John Bosen, the president of their first USA customer advantage home care, based out of St. Louis. we’ll explore many of the benefits that this Australian company is bringing to U. S. based companies in the aged care and senior living industry.

thanks for joining me today, both Johns. first question I have for you, John Perkins is, can you just tell me the why behind Checked In Care?

John Perkins: Yeah, thanks, Matt. And thanks for having us on your podcast today. I’ve been working in the care sector since 1994,

My great aunt, who was heavily involved [00:01:00] in raising us, went into a senior living facility, And I remember walking in to see her and thinking, wow, you live a meaningful life and this is how it ends. And that really sparked a deep question inside me because the dignity of the end of life wasn’t there.

So that sort of lit that spark and led to me starting to work for not for profit care providers. I then started my first technology company in 1995. After selling that company,In 2001, I co founded another company called Ethan Group, which became Australia’s largest privately owned IT company, which delivered broad services to the care sector.

But what I noticed during that time was how self service capabilities, such as what you saw in the care retail industry, hospitality industry, even financial services industry, Where people could access what they wanted, when they wanted it, anywhere, anytime. you could go online at 10:30 at night and find out what you needed to know.

That was not happening in the care [00:02:00] industry. when you add the fact that in the care industry, it’s quite often families that are calling in and they’re anxious about knowing how their loved ones being looked after. That was the core reason behind starting Checked In Care. It was very much around bringing to the care industry the same self service capabilities that was happening in every other industry.

So that if a family member, or even the client, wanted to know what was happening with their care, they could access that information 24/7. What we’ve done is, we’ve actually Connect to a broad range of back end systems and bring all that information into a single screen, whether it’s an app or your desktop, so that whatever you need to know or you as a family member need to know about the care of an individual is available through that one app.

But also that’s extended now to staff, where there is so much app fatigue in the care industry. We bring all that information now into one single screen, one [00:03:00] window for staff to access the five, six, eight, 10 systems that they need to do their daily job.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it’s such a smart idea. I went and spoke to a group late last year, and someone mentioned they had 15 different apps on their phone, all required to do their job, all at different logins, it was a pain in the butt, right?

Like it’s just not a way, in a industry that prides ourselves in the care that we provide to have all of this. in one stop shop I love that. I know we’ll get to John Bosen here talking from the client experience, but I’m wondering John Perkins, if you can share some of the business outcomes, your clients are experiencing today.

John Perkins: Yeah. So Matt, the global issue that everyone’s having is staff availability and retention. And globally, as we talk to our customers, the number one issue they’re having with staff and when they do exit interviews with staff, the key issue that staff continually raise is they just don’t know what’s going on in the organization.

There’s not [00:04:00] enough communication. A lot of care workers who are mobile. They actually don’t access email, and the standard way that organisations communicate with their staff today is by email. And when our global partners have been looking at the reason why staff are leaving and it’s hard to retain staff, it’s because staff are saying, we don’t know what’s going on, there’s no communication, and there’s too much paperwork.

Even though these organisations have the systems in place, it’s too hard to access those 15 systems at the back end. we solve that problem, we connect to those 14 or 15 systems, we bring all that information into one single screen, and we enable that full communication channel.

everything the organization wishes to communicate with their staff is accessed through that one screen, that one app. solving the communication issue and access to those corporate systems. from a HIPAA compliance point of [00:05:00] view, staff are only allowed to see the information they’re allowed to see based on their role.

if you’re not supposed to see clinical information, if you’re a cleaner, you’re do not have access to that, our system solves that problem by only giving you access to the information you need based on your role.we have both the staff and the client app from a client point of view.

whether it’s the client or family members, you’re in a high stress scenario. You wish to know how your loved one’s going. And today, 70, 70, 70 percent of all calls into long term care facilities go either unanswered or someone says, I’ll get back to you, but they’re just so busy.

We help address that issue because those calls get dramatically reduced because the client or the family have access to the information they want when they want it. Reducing complaints, increasing transparency of that information to individuals and therefore substantially reducing staff effort because the [00:06:00] client or family members can find out the information they want when they want it.

Matt Reiners: I love that. I think where we’re going in terms of a working force, That transparency is key, And making sure you’re keeping that front and center. as we navigate the next five to ten years, I do see transparency continue to playing even that much larger of a role.

And I’m curious, this is for John Bosen, who hopefully gets an award for being the first U. S. based client of your guys. But John, I’m, John Bosen, I’m curious, what is the business problem that Checked In Care is helping you solve? And how’d you learn about Checked In Care?

John Bosen: great questions, Thanks for bringing him up. I met john accidentally as most relationships go, it’s right place and right time. I’ve been on the same software for about 20 years and we’re looking to switch we call it E. M. R. S, which is a electronic medical record.

We’re looking to switch softwares and the salesman of the new platform Introduced me to John he happened to be coming to the States for an event and we met up the clouds [00:07:00] aligned and here we are today

apprehensive because I don’t want to share the good magic that John’s done with the rest of the states. And so I understand that all that stuff that John said is true and great, but I’m biased and that I want to keep a secret for myself. And again, I’m being cheeky. So I hope you can see that.

 in all honesty John’s company solves a huge problem that I have in the home care industry it’s very segmented. A lot of stuff is still on paper. As John talked about, communicating with your team is a challenge in itself.

And I’ll just frame this for you so that you can see for yourself and your audience can see for themselves. here in St. Louis, we have a pediatric hospital called children’s hospital. They have about 150 beds. I have 4, 000 clients throughout Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, and Tennessee, administered through 50 office locations out of those locations, about 4, workers.

They don’t come in and so they don’t have access. You go [00:08:00] to the hospital every seven to 11, those shifts change, There’s healthcare workers leaving, there’s healthcare workers coming. They have support, they have policies, they have training, and if somebody doesn’t do what they need to do, all you gotta do is wait outside the doors and you can intercept ’em and train ’em

Home care is very segmented and it’s done like business was done 30 or 40 years ago. COVID for example. Prior to COVID, there was nothing electronic, no employment applications, or any of that stuff you order an HVAC guy to come out to your house, you get a picture of himhis likes, dislikes, his favorite color, you get all these things that tell you when to expect them, what he looks like and all these things, you order a home care worker, you Something that’s pretty intrusive.

You don’t know who you’re getting. You don’t know when they’re coming. Sometimes they show up, sometimes they don’t. And the lack of communication is missing. John plugged that void by supplying an easy platform that allows them to get the service that they need when they need [00:09:00] it, Imagine somebody interacting with your mom or dad that has dementia. And you trying to maintain a full job

And so nothing like my mom or my wife managing my mom’s needs. And John made that all doable as easy as with an app, as easy as typing in the phone number from my mom’s instance, without even involving me and giving her designated responsible party access to whatever information at their fingertips.

So they can make better decisions so that they can give quality care or partner with us to make sure they get the quality of care they need in the comfort of their home.

Matt Reiners: Wow. Love that. Talk about a testimonial. that’s so awesome to hear John Bosen.

I appreciate you sharing that with us. And I can understand being the first you don’t want the word to get out for everybody else, but hopefully John Perkins can take care of you in one way or another for doing that. John Bosen, another question I have for you, and you hit on it a little bit, but I always see this probably [00:10:00] more so a hesitation to work with some companies from outside the U.

S. market, bringing in solutions and services into the U. S. have there been any challenges that they’re based in Australia?

John Bosen: Noquite the contrary. I’ve been in this home care industry for 20 years.

I’ve been talking about an employee application since cell phones have come out, I’m only 45, but this is the first job I’ve ever really had. we’ve been talking about an employee app for literally 20 years. The man delivered that easily and It’s a breath of fresh air because what I like about John is he came here without any preconceived notions of what I wanted and in a typical salesman fashion, he listened, okay, but didn’t put me on what he wanted to put me on.

He put on, put me on a problem and trying to solve something and that goes a long way. he didn’t try to sell me something out of the box. He came to. solve my problem. in all honesty, that’s how the conversation started.

It’s not this is what we think [00:11:00] it’s tell me what you need. And he’ll tell you anything’s possible. It’s just how much it’s going to cost you. if he’s committed to it, He’s committed to making it work,

The hardest part is he’s on a different schedule but he’ll get up and have conversations with me And so I think that’s a, he can tell you how that converts in Australian time, but I sure don’t have a problem.

Matt Reiners: No that’s awesome to hear. And I know right now I just had to Google it.

It’s 6 20 AM in Sydney. So John Perkins waking up early to take part in this. And it’s so refreshing to hear. And I think John Bosen and you kinda, you mentioned like a typical salesperson my problem is I see typical salespeople are not like that. John actually coming in and listening and building a solution that makes sense versus forcing something upon you.

That’s where I’ve seen the most successful. Partnerships, not just a vendorship release is when you can work off the direct client feedback of what works well, what’s not working well and create a best solution for that. And then John boasted another question back to you. When you think about the [00:12:00] future with your partnership with Checked In Care, what do you hope as it evolves over time?

And would you recommend them to other us based providers that are not your competitors?

John Bosen: Yes, absolutely. You said it right there.

We are here in Missouri. we started with the caregiver side of it. The future is both a client side and a caregiver side of the app. in all honesty, more and more. Five years from now, it’ll be 22, five years from there it’ll be 44.

the answer is as fast as he can develop, we’ll continue to bring. More and more functionality to the table. And really it’s just as fast as what problems come up and how can John solve them? What I have now is a virtual mailbox. in front of every client and every caregiver that travels with them.

I’ve been waiting for that for 20 years. So I’m excited about our future.

Matt Reiners: I love that. question for you, John Perkins. It sounds like you’ve got a raving client and the St. Louis, Missouri area, but what are some of your other future plans for North America?

John Perkins: thanks, Matt. We’ve hired people in [00:13:00] North America now, and it’s a matter of building the team and scaling our capabilities into the market.

What we see in this part of the world, in Australia, New Zealand is we are consistently allowing or achieving a 40 percent reduction in inbound and outbound calls. Why? Because clients families and staff have access to what they need when they need it so they don’t need to call.

Substantially reducing complaints and we typically see an increase in revenue per client of 1, 000 per annum. because the family and the client can see the whole range of other services that they can access through, through that one provider. So really it’s about bringing that same capability and business outcomes to North America.

And to do that, we’re building the team, we’re scaling the team in North America. It’s really a matter of our growth and the great work thatwe love working with John Bosen and his team. And it’s a matter of [00:14:00] replicating that across many more customers. very excited to be in the States.

Very excited to see our growth and keen to bring the same outcomes that we’re consistently saying to providers in the U S market.

Matt Reiners: Awesome. Super exciting. And I’m always excited when I see new companies breaking into the North American market. at times we think we’ve got all the solutions here, which is just not the case at all.

I’m always looking for other people to bring innovative ideas into it. last question, either John can take it. Any final thoughts you want to share that you haven’t had the chance to share quite yet?

John Bosen: Matt, we call him internally. We call him me the States, John, and that’s Aussie, John. And so there’s the first two things you didn’t know about our names. And so we’ll give you that. But then for me and all honesty, I think the takeaway here Is that John brings flexibility

He’s not bolted onto any platform. He’s going to solve your problems and address your needs and bring his solution and try best to go after your specific problems. For me, I think that’s the takeaway [00:15:00] here. It’s not a it’s not a specific solution, but it’s a solution that has the right back end and the right customer service to streamline any kind of software you need.

Matt Reiners: And then Aussie John, anything else?

John Perkins: Our mission as a company is a world where all people live their best lives with choice and dignity. it’s about putting that choice into the hands of the consumer and staff what

excites us about the North American market is it’s very heavily privately paid. Where the choice is much more in the hands of consumer. Whereas in our part of the world, it’s very much government funded. we’re seeing enormous amount of excitement for our solution in North America because the, the nature of a more properly paid system.

We’re very excited to be there and watch our growth as we go forward. The customer and potential customer we’ve met so far in North America have been awesome. John Bosen, certainly the top of the tree, butwe love working in the North American [00:16:00] market.

Matt Reiners: Awesome. Thank you, Aussie John andUS John, this was a great episode and really grateful to hear the success that US John you’re having with Aussie John’s service. Awesome job, guys. Thanks, man.

John Bosen: Nice talking to you, man. Thank you,

John Perkins: Thanks for having us.

You can find us online at RaisingTechPodcast. com where you can see all of our episodes and contact us to provide feedback or submit an episode idea. We are on social media everywhere at Raising Tech Podcast. If you enjoy Raising Tech, please leave us a review and share with a friend. Music is an original production by Tim Riesig, one of our very own Parasol Alliance employees.

As always, thank you for listening.

Hey everyone, my name is Alex Reckard. I am a resident IT technician for Parasol Alliance, and I’m currently based in Madison, Wisconsin. I will be your presenter for this month’s Tech at Home resident exclusive miniseries, and the topic is going to be all about artificial intelligence. Now, I’m sure plenty of you have heard of artificial intelligence before, so this will be a great refresher for a lot of you.

And if you haven’t, hopefully you’ll learn quite a bit with this presentation. With this presentation, we’ll explore how machines mimic human thinking and discover practical applications for everyday life. Now going over the overview, which will be the structure for the presentation.

We’re going to first go over understanding AI, also known as Artificial Intelligence, the benefits of AI, risks and concerns, practical applications, AI tools, and [00:01:00] Followed by demonstrations.

Alright, so I wanted to do a pop quiz at the beginning of the presentation. And as we go through each image, can you distinguish whether it was generated by AI?

I’ll zoom in for you so that you can get a better look at each of the image,

alright? I’ll give you a few seconds. You can feel free to pause the video if it makes it that much easier for you to get a better look at each of the image. And then, you can resume the video if you are paused, and then I’ll let you know the answers.

 Alright, what do you think? Do you think you got all of them correct? Alright, so let’s go on to the first one. So we can see that this image looks really great. He looks really cozy. He has a nice knitted sweater. And if you actually guessed if this was captured by a human being, unfortunately, it is not.

It’s AI generated. And then going on to this image looks like it could be a great LinkedIn profile [00:02:00] photo. But if you mentioned that it was captured by a photographer, unfortunately it’s not. It’s AI generated as well. And you guys can probably catch on and see that there’s a pattern going on and if you did, in fact, think that this was captured by a human being, unfortunately this photo is generated by AI as well.

All these photos were generated by artificial intelligence. And now you’re probably thinking, how is this even possible? And I have to say, yes, it’s quite Interesting how someone even came up with technology that can do this it’s almost like magic to say the least, but the AI tool that I used to be able to make these images is a AI tool called mid journey.

And so mid journey allows for the generation of images. And it’s really come a long way and these are some of the images that I came up for this pop quiz that I wanted to add a little bit of interactivity [00:03:00] to the presentation. With that being said, let’s actually move on to the contents in the presentation as well.

Alright, now We will be understanding artificial intelligence, and with this slide we’ll go over a lot of the origins and history of AI and how it became to be what it is now. Alright what AI does is that it mimics human logic and reasoning, and its origin was actually from Dartmouth in 1956 by John McCarthy.

And he coined the term of Artificial Intelligence. And so what Artificial Intelligence does is that it’s actually a combination of various different subjects, such as Computer Science, also known as CS. Mathematics and Neuroscience. So it’s a mix of math, computers, and even a bit of psychology and neuroscience.

And then AI is all about data driven, adaptive systems. [00:04:00] AI thrives on using data, and the more data that it gets, the better that it can learn. And so the better that it can learn can improve automation, as well as optimization. This helps influence globally and also it continuously evolves each and every day.

Now going on to the benefits of artificial intelligence. And so some of the benefits that it allows us to have is automation saves individuals time and effort. And a lot of repetitive tasks end up becoming a lot easier and more convenient for us and if you ever use YouTube you can understand that a lot of videos end up getting recommended to you.

That’s actually artificial intelligence behind the scenes creating algorithms to better tailor your experiences for which video to watch and which video to recommend you watch next. This helps individuals gain access to more information as [00:05:00] well. It helps to foster innovation and enables further development, as well as optimize resource usage for environmental conservation.

Now, where there are benefits, there’s always going to be risks with everything. Automation may actually lead to a bunch of job losses as well, because a lot of repetitive tasks end up being automated, and machines are being used for those repetitive tasks and then a lot of human workers unfortunately will lose their jobs due to artificial intelligence.

Another risk is privacy concerns via personal data collection. And whenever you’re using an AI tool, you’ll have to make sure not to use any sensitive information or privacy that you wouldn’t want to share with a stranger. That’s something that you would have to keep in mind. false information from prompt hallucinations as well.

And so what I mean about prompt hallucinations is [00:06:00] that sometimes in these AI tools is that it might give back information that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. And it could come off as, false information at times. Another risk is reliance on tech also has a chance of reducing critical thinking.

The potential misuse in AI development can also be a major risk. It could be unfortunately used for spam or malicious purposes, and that’s something that we have to be aware of. And then also a risk would be energy consumption. E waste and carbon emissions.

Alright, now going on to practical applications. There are a lot of virtual assistants that help perform tasks. If you’re ever aware of Siri, Siri is a very popular Apple virtual assistant. That helps you with a lot of day to day tasks, such as being able to call people much [00:07:00] easier, or be able to send text messages, or search things on the web for you much quicker.

And if you’re not familiar with Siri maybe you might be more familiar with Amazon’s Alexa as well, and that allows you to do a lot of similar tasks. Another practical application is that algorithms personalize recommendations. AI can actually translate text and speech in real time. For example, if you’re ever on a trip in a foreign country and you use an AI tool that allows one of the native speakers there that speaks in a different language, what you can do with the AI tool is get the input of their language and then whatever the output set as is your native language, it can allow you to translate

whatever that person is trying to speak to you about. Another practical application is autonomous vehicles help enhance safety measures as well. A very popular [00:08:00] autonomous vehicle or uses self driving is Tesla. And then smart home optimizes energy usage. So if you use a lot of smart devices for your home, you can be able to control the heating or cooling of your home as well as the lights.

If you ever need to turn off the lights whenever you’re away from the home it just allows you to be able to optimize energy usage as well. And then another practical application is monitoring both your fitness and health metrics.

Alright, now moving on to artificial intelligence tools. So in this slide, we’ll have different types of categories for each AI tool, with the first one being all about text. So text, AI tools and one that you might be very familiar of will be ChatGPT, and then followed by Gemini and Copilot. And a really popular imaging tool, and one that I’ve used in this presentation, [00:09:00] was called MidJourney.

And then another is DALL-E, and also Leonardo. And then going on to video AI tools, we have Sora, which is also another open AI tool, which is from ChatGPT and also Runway Machine Learning. Now, going on to voice AI tools, there’s Speechify. natural readers, and AI covers that you can find on YouTube.

Image recognition AI tools are Google Lens, Apple Face ID, as well as Tesla. And, what Tesla does for image recognition, for example, is that their vehicles are able to identify what obstacles are on the road, so that if it ever needs to make a maneuver, It can be able to do a safe maneuver around that obstacle.

And then procedurally generated games such as Minecraft, Terrari, and Valheim, all use AI related technology to be able to achieve these procedurally [00:10:00] generated games. Alright, now going on to the demonstration of the video. So the demonstration will highlight examples from the AI Tool Chat GPT, including crafting delicious Thanksgiving recipes.

Designing festive and creative Christmas decorations and also tips for hosting holiday parties. And so the reason behind a lot of these examples that I listed is because the holidays are coming up and I just wanted to come up with some pretty practical examples that we can use in ChatGPT. So what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna click on this link and we’re gonna go straight to ChatGPT.

And so the first, the first example was all gonna be about

crafting Thanksgiving recipes. So What we can do with ChatGPT, and so this is an open AI tool, and so in order to use it, all you’d have to do is go to ChatGPT. com, and then it’ll ask you to make an [00:11:00] account, sign in. And then you can go right ahead and start chatting with the AI tool. And so you can really give it any sort of prompt.

So you type in to the text field and send it as if you were sending a message to a family, friend. And so it works very similar to that as well. So what we can do is we can type in ChatGPT and mention, ” list me some popular Thanksgiving recipes, and ensure to include the ingredients and measurements.”

Alright, and so now it’s gonna start generating a lot of what we gave the prompt, and we can then see exactly what popular Thanksgiving recipes, there are, and also include the ingredients and measurements as well. So a classic roast turkey is very common for Thanksgiving. We can see [00:12:00] all the ingredients that it gives us.

such as a whole turkey and then all the remaining other types of ingredients, different herbs, different seasonings. And then we can then go down to the creamy mashed potatoes ingredients as well. We can see all the ingredients for there. And then classic stuffing ingredients. And then green bean casserole.

Jeez, this is making me super hungry. It’s just in time for lunch coming up here soon. And so if you ever find that any of those recipes look great, you can actually ask it would you like the cooking steps for any of these? So let’s say, give me the steps for a green bean casserole.

Alright, and now it will start generating us the steps for the green bean casserole, as well as give us a recap of the ingredients that we need for the recipe. Hope it’s first given us each step by step of what to do, such as [00:13:00] preheating the oven, preparing the green beans, cooking the onions and garlic, making the sauce, etc.

And so this allows you to really follow it follow the recipe just how you typically would make a green bean casserole. So this is a great way for you if you’re ever needing assistance with being able to make food in the future. So this is just one of the examples that you can do with it.

Let’s see what another one of our, what was another one of our it was Designing Festive and Creative Christmas Decorations. We can say, give me some examples of Christmas decorations.

Alright, so here are some popular Christmas decoration ideas to bring festive cheer to your home. And it’s going to give us a list of Christmas tree decorations that we can do, various different ornaments lights, tree topper, even like a tree skirt to add. Some indoor decorations that [00:14:00] we can use such as wreaths, table centerpieces, Christmas villages, outdoor decorations, what you could do with windows DIY decorations that you can do as well, and then theme decorations.

Then it later provides us would you like tips on creating a specific type of decoration. So this just allows you to go further in depth on some of the decorations that you’d like to do. Alright, now going on to our last. example, it’s going to be tips for hosting holiday parties. So now we can ask GPT, “please give me some tips on hosting holiday parties.”

Alright, and so it says hosting a holiday party can be a joyful yet challenging task. Here are some tips to help make your event successful, festive, and stress free. So it just mentions to plan ahead, decorate thoughtfully, set the mood with music, being able to prepare a holiday playlist a mix of [00:15:00] classic and modern songs as well, various different types of food and drinks that match the the event.

Entertainment activities, organization tips, and then create a welcoming atmosphere. And then it also mentions to don’t overdo it. Alright, and then it, like I said, at the end it wants to give even more types of suggestions. Here’s a bonus one. We can say list me five popular 2024 gifts

 For nephews or niece.

All right, so now it’s going to list me five popular 2024 gifts for nephew or niece. So now we can see that a Nintendo Switch Lite is, one of the things that it mentions an instant camera, a name puzzle STEM related kits. DIY comic book kit. And these gifts cater to a range of interests and ages, making them thoughtful and engaging choices for your niece or nephew.

Like I said, you [00:16:00] can really put in whatever information that you want with this but just Keep in mind you can go as in depth as you want, but you have to make sure not to share any sensitive information that you wouldn’t want to say to any strangers. That’s just a disclaimer that I want to make for anyone that’s using this in the future.

All right. I want to say thank you for letting me do this presentation. Like I said, my name is Alex Reckard. I am the resident I. T. Technician for Parasol Alliance. I’m currently based in Madison, Wisconsin, and it’s been a great pleasure of being able to do this presentation. And I hope you have a great day. Bye.

Amber Bardon: [00:00:00] Welcome to raising tech podcast. I’m your host, Amber Bardon. And today’s episode features Suzanne Allen, who’s the managing partner at Blue Fingerprint. So almost every single time I go on site to a client, I’m always telling them about Blue Fingerprint. I think it’s such a great product and I think it has such an impact on improving processes for sites.

So I’m so excited to talk to you today to Suzanne, learn more about Blue Fingerprint. So welcome to the show.

Suzanne Allen: Hey, thank you so much, Amber, for having me. And I’m excited to talk about a topic that rarely gets much attention, but it’s so critical when it comes to either an operating campus or new development.

So I’m excited to be here today. Thank you.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, definitely. You’ve definitely got this niche on solving a very specific problem and making it a lot more seamless and easy for senior living organizations. So tell us what it is. Tell us about it. First of all, a little bit more about [00:01:00] yourself and your journey.

And then tell us more about Blue Fingerprint.

Suzanne Allen: Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. So

I’m Suzanne Allen.

I a managing partner here at Blue Fingerprint have been working in senior living since 2005. So really my experience began on the construction side, working for a national general contractor who at the time in early 2000s, they were focused on building a lot of greenfield.

what we called CCRC’s life plan communities back in the day. And really what that organization developed was an in house tool to manage options and upgrades. So anytime a resident was Provided the choice to choose cabinetry, countertops or flooring. They took a very manual spreadsheet model and developed a platform.

So I joined that group in 2005 to really help project manage some of [00:02:00] those clients that were utilizing the tool. Since that time, we had the opportunity to purchase the intellectual property and create a standalone organization where today we work with providers, contractors, architects, developers across the country still very focused in senior living.

We’re passionate about helping our clients. We like the industry and we feel like we have a good understanding of all parties involved in the and really the development building process as well as in managing options and upgrades.

Amber Bardon: So tell me a little bit more about the specific problem that Blue Fingerprint helps solve. And can you walk us through a little bit more about the functionality of the system?

Suzanne Allen: When we think about new construction in particular, and for a new community, a new campus, for example, that is offering options and upgrades are what we term as personalizations [00:03:00] today. I think about managing multiple units, having to manage multiple items in a very specific amount of time.

Contractor is on board and they say we need all of the selections for the first floor by X date. So it’s really documenting and then tracking that information and data through its life cycle and the life cycle really is similar to conduit right between sales marketing and the resident and then it flows that communication to the builder and the subcontractor.

Moving coordinator, for example, meets with a future resident and presents a menu of selection offerings. That moving coordinator documents within the Blue Fingerprint platform. All of those choices also identifies any custom requests or items not on the menu. And then that information is [00:04:00] stored really in real time.

Available 24 7 for the team to access, right? So it’s hosted in the cloud. So everybody can look at that information once that unit is complete. Then again, notifications are sent off to the builder so that they know that complete inventory list of everything that they need to procure for the finishes in that unit.

Amber Bardon: So just to compare, how would that work without something like Blue Fingerprint? So what is the time saving and what’s the efficiency here?

This

Suzanne Allen: method, truly our biggest competition today is truly Excel because a lot of folks will manage this manually on paper. That process truly is only as organized as the person who owns it.

I’m sure if you gave me your spreadsheet, one of your spreadsheets that you use, Amber, I would be like, blown up. What does this all mean? So what we see in the industry is sometimes there’s staff turnover. So I have to relearn [00:05:00] this process all over again in order to pick up the ball and continue with them.

With the process of meeting with these residents and selecting so really it’s. It’s an organizational tool designed to keep everybody on the same page, right? The other challenge with a manual process is version control, right? Did I remember to send that latest version off to my project manager?

Did I document what unit 101 wanted in their sunroom? It’s the place everybody can look to really see the information. It’s also a product that provides documentation to the resident so that they can sign off on. And new construction in particular, they don’t move in for sometimes 18, 24, 36 months from when the process begins.

So they’re going to hang on to that documentation and what we call a personalization summary up until the day they move in. And they’re going to check their list on. [00:06:00] Okay, these are the cabinets. These are the countertops. This is the flooring I selected.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, I’m also thinking it’s a better look for the people meeting with the residents to be able to do this all electronically. I think every time I go to a doctor’s office and I still have to sign things on paper, I’m always thinking like, why are they not more technically advanced?

I think that there’s an advantage there to be able to do things right on the spot and right in the moment without having to go back and check on things. I’m sure that can add time into the process by being more efficient upfront that way.

Suzanne Allen: Even our clients have came back to us and said, you know what it does, Suzanne, is it helps build confidence with our residents, right?

They’re seeing us documented there. We’re capturing that information rather than maybe taking a clipboard and a sheet of paper or a notebook, or even a Word document to capture it all. It does help build that confidence. Not just that they made the right choice to make that decision, Move into the community, but the right choice and interesting their future with that organization.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, absolutely. [00:07:00] And in today’s world, where this industry is just growing and growing, and there’s so many options to choose from, and a lot of the community websites look the same that personalization is so important. And we’re starting to see a lot more of our clients want to be able to offer that as differentiator.

So can you talk a little bit about what you’re seeing in the industry in terms of trends and personalization and why that’s important?

Suzanne Allen: Oh, sure. We all want the ability to personalize and companies like Amazon, stitch fix, blue apron. They’re all feeding off of that, right? We identify what our personal shopping preferences are and how often do we look on Amazon?

But that says, Hey, we think you’ll like this product. So what we know about today’s precedent and we’re talking about baby boomers coming into the mix now, right? They’re influenced a lot of by what they experienced their tech savvy. They’re using Amazon Prime. They’re ordering their products [00:08:00] digitally, but also we’re seeing shows like HGTV and other design type shows that are very popular in today’s market.

So when you’re seeing all of these trends and styles and renovating your home or designing your future home and space. That’s really the expectation today. I think what organizations need to evaluate is. Is how much do you offer? Because we get to a place where it’s that paradox of choice.

We all want choice, but when we’re presented with too much choice, it’s overwhelming, right? Go Google faucet and Amazon and you’ll get 375 different options of a faucet. If we can help companies narrow down that menu to make it the right fit for them, 80 percent of their clients will choose off that menu.

I can almost bet. 20 percent is truly those that want what they want and they will customize. But if we can help manage the [00:09:00] majority I think it, it makes it operationally even easier for the ops team to support and provide maintenance to those products as well.

Amber Bardon: Are you seeing anything really unique or different when it comes to personalization or customization?

Any tips or trends happening? I’ve heard about, and we all know about the common ones about paint and cabinets and things like that, but I’ve heard about moving walls. And is there anything like that you can share with us?

Suzanne Allen: Yeah, I think when we look at trends and evaluate, we’ve been around for almost 23 years now.

So when we do a look back and say, what’s important to seniors, right? A functionality is still really important because they want to envision doing what they love in this next home that they’re gonna occupy. But what a trend that we are seeing is more and more people are choosing to consult or do some type of work once they move into a retirement community.

So technology is extremely important as you guys [00:10:00] know, right? So having the ability to even add extra outlets, ensuring that the connection or the connectivity to their den, which is not going to be their office has appropriate bandwidth so that they can, use still different programs or streaming, different things like that.

But also items still like adding lighting or creating unique space for what’s important for them, whether that be in a wine fridge or extra storage.

Amber Bardon: What do you see are some of the challenges with More communities trying to do more with customization and personalization. Is there ever a point where it goes too far?

Suzanne Allen: Yeah, I think it sets a precedence, right? So in about 2010 when the recession hit, communities had to offer whatever they could to get people to move in, right?

So there were all kinds of incentives and one incentive was truly Customize the space and it’s on us, right? [00:11:00] So here, fast forward almost 15 years. We’re in a place where the buzzword and senior living is how do we standardize? How do we maximize and create efficiency? And so trying to reign that back in is a challenge, right?

But I think the first step in doing it is to actually take their current process. Here’s what I would invite any community to do and communities that we work with. One thing is we’ll invite them to a process mapping session, right? This is specific for a renovation or a unit turn, walk me through every step every person has to take in order from sales, right?

We sell the unit, we have someone who wants to move in to the time they move in, whether that be 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, 120, walk me through all of those steps. And then from there, we can identify here’s a big gap of time where, we’re waiting for this.

What if we [00:12:00] try this approach? So we identify those inefficiencies and then try and introduce whether it be a Blue Fingerprint or some other method or process to improve it.

Amber Bardon: Yeah,

that makes

sense. What would a community need to know or do to prepare for implementing something like blue finger print?

What does that process look like for onboarding?

Suzanne Allen: Oh, I think the

1st step is communication. So our leaders today and senior living understand the importance of how we need to maximize how we have better buying power. We only have 4 carpets to choose from versus 40 right? Our suppliers may give us a better price if we can maximize some of that.

Purchasing on scale but, really, I think it’s the communication from leadership to the actual boots on the ground to say why is this important? Because I think what we find here at Blue Fingerprint is leadership understands that [00:13:00] boots on the ground are just so busy trying to get through each day.

With the task they’re responsible to perform. So to stop pause. Hey, we have a new implementation. We all know it’s some work to get that set up. So I think if the communication is still up front, we provide a nice demonstration for the entire team so that everybody understands what we’re into and then clear established goals, right?

What are we trying to achieve here? Is it reducing the number of days it takes for a renovation from 90 to 70, right? So it’s determining that path, I think first through a communication plan to the entire team.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, I think that’s good advice for any implementation for sure.

Yeah. Suzanne, is there anything we haven’t talked about yet that you want to share and make sure our audience is aware of?

Suzanne Allen: I think the biggest thingIs listen to your resident, some communities who are approaching a new development we work with a lot [00:14:00] of development teams and marketing teams and your residents are your best source of information. During those early sales conversations, or even events where communities might sponsor a coffee top or a cocktail hour to come in and look at what the future might look like.

Community or expansion may look like they’re your best source of information on what they might expect in their homes and units, right? If it’s a clientele that when I started 15 years ago it oftentimes when folks move to a new senior living community, it was almost a step up, right?

Because they hadn’t really renovated their homes yet. Back in that time. They were moving into something fresh and new. Today’s residents have either moved, downsized, Renovated their homes. So they have some expectations like they don’t expect plastic laminate countertops anymore, right? They expect solid surface.

Many of them have quartz in their [00:15:00] home. They manage to expect that. Listen to those residents find out what they’re passionate about, what’s important for them in their home. And then, if it can be accommodated, then talk to your development team, talk to your contractor about how can we provide this within the construction schedule.

Amber Bardon: Suzanne, thank you so much for joining me today. It’s really great to chat with you again. And I am excited for all of our listeners to learn more about Blue Fingerprint because I think it is such a great product.

So where can our listeners find you if they want to learn more? Yeah, thanks so much, Amber. You can find us by visiting our website at bluefingerprint. com. You can connect with me, Suzanne Allen, on LinkedIn.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

You can find us online at RaisingTechPodcast. com where you can see all of our episodes and contact us to provide feedback or submit an episode idea. We are on social media everywhere at Raising Tech Podcast. If you enjoy Raising Tech, please leave us a review and share with a friend. [00:16:00] Music is an original production by Tim Riesig, one of our very own Parasol Alliance employees.

As always, thank you for listening.

[00:00:00] You can find a full demonstration of this tutorial on our website at parasolalliance. com. Just click on the resource tab and it’s under Resident Education.

Hello, my name is Michael, and today I’ll be talking about assistive access and accessibility for iPhones.

To get started, you will need iOS 17 or higher in order to do this on an iPhone. If you don’t have iOS 17 or higher, don’t worry, we will still cover some accessibility settings that will still be available for you and everyone else as well.

So assistive access, what is it? Assistive Access is a simplified home screen that allows people to use the iPhone easier and more effectively. As you can see on the right side of the screen, it makes the apps a lot bigger.

There’s not as many apps on the screen, and that’s really the only thing you can see. Assistive Access is really there for simplicity, to make it easier for you to use it, as well as keeping things in an orderly fashion, in a row or a grid, however you like it. So we’ll go ahead and [00:01:00] get started, and go ahead and find where the Assistive Access is in the phone.

Where it’ll be is in Settings. You’ll scroll down to Accessibility, and then Assistive Access will be at the very bottom. Once you’re in Assistive Access, you’ll see these two screens on the right side of the presentation. They’ll let you put applications in, any ones you want. You can change the view from grid to row, as well as all the other options, such as wallpaper, if you’d like to be in the background.

If you’d like to allow volume buttons or not. If you’d like to allow the ringer or silent mode to work. If you would show time on the lock screen, so if you like a clock on the lock screen or anything like that. If you would like to show battery level on the lock screen, show notification baggages, and allow Siri.

The very last one, passcode settings, will be something we’ll deal with towards the end. And that’ll be how you start assistive access, so we won’t get to that just now. But once you have adjusted all these settings how you like, changing the row to grid, adding in, turning off, turning on, any of these other settings at the bottom, [00:02:00] we’ll go ahead and look at the applications.

So calls and messages will be a little bit different than any of the other apps. All the other apps will work how they normally do when you’re not in assistive access or looking at the iPhone normally. But calls and messages will be much different. So for calls and messages, you’ll be able to receive calls from either selected contacts, all contacts, or everyone.

However, you can only make or send messages and calls to selected contacts in the phone. So you can’t choose the option to make a call to anyone or make a message to anyone in your contacts. You’ll have to go in there, Select the contact you like and then keep going down the list and saying I need you know this person that person they Need to be a person I can call or text at any given time and you’ll choose all of those people and then once you’re done You’ll move on to the next part of the settings So I would suggest having the show dialer keypad always on just in case let’s say you go to the doctor They give you their phone number and they tell you to [00:03:00] call them or something like that If you don’t have that dialer keypad on then you wouldn’t be able to type in their number and call them.

They would have to be on that selected contact list that we mentioned earlier. So definitely have the dialer keypad on as well as the in call options of keypad and speaker. Have those on as well. It’ll just make the calling experience a little bit easier. If you like speakerphone because it’s a little bit louder, you can do that as well.

So all of these options are definitely helpful and I would have them on. For the messaging options, you can have it tap to hear a message, so when you click on it, it’ll just start talking to you, it’ll read out the message out loud, as well as conversation details, if you wanted to have that summarized for you as well.

The other options at the bottom are message input, which means do you want to have the keyboard available, do you want to have a video selfie or emoji available, so that’s all completely up to you. I would recommend at least the keyboard available, but the emoji and video selfie are definitely something that are more personalized and completely up to you if you want to add them or not.

But since we’re done with the calls and messages, we can move [00:04:00] on to what the other apps will look like and how you’ll set them up with assistive access. For example, here on the left side, I have ESPN and Assistive Access. If you want to have that on and available, you can choose it, and then it’s going to ask you a couple different settings questions.

Each app will be different. However, they’ll majority be the same. So it’ll ask you if you want to have any notifications, Face ID, Bluetooth, a microphone, local network and location. So you’ll be able to choose, if you want the app to have access to that or not. More or less, you’ll say yes to mostly everything, unless there’s something on there that you say, I don’t want the person who’s using the phone to have the ability to do that.

And you can turn that off from there. When you’re in Assistive Access, these apps like ESPN or maybe a banking app or a weather app will all work how they normally did before. So you won’t have to worry about getting used to a different layout or a different display. Once you click on the app in Assistive Access, it’ll look exactly like how it did normally on the phone.

So once we get all those settings [00:05:00] adjusted, you add all the apps you’d you change all of the settings on assistive access at the bottom of the screen, such as, the wallpaper, volume buttons, etc., you’ll be able to start assistive access. And where that’ll be is at the very top of the main page of assistive access, they’ll say something to start assistive access.

So once you’re all ready, you’ll click that, It’s going to ask you to set a passcode for assistive access. What I would recommend is putting the same passcode or PIN that you use on the phone currently. If you don’t have one, then you can make it something simple. If you really want to, like 1111, it doesn’t have to be something too complicated, mainly because when you’re in assistive access, you don’t want to get stuck in there and not have the ability to leave.

So what that passcode does is, if you want to leave assistive access, You can exit it with that passcode, but you do need it. So something to definitely remember, jot down, or make it something that you would easily remember. So we’ll go from there once you get it all set up, if you want it or if you don’t want [00:06:00] it.

So once you click star assistive access, you put in your passcode, it’ll begin to enter assistive access. It’ll look very much like the phones on this screen. So it’ll have all your apps in this order. You’ll have that wallpaper if you want. And you’ll be able to use any of these apps how you’d like.

Except for calls and messages will be a little bit different. You’ll still be able to make calls, receive calls, all that kind of stuff. Just depending on what settings you chose earlier. So that really is it for assistive access. The only other thing I wanted to mention was if, let’s say, you don’t want assistive access, you want to get out of it, how you can get out of it is clicking the power button on the right side three times.

Once you do that, it’ll give you the options of either going to settings, emergency, or exiting assistive access. Then it’s going to ask you to type in your passcode that I mentioned a little bit earlier. You’ll type that in, and then your phone will go back to how it normally was before.

So it’s really easy to get out if you don’t like it. So you can play around with it, see if it’s something you would like, and then leave if, let’s say, you don’t like it. So there’s a lot [00:07:00] of options in here. They make it easy to get out, easy to get in. It’s just adjusting all those different settings to how you might want it.

So now that we’re done with Assistive Access, this is the part for anyone who doesn’t have iOS 17 or higher. Or if you do, you can still use all these options here. All the other accessibility options available. So there’s a lot of them in vision, a lot of for physical and motor including, touch face ID all those kinds of things that would help you use the phone a little bit easier, as well as it can look at your hearing devices, you can put subtitles on the phone if that’s a little bit easier for you.

And you can enable live speech as well. What live speech is, it’s just that if you talk into the phone, it’ll do what you tell it. So completely up to you and how you want to use it. But definitely take a look at these settings. If it’s something that interests you, play around with them. And you can always turn them off if you want.

But one of the main ones that I’ll talk about is display and text size. And that will be in accessibility, And then over here at the top in the vision [00:08:00] category. So once you click on display and text size, you’ll be able to see all the different options in it. The most important ones that I think are larger text and bold text.

So if you have a hard time seeing the phone, if let’s say you think the font size is a little bit too small for you, you can turn on larger text They have a couple different options about 5 or 6 so you can choose and see how big you want it.

If you want it as big as it can go, or if you want it somewhere in the middle, they have all those options available as well as bold text will make it a little bit pop out more. So makes it easier to see and makes it easier for the person using the phone.

How you see the phone and if it helps you. So like reducing transparency, increasing contrast, those don’t necessarily help you see the phone. It all does depend on the person from case to case. So definitely try them out, see how they look for you. And you can always just turn them off if you don’t like how they look.

The only one I wouldn’t recommend is Smart Invert. That completely changes the screen [00:09:00] color. So I wouldn’t recommend that one. All the other ones though are very good to use. So that’s just one of the accessibility features. But another one that I wanted to touch on was something called Assistive Touch.

And where that will be? Is in settings, accessibility, and then in that physical motor, you’ll click on touch. So once you click on touch, it’ll take you into this assistive touch menu. You want to turn it on and this will give you the option to tap things that maybe you wouldn’t normally be able to, or do things a little bit easier.

So what it’ll look like is over here on the right side, it’ll look like this home button. There’ll be a white dot in the corner of your screen. You can move it around wherever you’d like, but once you click on it, it’ll give you all these different options. So if you want to go to the home screen, you can click on that home.

If you want to go to the control center, that’s a quick way to get to the control center. Same with the notification center. If you were to click on device, then it would give you all these different options to either lock the screen, rotate the screen, Increase the [00:10:00] volume, decrease the volume, or unmute.

So this is more for if you’re having a hard time doing things, or maybe your screen is a little bit broken, and some features don’t work how they should. You can use AssistiveTouch to get around that and get to those certain places, like Control Center or Notification Center, as well as locking the phone if your lock button doesn’t work anymore, or if your volume button doesn’t work, you can use this as well.

There are a lot of other options in here, so you can customize things. As you can see, there’s another part called Custom and Gestures. I wouldn’t really recommend that that’s a little bit more advanced and harder to use, so I would stay away from that, but the Home, Control Center, Notification Center, and Device are all very good things to use with this AssistiveTouch.

And you can always turn it off if you don’t like it. Again, play around with these settings, see how you like it, and go from there. But that does conclude the presentation. Thank you guys for listening, and have a good day. [00:11:00]

Matt Reiners: Welcome back. This is Matt Reiners Chief Growth Officer at Parasol Alliance. Excited to bring you another episode of Raising Tech with our special guests, Akshita Iyer. She’s the visionary founder and CEO of Ome, a company dedicated to making homes safer through innovative technology.

She’s inspired by a personal experience, which I’ll let her get into. But this allowed her and really inspired her to invent a groundbreaking device that transforms any stove into a smart appliance within minutes.

So thanks so much for joining me today. And I’m curious, a great place. We always like to start with new gases. You tell us a little bit about you, about Ome and how this came to be.

Akshita Iyer: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, Matt. It’s a pleasure to be here. I took a bit of an unconventional path to entrepreneurship.

So I went to school for neuroscience, thought I was going to go to med school and then I took a few gap years. And in that time, my mom was diagnosed with Parkinson’s [00:01:00] and she actually just left the stove on one too many times and started a kitchen fire. I never really talked to my parents about aging.

I just got out of college and I didn’t realize the effect that this disease was having on my mom until we actually had an incident that could have caused real harm. We were early adopters of all your smart home technologies, doorbells, door locks, thermostats. And so I figured there had to be something that could solve for the number one cause of house fires, which is exactly what my mom did.

Leaving the stove on by accident. And lo and behold, there wasn’t. But also realize that, the appliance industry is tough because you have appliances that last a really long time, right? 15, 20 plus years. Most people don’t buy an appliance unless there’s breaks or they build a new house.

And so I thought, how hard could it be to build a smart device that can retrofit onto your most used cooking appliance, so that we could actually provide the needed safety features today. It was not as simple as I thought it was, but I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time. But what we ended up building is the only smart device on the market that can not only [00:02:00] turn a standard gas or electric stove into a smart appliance, but also proactively adjust the burners or turn them off if it’s left on.

And we do that through this very simple device that looks like a normal knob, but it’s actually very smart. So it’s got a motor inside position sensors and functions like a normal knob. You push your turn. We’re not changing how you cook, but then it has all these extra safety features that make sure you’re safe in your own home.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I love that. And to your point about like buying new appliances, we just bought a home, moved in using all the appliances that were already here. No timeline to buy any new ones. Imagine when they break. And I think just being able to adjust what might be in someone’s home already.

And making it smart. And this idea of technology and incorporating that is brilliant. And yeah, the journey of entrepreneurship is always harder than I think we all anticipate going into it, but that what makes it so fun. And I know you had mentioned your mom and some of these fires that were starting which, of course, whatever we can do to avoid those what made you go down this path of coming up with the idea of that smart [00:03:00] knob?

And can you just explain how it works?

Akshita Iyer: Yeah, so the idea of the smart knob really came from, all of these retrofit smart devices in the home, right? We had Nest come out with the 1st retrofit thermostat. And then you had door locks and doorbells and HVAC systems.

And really the power of those devices was that they’re intuitive. They’re affordable. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get the safety and security you need at home. And I looked at the appliance industry and all we do is sell new appliances, right? And that takes a really long time. And it’s expensive.

If you look at a smart appliance today, it can be thousands of dollars. The average consumer can’t afford that. So the idea was really, can we do what the rest of the smart home did for your Appliances, starting with your most used cooking appliance that clearly has some safety concerns. And we wanted this knob to look and function like a regular stove knob.

So the beauty of retrofit devices is that you don’t have to change how you do what you do every day. And the last thing we wanted to do was change how someone uses their stove. We wanted this to be intuitive. [00:04:00] And we wanted to make sure that it looked and functioned like a regular stove knob, but we also needed to make sure that it had the ability to automatically and proactively adjust.

The way this knob works is we have basically 2 parts to it. The bottom has a motor inside, and then this just goes right on the stove shaft. You tighten down. So you pull your knob off. You put this on and then this has all the electronics and it just snaps on, And every time you turn the burner on we have some LEDs that will show up to let you know what setting you’re at.

And what the knob is doing is basically tracking what setting, what burner, how long the burner’s burner’s been on for, and then, That way it can automatically turn off the burner if it’s left on for too long and you as a consumer can adjust what that time looks like based on your cooking habits. We also offer cooking timers.

So if your rice is going to take 22 minutes and you don’t want to get distracted or your hard boiled eggs take 11 minutes. You can set that either through our app or through a voice assistant. And then we also have a safety lock which means that when you don’t want your stove [00:05:00] used if it’s at night or you are out of the house and you have kids at home or pets, recently there was a viral videothat CNN Broadcasted where a dog jumps on to the range and lights a burner and it starts a kitchen fire.

And so with that safety log, when the stove is in that mode, anytime a burner is turned on, it can automatically turn the burner off and then send you notification. Really addressing a lot of the safety concerns that have been there for a really long time, but in a very affordable and intuitive way that consumers can understand.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, I even just think about my own house. I’ve got a three year old running around and we’ve got these things on there right now that she can’t adjust it, but it makes my life much more difficult to do it. Cause it’s childproof, but I feel like I’m a child at times because I can’t open some of the stuff.

And I’m curious For this what are some of the challenges and opportunities for the smart home or like smart kitchen space?

Akshita Iyer: We’ve learned in the last couple of years after we launched the first generation of this device was, this is a problem that everyone has and they know they have, right?

Who hasn’t gotten distracted and [00:06:00] overcooked food, right? Or left the burner on, may have not led to a house fire. But it is something that we’re constantly thinking about, especially now that we spend a lot more time at home than we did before. We all have aging family members, so safety is a concern. What we realized was this is a problem everyone knows they have, but they don’t know a solution exists, right?

It’s just, this is the way that it goes. And that’s where I was when we had this incident um, we’re going to have to Oh, this just happens all the time. And so we’ve had to spend a lot of time educating consumers that it’s not just your smart home in terms of, your security system, your appliances should also be smart in a meaningful, impactful way.

A lot of smart appliances nowadays. But what is it actually doing for you? What is it solving? And so I think that’s a big challenge in making sure that we’re able to get that awareness so that people know that there is actually meaningful technology that’s going into these smart appliances. think that also leads to the opportunity, right?

Where You know, there are [00:07:00] tens of millions of non smart appliances out there, right? And we shouldn’t have to wait for a consumer to need a new appliance, right? What if we can build that line of communication with the retrofit, right? If I can get into your home today. and I can offer you this value, then I’m better understanding how you’re using your appliance.

What other pain points do you have? And now I’ve got a digital line of communication with you where I can continue to build out features. And then, oh, in 10, 15 years, we can actually build a new appliance that has all this functionality built in based on data. And so that’s really where we see the opportunity of this retrofit

period where we can actually learn what customers want from an appliance. And then we can give that to your OEMs in the future to make sure they’re building appliances for you.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it makes so much sense. And I think, you’re attacking of retrofitting some of these legacy standing appliances in these houses.

Cause I think of my parents, who knows the next time they’re going to buy anything like a new [00:08:00] appliance or anything like that. And I know a lot of these listeners are working in senior living at these communities working with older adults and you’ve hit on a few of them, but love for you to just highlight any other benefits features that you see for the Ome smart knob specifically for older adults.

Akshita Iyer: Yeah. Again, what we saw this last couple of years is a huge pull towards using our technology for aging in place, right? So our target demographic are your sandwich generation. Middle aged adults who have young kids, you who want to be safe and secure and make sure that their home is safe, but they’re also the ones who have family members and parents who are getting older.

And the reality is that, 14 million older adults in the U. S. Live alone and the vast majority of them over 90 percent are going to remain in their own homes, which means that we need to make sure that safety is addressed and cooking is a big concern, right? So if you have any kind of cognitive decline, early stage dementia, Alzheimer’s, if you leave a burner on [00:09:00] that could be catastrophic.

And not only is Unattended cooking, the leading cause of house fires, but older adults 65 and up are actually almost two and a half times more likely to die in a kitchen related fire. So there’s even more vulnerability and we’ve seen opportunity is not just, through their caregivers and family members, but also just going directly to these communities, right?

So like you mentioned, senior living communities where risk is a big concern, right? So making sure that the buildings are safe, residents are safe, that residents can continue to retain their independence and continue to cook and do the things that they’ve been doing for decades without the worry of something bad happening.

But then also what we found is that with smart devices comes data, right? But what we realize is we don’t want data for the sake of data, but we can actually pull cooking activity from our device. So how often is someone cooking? What time of day are they cooking? How long are they cooking for? And we can actually map that out and detect anomalies, right?

So if we know my mom [00:10:00] cooks every weekday morning, all of a sudden she doesn’t cook for three days, I can alert the relevant party. And so it’s not just about the hardware and making sure that we don’t have cooking fires. It’s actually being able to harness that data in a way that’s actionable for caregivers, family members, and property managers.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it’s such a good point. And I think too, right? Like we’re all creatures of habit and cooking is one of those things you have to do throughout the day, and tracking that data, tracking the patterns, it seems like you could really pull some actionable insights out of those things, which is super cool.

And I’m wondering too, we’ve talked about what it is and what it does. And like this idea of data, I’m just wondering if you could share any feedback from some of your original clients is this sandwich generation, which I had to Google before looking into. So people like taking care of their parents and their kids simultaneously, it seems like they’re often buying two sets of these knobs.

And I’m just wondering too, if you’ve seen any hesitation from older adults and adopting this new technology.

Akshita Iyer: Yeah, so the beauty of this sandwich generation is that [00:11:00] they’re the ones installing this for their family members, right? So we’re not going directly to older adults, typically where they’re buying this and installing this.

But the reason we don’t see a lot of hesitation is that this is just like a regular stove knob, right? So you don’t ever have to use the app, right? Once it’s installed, once we know what the settings are for each burner, The older adult or whomever is using this can just use the knob and use their stove like they have been, forever.

The difference is that we can actually now proactively do something if the burner is left on by accident and the notification ends up going to the child or the caregiver who installed it. And so never is there a point where an older adult has to learn how the technology works. And I think that’s really what we prioritize in terms of the design and the interface of this was, yeah, there are a lot of techies that buy this, but it’s not a techie device.

There’s a lot of technology in it, but it’s really meant to just blend in with what you do every day [00:12:00] and the way your kitchen looks. And I think that’s really the biggest reason why we haven’t seen that kind of pushback.

Matt Reiners: yeah. Again my comment before we’re all creatures of habit.

If they’re doing the same thing all over again, and someone in the background was just setting it up to keep track of some of this stuff it makes so much sense, right? It’s not technology to them. It’s the same old of what they’ve been doing for 60, 70, 80 plus years, and just figuring that into it So simple yet brilliant.

So cheers on that. You just got to figure out how the knob can make my cooking better.

Akshita Iyer: We’ll get there.

Matt Reiners: roadmap. I gotcha. And so we talked about like the older adults and I know with like senior living, like you guys have been more of like direct to consumer, but now we’re starting to get a lot of interest from senior living communities at this.

And I’m just wondering if you could speak to the importance of this new customer.

Akshita Iyer: Yeah and, I think senior living the reason we started to look more at these multi unit buildings is that over 65 percent of these multi unit building fires, even more so than residential house fares are caused by unattended cooking.

You’ve got a ton of units. You’ve got a ton of people. [00:13:00] And if, someone leaves the gas on, or, starts a kitchen fire, you’ve got a really big problem. And We saw that initial pull because of our customer base buying this, but then, as we started and I just cold called a bunch of senior living communities, because how else do you get in front of them and, heard that most of them have had some incident where the entire building had to evacuate.

Or you had family members that were asking about, Whether their loved ones can continue to use appliances and continue to remain as independent as possible. The other thing we heard a lot which we were able to address is that oftentimes when, a family member, you know, or needs to move from independent to assisted living or to memory care or nursing.

It’s oftentimes a very subjective conversation, right? We think this is happening. And so now we’re able to actually give some data points, right? This is what, the automatic shutoff engaged, four times last week, right? Which means that something is not right and the actual [00:14:00] objective data versus just a general conversation that can be very Emotional and challenging.

And we really see the multi unit building space as a prime market for growth. Also, because there are big insurance implications here, right? Insurance companies pay out a billion dollars a year because people leave the stove on. And so what we’re working towards is, as we get these larger buildings, a larger customer base, more devices out there, We actually want to be able to prove that we’re bringing down the risk of cooking fires and we’re saving insurance companies billion dollars a year.

And so that eventually, as a property manager, you can actually get, or even a consumer, you can actually get a discount on your insurance policy like we do with so many other smart devices.

Matt Reiners: Yeah, it feels like there’s just so many opportunities for this. I think a lot of people are cooking in some capacity, especially in some of these like independent living, assisted living. And just I know whenever someone can get their insurance down or help on that side. I’m curious, you’ve been [00:15:00] doing Ome for more than a few years now, which is awesome. Hey, I think every entrepreneurial journey is a rollercoaster ride. Grateful for you. You haven’t lost all your hair like I have along my own journey.

Uh, Why do you see this as a good time to introduce the smart knob to senior living communities?

Akshita Iyer: well, I mean,

As you know, in the last couple of years, aging in place has become a huge priority, right? I think every day, 10, 000 people are turning 65. And I think in the next 10 years, 77 million people in the US are going to be 65 and older.

And everyone’s going to stay at home, or at least they want to stay in a place where they feel like they’re at home. They’re retaining their independence, which means that a technology like ours that is. less expensive, right? It’s relatively affordable. If you think about, a smart appliance that may have these features in the future is something that’s really critical.

And I think can also be a differentiation for communities that are trying to create this environment for older adults where they don’t feel like they’re being limited in what they can [00:16:00] do. And so I think now’s a great time because of this, trend towards these assistive technologies.

And I think the need for innovative solutions to ensure the safety and the independence of older adults has never been more important.

Matt Reiners: Love it. And then I know October is a big month. This is national fire prevention month. Any other tips that you have outside of buying Ome smart knob that you could give to our listeners here?

Akshita Iyer: Definitely. Especially if you cook a lot or you have family members that cook a lot. We would love for Ome to be in your home. But I think it’s always just being a little bit mindful and aware, right? Nobody ever thinks they will have a fire, just like you don’t think that your house will be broken into until it actually happens.

And finding any way to Make sure your family safe. Especially if you have pets and you have young kids and you’re not home. I think just being more intentional, more aware, more present, right? We’re all doing 10, 000 things at once and running to the next thing is really important and definitely something to keep in mind in October.

Matt Reiners: [00:17:00] love it. Thank you so much for joining us today. I know this is definitely a need and so cool to see how you guys are able to make dumb appliances smart, if I must say, but thank you.

Akshita Iyer: Yeah. Thanks so much for having me, man.

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