Raising Tech

Patrick Leonard:
0:06

Welcome back to Raising Tech, a podcast about all things technology and senior living today. I’m your host Patrick Leonard and we’re going to talk about a very familiar topic at issue and senior living today, which is wellness monitoring in Senior Living communities. However, we’re learning about a very unique solution today that I’m really excited to educate you all on or rather have our guest educate you all on and I personally just learned about this in the last couple months. And so with that I’m excited to introduce our listeners to Vik Kashyap from Toi Labs to talk to us a little bit about this wellness monitoring idea and particularly about a product called TrueLoo. Welcome to the show, Vik.

Vik Kashyap:
0:45

Hi. It’s a pleasure to be here, Patrick. Thanks for having me!

Patrick Leonard:
0:47

Absolutely. Before we really dive into this topic, Vik, I was really intrigued during our introductory conversation about your background and your experience. So if you don’t mind, can you introduce yourself a little bit and tell our listeners a little bit about that?

Vik Kashyap:
1:01

Sure. So I am an entrepreneur. I’ve been building companies mainly in the Silicon Valley area for more than 15 years. But in addition to doing that I also suffer from ulcerative colitis, which is a serious debilitating lower digestive disease, and it was through my experience in treating myself with my condition including developing a new treatment, I ended up publishing about that really got me set on focusing on developing the technology that has become TrueLoo. And I really discovered through that experience the importance of gut health, the importance of our waste and output as indicators to our health. And also turning this science fiction concept of a toilet as being a health monitoring system or device into reality.

Patrick Leonard:
1:56

Thanks for that background. So can you tell us a little bit more specifically about Toi Labs and TrueLoo, which is, you know, what’s commonly known out there on the marketplace? You know, personally when I first kind of Googled your company looked at your website, I was like, oh, it’s a toilet seat. It’s a smart toilet seat, but it’s so much more than that in talking with you. So can you tell us a little bit more about kind of the founding story of it and you know, what problem you’re really looking to go after here in this Senior Living space?

Vik Kashyap:
2:27

Yeah, so Patrick, going into a little more detail, I actually developed a treatment for my ulcerative colitis that helped me not have to have my colon removed. And through the course of that treatment I tried many different things to try to understand how they would have an impact on my health. And what I found is that it’s very, very important to understand what’s going on with your output as an indicator of your general health and wellness. And so what I decided to do after publishing co-authoring a paper in Science Translational Medicine was to really try to figure out a way to make it cost effective, convenient and easy to capture your output information in a way that doesn’t really change how you go about it in your day-to-day life. And so what I developed is a new type of toilet monitoring system that is comprised of a new replacement toilet seat that can be affixed onto any existing toilet in a matter of minutes. And what it’s doing is that it’s looking at the visual aspects of the stool and urine. These are characteristics that have been known for centuries, even millennia to be very valuable for human health. And if you look at Senior Living communities today and senior homes, they’re tracking this information because they know it’s so valuable. You know, if someone isn’t going to the bathroom, if they are potentially bleeding or have other signs of issues that could be, you know, indicative of something more serious. It’s very important to track that kind of information. But today, the way it’s been done and being done prior to TrueLoo is that it requires someone to interpret, to actually see that excreta, interpret it in their own particular way(and then in a subjective way) and then record it usually manually into some type of a system. And given the importance of this kind of information, which arguably is, you know, as important if not more important than a lot of other types of vital signs that are being tracked today, what truly does is it helps to create an objective, accurate and timely understanding of someone’s output patterns and when they’re clinically concerning to be able to report on those. So, you know, for me it was very important to be able to do this because it’s such a fundamental aspect of being a human is doing this every single day. Everybody does this yet today there’s no way to get any insight or value from this activity that is being done. And so much in the same way that, you know, a lot of people may have been skeptical about wearables and the value, for example, of tracking steps or tracking heart rate. You when you take things that are being subjectively or manually done and you automate them and bring computerization to them. So that’s when you begin to see a lot more power, you know, and so that’s one of the things that was very important, you know, as we first developed the TrueLoo system.

Patrick Leonard:
5:30

That’s amazing. Sounds pretty complex, but also, you know, the concept is pretty simple to understand I think. But clearly there’s a lot of complexities going on in the background. So talk to me a little bit about the perceptions of you know, an older adult or a Senior Living resident who may have this installed in the room. And then also on the flip side, having the conversations with the decision maker to install this. I mean it’s such a, I don’t wanna, you know, icky for lack of a better term, it could be a sensitive topic, you know, as a lot of things can in the caregiving in the Senior Living world because we get so intimate with our residents on a level learning about their health in, very different ways and servicing them and caring for them. And this is certainly one of those items that falls under that category. So can you just talk to me a little bit about perception from kind of both of those stakeholders in the utilization and implementation of something like this.

Vik Kashyap:
6:24

Yeah, absolutely. You know, we’ve been in market with the TrueLoo service since 2021 and when we first came into the market, one of my biggest concerns was the perception and in particular the privacy considerations related to a technology like this. What it comes down to is really education. Because this is such a new technology, there sometimes some misperception about what it is the technology does and also there needs to be some awareness building about what the technology has the ability to do as well for someone’s life. And so, you know, I think one of the things that’s interesting about a product like this is that it is, as you mentioned in this area of kind of taboo or ick factor where people know it’s very important. I mean, look, if you are living in a Senior Living facility, either as a resident or as a care staff member, you know the importance of tracking this information and it’s something that is being done today. Now one of the things that I think we have been able to demonstrate is that by using something like this you can actually not have to have uncomfortable conversations and maintain the dignity of the person whose extra is already being monitored. And so today, for example, in the current practice, you have care staff that often ask residents about their stool and urine activity. They often are accompanying older resident and looking into the toilet bowl and then recording information about their excreta, and those things today are not comfortable, they’re not dignified. And to be able to remove that and instead have a system that is 24/7 objectively and in a very private way analyzing this information in my private, you know, it’s completely de-identified. It’s not capturing any sensitive body parts, it’s only looking downward into the bowl with its scanning technology. And then also on top of that, educating both care staff and residents about the fact that look, what is the implications of something like this? What are the benefits that you can get from it? That is really a critical part of the conversation because even though it’s something that people may not want to talk about, the reality is if you have, for example, a very unusual pattern in your stool and urine, you know, that could be an early sign of something extremely serious. You know, we typically bucket the issues that the TrueLoo is able to, and to be clear, the TrueLoo is only identifying those abnormal waste patterns. It’s not diagnosing any diseases. But if you’re to look at the areas where waste, the visual analysis of waste is valuable, we generally bucket them into a few main areas. The first is around intake. Is someone taking off liquid? Are they taking the right kind of diet? You know, that’s a fundamental human question and something that should be monitored on a daily basis. The second thing around infections, particularly in a communal living setting where things like gastroenteritis, norovirus, C. diff, other types of viral infections can spread, you know, is there something in the waste pattern that can be able to identify, you know, some signs and symptoms, you know, of these types of infectious diseases. The third is around cancers. And I think most people understand that many, many cancers including for example colorectal cancer, pancreatic cancer are extremely deadly. And when you catch them late, these kinds of cancers can be fatal and often are. And the fourth is around trauma, which can be caused, you know, from a variety of different sources. But all of these types of potential issues, they often show up in the waste of an individual. And the ability to be able to automate the tracking of something that today is manually done day in, day out in these settings, really you know, has a significant impact not only on the life of the resident in terms of their ability to have an intervention that has the potential to change the course of a disease and their life, but also has a significant benefit to the care staff and the operators in that they no longer have to do this very unpleasant task and at the, and also reap the benefits of having a healthier, longer living, longer lifespan and healthspan type of resident.

Patrick Leonard:
10:49

Thanks for that! Yeah, it’s always amazing to me the different solutions that people like yourself and companies like Toi Labs are coming up with to address these really critical issues that everybody’s kind of banding together to come up with a solution in their own way. But I feel like this is a really unique one that I personally never would’ve thought about. So I think it’s really helpful to kind of shed some life on this today and I think our listeners will get a lot out of this. Can you talk to me a little bit more, you walked us through the use case and a little bit about the information that TrueLoo’s gathering, what that’s helping to prevent from a health perspective? But can you talk to me a little bit more specifically about what you touched on at the beginning of the actual technology that’s powering this thing? How is it actually capturing reporting on these data points that you’re mentioning in this automated manner? Is it a proprietary technology that you came up with? Is it a combination of different of AI automation, you know what, what does that look

Vik Kashyap:
11:43

Like? Yeah, this is just something that is near and dear to my heart as I am the inventor of this. The technology that’s being used is patented. We have have multiple patents that cover the system and what it’s doing is that it is capturing using a technology called computer vision or machine vision, detailed information, visual information about what goes into the toilet bowl. And it’s doing it at a resolution and in a manner that far exceeds that of the human eye and mind. And we’ve reached a point in the technology adoption curve where certain types of sensors have come down to a lower cost that allows us to use primarily software to be able to interpret what the sensors are doing in a way that is very valuable and that improves over time. So if you look at a lot of what our technology is doing is it’s taking this information that’s very granular, it’s very targeted and it is analyzing it for essentially biometric or physiological value. And so the challenge associated with this technology is not just technical, it’s actually mapping a lot of what the software is doing to the actual underlying conditions of the individual in order for it to provide predictive value. Right now the product, and I wanna be very clear about it, it is not a medical device. We’re not claiming that it’s going to be diagnosing, treating or preventing any specific diseases. What it is doing however, is that it’s identifying when there is an abnormal pattern of the output that requires further investigation and that we have very high level of confidence that requires further investigation. And the way we do that is we actually have board certified physician on our team that establish guidelines that the machine which is constantly improving uses to be able to report on when there are these abnormal issues that require an intervention. In many ways we’re doing something that today is already being done or should be done manually, subjectively, sporadically. And we’re making sure that it’s done completely accurately and timely through a system like this. And I think what’s really exciting about this technology is that it’s designed in many ways to be forgotten. So unlike many things that require you to recharge or to change your behavior in order to use or remember to use, this is a product that is literally designed to fade into the background. It’s not meant to be thought of when a user is using it. It’s not meant to be interacted with, it’s meant to just fit into the day-to-day life that you already live. And I think that’s one of, if not the most unique aspect to this. And we have spent years and millions of dollars designing this product and and service and if there’s one key kind of ethos or philosophy that we have when we have built this is that it really doesn’t require anything on the part of the user. They ought to be able to get value from it from doing nothing extra. And we try to be very, very ruthless about drawing lines that ensure that this kind of ethos remains. And this to me is the difference between what I see as kind of some of the first generation of products perhaps that was seen in the Senior Living space and what I think the next generation of products are going to be. And particularly if you’re dealing with an older adult population, you know, these kind of considerations are paramount and I think that as we’ve developed the technology that’s been kind of a guiding principle for us.

Patrick Leonard:
15:43

Thank you for that. So another question popped up as you were kind of talking through that from the caregiver or the Senior Living operator side, how are they monitoring this on a daily basis? I mean it certainly sounds way better as you mentioned, and more effective, less invasive than the manual process that’s being done today. But with this implemented, what does it look like to monitor? Are there alerts to integrated with other health monitoring electronic medical systems? What does that look like from an ongoing basis and a daily basis and a practical use case?

Vik Kashyap:
16:14

So going back again to the guiding principles and the philosophy that we espouse, the reports themselves are only produced on an exception basis. Unlike other types of products in this that serve this population, which often provide data that has to be interpreted. What we do is we actually have a clinical team that reviews all of the data that’s being analyzed and captured by the TrueLoo system. And we only report on issues where we’ve identified abnormal patterns that cross a meaningful clinical threshold. And this is a very important point because as we’ve spent time with our customers, if there’s one thing we have found is that they do not need another dashboard or more data to analyze, that’s the last thing they need. What they need are ways to help them improve the human care that is so critical to the job that they do today. And to do that and to use machines that can help leverage that is in my mind a true application of artificial intelligence that hasn’t really been delivered in this industry. And so when you look at the design of a system like ours, what it’s really doing is taking away this unpleasant, disgusting job that care staff have to do today and instead giving them actionable reports that enable them to provide follow-ups and better care to the residents that they take care of. And that is, I think part of the, of the reason why our product has been so well adopted in the industry is that you really have to, in this industry make sure that you integrate into the existing clinical workflows of the staff. And one of the things we found early on is that besides doing this, you know, and providing our reports the way I described, we also need to integrate into the systems that are already used. It doesn’t make sense to create a separate dashboard to log into. It makes much more sense to integrate this information into the systems that are already being used, the EHRs that are already being used. And so we have integrations with a variety of electronic health records and think that that’s very important because at the end of the day you don’t wanna be creating more portals, different login systems for the people who are getting this type of information.

Patrick Leonard:
18:39

Absolutely. Thanks for clarify that, and I think that’s right. I think a lot of people and a lot of innovative solutions today, one of their biggest wow factors sometimes are selling points if you will, tends to be oh we have these, this amazing reporting tool built in or these amazing dashboards. And so it’s really interesting and cool to hear you taking a little bit of the opposite approach and it’s the same type of approach with, like you said, kind of set-it- and-forget-it type of thing when you install this, but the toilet seat from the end user standpoint and then that kind of flows all the way through to the community and caregiver standpoint as well. It’s almost like on an as needed basis, we’ll give you the information we need but we’ll handle it on the back end in the meantime. So I think that’s a really interesting and innovative thought process in itself in today’s world.

Vik Kashyap:
19:25

Yeah, our goal is ultimately for this to be one and done. We want it just to happen without effort, without additional maintenance or effort. That is the North Star that we look at when it comes to enabling other humans to help the people who really need, need the help that they receive.

Patrick Leonard:
19:45

Well Vik, this has been fantastic. Before I wrap up with any of the thought leaders we have on the show, I always like to ask, I’m always curious about what’s next in your specific space and area of expertise and any other final thoughts or words of wisdom you want to impart with our listeners would love to hear it before we part ways today?

Vik Kashyap:
20:04

So one thing that is near and dear to my heart is what kind of changes are happening in the healthcare system today? And I think what we’re trying to do here, and I think something that’s an inevitable trend, you know across the country is that health care is moving very rapidly towards a home setting. It’s leaving the hospital and clinic where it can be left and is coming into the home and it’s gonna start happening faster than a lot of people realize, especially after Covid. And so for us, a lot of the future is about how do we enable a world in which people can get a far deeper level of health care from the comfort of their own home. I think what you see today in wearables and other types of remote patient monitoring tools and telehealth is very, very different from what things are gonna look like a few years from now and it’s companies like ours that are really focusing on enabling a much more passive ambient experience that I think are ultimately going to bring in a new way in which people are able to engage with their healthcare. And I think this is going to happen a lot faster than people, people imagine. And I think there’s a great opportunity for people in the Senior Living space to combine the human care that they have with these new technologies to build something that’s truly differentiated. One of the things that I think is unfortunate is that a lot of the technology promise that maybe happened in the first phase of Senior Living adoption of technology hasn’t really happened. But I would just say it’s important not to close your eyes and mind to the possibility that there will be some things that really do get widescale adoption in the industry that are coming down the pike.

Patrick Leonard:
22:02

Awesome, thanks so much for that and thanks again for being here today, Vik. I personally have enjoyed our conversations quite a bit. I feel like I learned something new from you every time. Your experience and your background and your passion for what you’re doing is amazing both in the technology and the Senior Living space and bringing those two things together is why we’re here. So thank you for everything you and your team does and for all the knowledge that you gave our listeners today!

Vik Kashyap:
22:28

My pleasure, Patrick, thank you for having me!

Patrick Leonard:
22:31

And listeners, thanks for tuning into another episode of Raising Tech. I know you’ve probably picked up some very valuable information today as well, and hope you did. If there are any topics you want to hear about or want be on an episode yourself, please feel free to reach out to us on our website at ParasolAlliance.com. Have a good one!

Patrick Leonard:
0:07

Welcome back to Raising Tech, a podcast about all things technology and senior living. I’m your host, Patrick Leonard, and today we’re gonna talk about live chat on your Senior Living community’s website. This is a technology that’s isn’t necessarily new, but something that’s continuing to be a topic of discussion as we dive deeper and deeper into the digital world, prospective residents looking more and more to do their research online and in particular your community’s website. So with that, I’m gonna introduce you to the experts on this topic who’ll be able to dive much deeper. Today, we have with us Rob Bills and Marc Cherabie from SiteStaff Chat. Rob and Marc, welcome to the show.

Rob Bills:
0:45

Hi Patrick. Thank you so much for having us. We’re very excited to talk about our service and the industry in general.

Patrick Leonard:
0:51

Awesome. So before we dive into this topic, guys, if you don’t mind, could you just introduce yourselves, your background a little bit and your specific role with SiteStaff?

Rob Bills:
1:00

Absolutely.

Marc Cherabie:
1:01

As Patrick said, my name is Marc. I’m the Director of Sales here at SiteStaff Chat. We’ve started together in the same class. We’ve actually been here for just over three years and just, you know, working in this, in the sales division, business to business. My background’s always been in some sort of sales role, whether it been sunglasses, in a sunglass kiosk, used to have a sunglass business, telecom, you know, basically you name it, I’ve worked in it. So I’m always been a sales guy, but been thrilled to, to be here and, you know, love the people I work with and super passionate about the industries that we serve and, and the product that we sell. So thanks for having us.

Rob Bills:
1:32

Yeah, absolutely, and I’m Robert Bills and I’ve been with the company as Marc said, we started the same week together about three years ago, and I come from a background of real estate and finance and so sales as well. I was real estate broker for 15 years and in finance for just over five, and so coming into to SiteStaff, here, has been an amazing adventure because we really are a family here and we really are team atmosphere and really we all want to lift all boats and make sure that everybody’s succeeding. If we’re succeeding, our clients are succeeding, our partners are succeeding, and it’s just very welcoming and warm place to be.

Patrick Leonard:
2:08

Awesome, love that. Thanks for that background and, and a little bit about the SiteStaff family. It’s really cool that I didn’t realize you all started it the same week. That’s pretty awesome, and then on this journey, the last few years together, and who better to talk about this powerful sales and marketing tool than some sales and marketing folks like yourself who’ve been in different industries over the years. So that’s awesome. As we dive in, I’m familiar with your tool, I’ve been exposed to it over the last five or six years as I’ve been in this Senior Living technology space. But for our listeners who aren’t familiar, can you give us just a high level overview of SiteStaff and what it hopes to accomplish as it relates to senior living?

Rob Bills:
2:44

Absolutely. So SiteStaff, we’ve been around, this is our 13th year and really the impetus for the company came from our CEO, Bill Jennings, who said the buying process is changing and things are starting to be bought online, and he saw that even high-end items, things like senior living where it’s a very high ticket item, but also a very emotional item. They’re also being purchased online, and so he saw the need to make sure that the human element is always captured in that communication online. And that’s why he started the chat. It’s, it’s now been, you know, 13 years. We’ve done over a million chats in senior living. We’re currently on just about 3,000 websites around North America, and it’s about giving the very best website experience to that end user. And whether they’re looking for customer service, whether they’re looking to actually move in, whether they’re looking to volunteer employment, there really is nothing that we cannot capture and talk to them at that human level, give them the information that they need and really make it a human connection that is tremendous for our clients as far as capturing that information, capturing that client at their highest level of interest in their community and then creating that lead that becomes, you know, better lead than any other lead they can get besides a personal referral.

Patrick Leonard:
4:08

Awesome. Thanks for that! You know, I heard some key words come out as you were talking there and the biggest one was human. Obviously in senior livings, that’s an important one and, and one that we’re all impacted by. It’s a human business, it’s we’re taking care of Senior Living residents and the staff of the communities as well. And I love how you touched on the different use cases at a high level. It’s not just for the prospective resident, but it could be for a job applicant or some anybody looking to volunteer you mentioned. But going back to that human piece, it brings up a topic of conversation when I think of chat on websites between the live chat, the human aspect, and then everything going on with AI right now. And I know and more of the automated bots that some people are utilizing on their websites. So can you talk a little bit about those two? What are the differences, how do they kind of work together, if at all? I noticed on your guys’ website you have two solutions, kinda the live chat versus the SiteStaff Chat AI. So it sounds like you all are, have entered into that space as well. So can you talk a little bit about those two different solutions?

Marc Cherabie:
5:14

Yeah, absolutely. You know, so for us, as Robert had just touched on, it’s, it’s really all about that experience, right? And I think that that’s a big shift that you see in the Senior Living industry is experience as a whole, and we always think that the experience definitely starts on the website. There’s a lot of emphasis on experience when the resident comes in for a tour or what it’s like to live their life there. So it’s always about that experience, and so furthermore on, on the live chat versus the AI side, I think we were in a really unique position because we started off as a live chat company. We were really well versed, very well experienced. You know, I’ve done it for so long, built out our own software, so we had a really great foundation as a live chat company. And then, so developing the AI was just a way for us to expand the experience but also give our clients or our prospects an an additional option, right? Because it’s all about options now. So when you really break down the difference between the two, you know, on the AI side it’s, it’s more of a convenience factor. It’s a little bit more geared towards people that might be a little bit more tech savvy or maybe they want questions answered a little bit more quickly and if that’s what some of our clients are really adamant about or it just resonates a little bit more with their sales process, they have that option. And whereas on the live chat side, it’s gonna be a little bit more of that personal approach, right? It’s might result in 8, 10, 15-minute conversations, but those are really meaningful, powerful conversations because a lot of the times, you know, we see visitors come on the website and begin a chat because there’s just so much uncertainty. It’s not so much about they don’t know if they can afford it or they don’t know if it’s gonna be a right fit, but it’s just like what the expectations are, talking them off of that ledge and delivering that experience. So by having both of those, it’s just really about being able to be more well-rounded and serve an array of different clients on an array of different websites. And we also have a really unique solution that combines the two together. So you have the ability to have the conversation start off a little bit more automated on the AI side, very easy, just one click through, you know, if somebody’s asking maybe about a job application or just a little bit more simple questions of I need a phone number to call or a fax number or whatever it might be. The bot might be able to take care of that, but at any point of the conversation they can click on a button and be connected to a live human right away immediately, within, within 10 seconds. So it, it’s a way for us to merge the two great solutions together and create an experience that really just falls in line with whichever the visitors is wanting, whatever works better for them, really give them an option to choose.

Patrick Leonard:
7:28

I love that. Thanks for clarifying! That makes a lot of sense. I can perfectly see the two use cases separately and how they work together and it makes a lot of sense because I know there are certain things that AI automation, robotics, just the whole concept could sometime it’s still new, it can seem scary to some people, but I think there are some very specific use cases like you just mentioned, that it makes a lot of sense and still having the option for the human elements to talk to someone live one-on-one is the best of both worlds in my opinion. So thanks for shedding some light on that.

Marc Cherabie:
8:01

Yeah, absolutely.

Rob Bills:
8:02

Yeah, it’s really just about giving that end user every option that they want for communicating, and if we’re able to do that, then you’re able to capture that user at a far more efficient rate than what you’re usually getting with other calls to action.

Patrick Leonard:
8:16

Definitely. So along that same vein, taking a look at the live chat side of things, from my understanding, if I’m a Senior Living community and I want to engage with SiteStaff live chat, we’ll be leveraging the power of your team to engage with visitors to the website directly. So how are you ensuring that your team is set up for success to offer kind of a personalized solution and responses as an extension of the senior living community operator?

Rob Bills:
8:46

Absolutely. Great question, Patrick. And it’s one we get often and it really is about creating what we use is called a knowledge base. And we work with the community to build that knowledge base out and it really gives us all the answers that we’re looking for. You know, after 13 years we have a really good understanding of what these visitors are, what type of questions are going to be asking. And so we really mold that knowledge base to give us every answer to the majority of questions that are gonna come across that conversation, down to, you know, floor plans, pricing, amenities, even cross streets, you know, nearest churches, nearest hospitals, things like that. So that when we start that conversation with that visitor, that visitor has no idea that we’re a separate third party that’s not actually sitting at that community because we have so much knowledge, we really are just like a receptionist sitting at the front door of that community. We’re just the virtual receptionist at their website, which we could really consider their new front door and their virtual front door. And oftentimes the problem is that a lot of these communities and the operators don’t view their website the same way they would a physical location. They don’t see the power in treating it the same as that physical location, and by treating it the same and by engaging with that website visitor, you’re really giving yourself far more opportunity because you’re going to get a lot more website visitors walking through that virtual front door than you’ll ever dig walking through your physical locations.

Patrick Leonard:
10:18

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love that analogy of your new front door or your virtual front door. I’ve never heard that before. That makes a lot of sense. And it’s so true the day and age, given that it sounds like this solution makes sense for everybody, but if I’m a Senior Living community who hasn’t dove into this yet, how do I know if it’s a right solution for our use case? What does that process kind of look like?

Marc Cherabie:
10:40

That’s a great question. I mean, really on the basis of it, it’s if you’re not at 100% occupancy and have a really long wait list, we’re a really great fit for you. But what I always tell a lot of the prospects that we speak with is, you know, not all live chat is the same, right? I mean, live chat on the surface seems like it’s a great fit for everybody, but really about implementing the right life chat solution, just like it’s about hiring the right CSD at the community, having the right employees, you can hire somebody who you think is gonna be a really good fit for your team, but if they’re not, it could be very counterproductive. It can affect your, you know, your brand, the overall experience and do the exact opposite. And that’s what we always talk about is making sure you’re hiring the right solution. And the reason that we feel like we’re the right solution is because we are very industry specific, which is extremely important because we could bring over our level of expertise, we could bring a lot of experience that we have and act as kind of a, almost a consultant for a lot of our clients as well. But ultimately we do work for them, we are trained by them. So you’re never gonna get the same experience with, you know, one client that we serve with another client because those two communities are so different. So just being pliable and and being able to make sure that we’re trained by them and mimicking their process, we can all sprinkle in a little bit of what we think. I think that’s really what makes us unique and allows for us to be very successful. But we can also speak with the proper verbiage, obviously showing that empathy, understanding that what the visitors going through, what their families are going through, and be able to connect that way and then really be able to, you know, move that conversation forward. And we can do it at all hours of the day, right? I mean, your website never closes. You can access it at 24/7. So we want somebody available there at 24/7. We think that that’s really what puts that community above everybody else if they’re able to deliver that service and you know, set them up for success. So, you know, really in a nutshell, if you’re looking at, especially in this day and age, right, where staffing is such a challenge that so many communities, so many businesses in general are really going through, you know, allows for us to, you know, at a fraction of the cost, have somebody that’s there at all hours to really alleviate a lot of the stresses that those employees at the community levels face. So we really want them to focus on selling, that’s ultimately what their job is. We don’t want them focusing so much on follow ups and trying to get a hold of these people, let our team take care of all that on the forefront, deliver only the qualified leads, and then pass along the rest elsewhere. So hope that answers your question. I know I can kind of go on a tangent a little bit sometimes.

Patrick Leonard:
12:48

No tangents are good! That’s where we get best nuggets of information and it just sparked another question as you’re talking, given that everybody’s using this a little bit differently as far as the information that’s going back and forth in these chats, it sounds like, you know, your team is answering questions obviously on the community’s behalf, but are they going as far as actually booking tours or visits? Are they doing anything post tour or post conversation to nurture these leads? What does that whole lifecycle look like?

Rob Bills:
13:18

So yeah, some of our technology, we do have the ability to, we integrate it with your CRM system so the leads are sent into your CRMs coded exactly how you want them to code. They are, the transcript is also included in that, which is very important for the sales team to be able to get an understanding of the story behind that individual. But yeah, the other technology that we have is through that integration. We can schedule tours obviously for the communities, but we also have what’s called Call Connect. So during our conversation, during our chat with that visitor online, if we’ve taken that conversation to the point where they’re ready to talk to somebody internally at the community, we can connect them directly with that point person in real time through the chat to the community so that they can continue that conversation really capture that hot lead at that point.

Patrick Leonard:
14:10

Thanks for the clarification there. And so going back again to these different types of use cases and each community utilizing the chat function a little bit differently, can you tell me, and you touched on a little bit before the different use cases from prospects or potential job applicants volunteers, can you tell me a little bit more about the breakdown of what are you all seeing as far as, I don’t know if it’s a percentage, but just general allocation of who is engaging with chat most frequently. Is it a good mix between the prospects, the family members? Tell me a little bit about that, the audience if you don’t mind.

Marc Cherabie:
14:43

Yeah, definitely something that we’re always deep diving into. We would say the big majority is definitely the adult child, especially on the chat side, and for a lot, a lot of reasons, a lot of the times, you know, if it’s an adult child, you know, coming in crisis mode, they’re like, I need to pull my mom in a new home, I have 48 hours to do it and I live across the country. I mean, there’s so many different scenarios, but typically we do see that it’s an adult child, but now we are seeing a lot more seniors just chat on their behalf and doing a little bit more of their shopping there. So it’s definitely a big mix between that. But I would say definitely the adult child is probably the majority, but we’ve almost seen it all I would say.

Patrick Leonard:
15:14

Talk to me a little bit about if I’m a community ready to put this on my site and start chatting today, what does that process look like from implementation? What resources need to be involved, timeline, training and ongoing support needed? Can you walk me through a little bit of that so our listeners can understand if they’re not using this already, what that might look like?

Rob Bills:
15:33

Yeah, absolutely. So our onboarding process, we’ve made as simple as possible, and it’s very streamlined as well, but it’s a two or three step process where first thing we’re gonna do is we’re going to actually have an interview session with some C level executives where we go through, ask a set of questions that we’ve developed over the 13 years to really begin the process of understanding their brand, their culture, and how they want to express that while communicating with the general public. So we record that, choose about a 30-minute interview, and we share that with our chat host so that they really have an understanding of that brand, of that, communication, how they want to be represented. Then we build that knowledge base that I spoke about. The knowledge base on a per community basis takes about 15, 20 minutes to do. Again, you know, in a form that is very quick and easy to fill out, especially if you’re working day-to-day at the community level there. Once we have the knowledge bases all put together, then it’s really as simple as API code, JavaScript code that gets put onto the header footer of your website and you’re up and running. And so best case scenario, I mean obviously it depends on the size of the communities, how many communities we’re onboarding and such, but I’ve onboarded somebody as fast as three days with, you know, three or four communities. But generally I like to say, you know, if you’re five to 10 communities, we could probably have them up and running within 7-10 days. If you’re a larger operator, then usually it’s within that two to three week period where we can have the up and running in going.

Patrick Leonard:
17:08

Wow, that’s pretty clear.

Rob Bills:
17:10

and then to follow that up, sorry, Patrick, but so we have a monthly review reviews, we have a whole client success team here because we have 96% retention rate of our clients. It’s very important for us to make this all about a relationship, not a a one-time, let’s check us out, see if you like it, but we really want to become a integral part of your operations, of your sales cycles so that we really do not become any kind of budgetary item. We really become a revenue generating item and really an appendage of what your systems are already doing. And so through our client success team, we’re gonna have monthly reviews where we’re constantly going through transcripts, we’re making sure that our messaging is correct, we’re reviewing our leads sent over, we’re making sure that they are actually closing and going places. So it’s a process, it’s not, you know, one and done type thing. We really do value our clients, and we want to be always in a relationship with them. And that knowledge base that I spoke about, you know, it’s a living document, it’s always changing. I mean, they’re gonna have staffing changes. They may be having a move-in special of some kind or some big event. Those are things that we want to know about, and so they have the ability to go in and make those changes on their knowledge bases as well as just obviously communicating with us and getting those changes done. But it, like I said, that living document, it’s gotta always be reviewed. Our data, our stats, our success always needs to be reviewed as well because we wanna make sure that we’re adding value at all times.

Patrick Leonard:
18:42

Yeah, I love that it’s true partnership and that makes sense. There’s probably so many little nuances in communication changes happening, you know, so frequently in a Senior Living community obviously that of course you want your people on your front line, on the SiteStaff team who are responding, answering questions through your website to visitors to be up to date and all that, to be able to provide the best possible service. So yeah, I’m sure we’ve only scratched the surface on the depth and having to be proactive about that. So that’s fantastic that there’s such a, a great process for that. So, what’s next as far as the world of web chat? I mean, it’s come such a long way over the years, but from you all’s perspective, you know, where is it going next? What can we expect? Anything exciting or, or new and innovative we can be expecting to see coming down the pipeline in the future if we’re looking at the crystal ball?

Marc Cherabie:
19:31

Yeah, I mean definitely there’s always, I mean there’s always innovation, right? There’s, you know, our CEO always says,”if you’re not growing, you’re dying.” So there’s always ways for us to, you know, create new products. What’s really wonderful is that we’ve completely developed our own technology, our own software on the back end. So it’s completely proprietary and that gives us a lot of options and ability to, whether it be create new products that are, you know, customized for whatever, really whatever, the industry needs or to be able to integrate alongside other software, we have the ability to do it. But, you know, for us the the most important thing is the feedback that we receive from our clients, right, you know, what do they need? We’re going into more of a mobile world, right? So we’re working on a lot of changes on the mobile side to be able to implement a seamless mobile experience, be able to continue messages via text messaging, right? Or WhatsApp messaging or, or really anything in social media is another part where I think the Senior Living industry is gonna continue to head in. So, we want to make sure that we can manage those leads too, whether it be on Instagram, Facebook Messenger, which we do now for clients and really just be able to continue changing with the time. But for us, we always are gonna stay true to our beliefs and true to our core value. Meaning it’s not just going to be about being the new shiny toy or be able to have all these products that just to be able to charge our clients more. We want to make sure that everything that we’re offering has a tangible value and a way to measure it, you know, so that starts off with, with the leads that we send, right? It’s not just about,”hey, we have this new product that can generate you a thousand, a thousand more leads a month.” That might sound great on the surface, but it’s something that I think, you know, we know that not really going be more productive. It’s not gonna ultimately result in more move-ins a better experience and ultimately more top line revenue. So we’ll always have you know, our core basis for how we do and how we help our clients. But in terms of advancing with technologies and, and finding different ways to be able to, you know, work alongside call centers, marketing teams to create really an all-encompassing solution, we’ll do it. We’re also working on a really great marketplace as well. The marketplace is gonna, you’re gonna look at it as kind of a one-stop shop. So not only would it be like a directory listing service where clients can go and view all the different clients, their pages, the amenities, but it’s a way that different vendors of all of all sorts. So it’d be, you know, food vendors, medical device equipment, anything can all go on there and, and have a marketplace where they can share a little bit about their company, share about their prices and kind of create that competitive atmosphere. But that’s a little bit down the road. If I tell you more, I might have to kill you. So, I won’t shed too much of those secrets, but that definitely a lot of really great changes that are coming in the pipeline for sure.

Patrick Leonard:
21:55

Awesome. I appreciate that. We don’t have to spill all the beans, but thanks for a little sneak peek. Well guys, any other final thoughts before we sign off today? This has been great information and I know I personally learned a lot. I’m sure our listeners will as well. Is there any other final thoughts before we part ways?

Rob Bills:
22:11

Really, I just like to always talk about the fact that one of the reasons that we’re so very important is because a lot of your clients, a lot of clients, a lot of these operators are spending a lot of money in marketing right now to drive that website traffic. And often times they’re very successful in that. It’s wonderful to see these clients, you know, 5K, 6K, 10K or 15,000 monthly unique visitors coming in. And what I like to talk about is that is wonderful, but now it’s time when they get to your website, it’s time to turn that monolithic number into that individual and be able to engage with that individual and tell their own story and really let them experience a little bit about what your community’s all about. And so that’s why I think we’re so very important is we’re able to turn those big numbers into that individual, which just creates, like I’ve said before, the highest quality lead that you can get besides a personal referral.

Marc Cherabie:
23:06

Yeah, I would say for me, just to kind of spend on that a little bit, you know, a lot of, a lot of Senior Living communities are, they’re tied up. They’re so busy, they think that they don’t have the time to be able to implement this, and we totally understand that. I think for us, what we always ensure for our clients is that we will make the onboarding as seamless as possible. We’ll take care of with as much as of it as we can to really limit the amount of time that you’re spending. But even that small investment of time that it might take for the, you know, seven to 10 business days at an onboards is going to save you a lot of time in the long run. It’s not nearly as time consuming as a lot of our prospects think that they are. And another thing is, how can we entrust another vendor? We can sit here and talk all day about, you know, why you can trust us and our experience and all that kind of good stuff. But for us it’s really about hear it from our clients, test it out yourself, you know, see what it’s like and allow for us to have that opportunity to prove it. You know, we really are about guaranteeing an ROI and making it as risk free and as painless for all of our clients as possible. If they’re not finding any value, if they’re not getting a return on investment, they won’t pay anything until they do. So we really make it as simple as possible to, you know, make the entry point, very seamless, and so for us, it’s just about if you allow for us to earn that opportunity, if we can earn that opportunity to serve you, we can guarantee and and be very confident that you will be happy in all aspects of the service. So that would be just another final thought for me.

Patrick Leonard:
24:19

Awesome. The personal guarantee, you heard it here!

Rob Bills:
24:22

First written into every contract, it’s literally written into every contract ROI guarantee. So we’re not producing, we turn off our billing.

Patrick Leonard:
24:30

Love it. Well, thanks again guys, for taking the time to be here with us today. This was a lot of fun, it was super educational for someone who personally thought they knew a thing or two about this topic, I certainly learned a lot. So I know our listeners will as well. Thanks again for being here.

Rob Bills:
24:43

Thank you for the opportunity, Patrick. Great seeing you.

Marc Cherabie:
24:46

Thanks so much. We appreciate it.

Patrick Leonard:
24:47

And listeners, thanks for tuning into another episode of Raising Tech. Hopefully you all picked up some valuable information today. Is there any topics or you want to hear about anything in particular or be on the episode here yourself? Please feel free to reach out on our website at www.ParasolAlliance.com. Have a good one!

Patrick Leonard:
0:07

Welcome back to Raising Tech, a podcast about all things technology and Senior Living. Today, I’m your host, Patrick Leonard, and I’m really excited to interview someone who needs no introduction. Our other primary host for the Raising T ech podcast, Amber Bardon. Hey Amber!

Amber Bardon:
0:23

Hey Patrick.

Patrick Leonard:
0:24

So today we’re gonna dive into a topic that we’re hearing a lot about lately and working with a lot of our clients on, and that’s new construction technology design. So to set the stage for the discussion, Amber, can you educate our listeners a little bit about what does new construction technology design mean from a high level for those who aren’t familiar?

Amber Bardon:
0:44

Sure, so, projects that we get involved with for our clients that involve technology design and new construction encompass what the name suggests. So it can be brand new construction, brand new buildings, but it also applies to any remodeling that’s happening in the community. If a community is doing any type of painting or remodeling or things like that, that can be a great time to do things like enhance Wi-fi, put in access points because if you’re already doing work in the room and you’re opening up ceilings and things like that, it can be more cost effective to try to make any technology changes at that same time. So what we’re going to talk about today really applies to either one of those situations or a variation of either one of those situations anywhere between complete design from the ground up as well as remodel or renovation of existing buildings.

Patrick Leonard:
1:32

Awesome! Thanks for that overview. So to start things off, who are kind of the key stakeholders involved in a project like this? There’s a lot of different hands in the bucket at different times I imagine. Can you talk to our listeners a little bit about who those folks are?

Amber Bardon:
1:48

Definitely, and this can be a very complicated and confusing part of these projects. Oftentimes we start working with clients and I start asking questions around who are the key stakeholders or who are contracted for different parts of the design and building configuration, and a lot of times the client isn’t exactly sure because there’s so many different parties involved. There’s the architect team, the construction team, low voltage vendors, and so the very first thing I like to do when starting a project like this is to do a project kickoff meeting and bring everybody together so we can have a conversation and actually run through a matrix that I’ve created that talks about all of the different components that are needed from a technology standpoint and really identify who is responsible for what, have certain things already been contracted, are certain things not contracted, there’s nobody identified and really clarify who has responsibility for what components of the project and then to keep that communication open and ongoing. So have a weekly status call, send status updates on a regular basis, just to make sure that all the key stakeholders are involved because there can be a lot of moving parts with these types of projects.

Patrick Leonard:
2:53

So given all those different stakeholders and people involved in this process, who is typically the community looking to take the lead on all this, right? Is it the IT vendor, is it the architect, is it the community representative themselves? I imagine someone has to be kind of the main pointof contact at the end of the day, make decisions and keep everybody marching along in the right direction.

Amber Bardon:
3:14

Yeah, again, this is something that there’s no one standard and this is why it’s important to identify what’s contracted under who or things that are not contracted upfront. Oftentimes, there can be an owner’s rep that’s involved. Sometimes there isn’t anybody identified. Sometimes this is contracted through the architectural firm and that there’s people involved on that end. Sometimes it is the local IT support. So really, it can, a lot of times the communities don’t know, and they’re not sure and that’s where we bring value in working with clients on these projects because we’re able to be that stakeholder who can come in and identify and clarify and ensure that all the components and parts are moving together.

Patrick Leonard:
3:57

Awesome, thanks for that. So bringing it back to the IT side of things, obviously our specialty and where we engage in these projects. In a perfect world, when is the ideal timing to bring an IT provider like us into the picture for a new construction project?

Amber Bardon:
4:12

I think it’s really important to have technology have a seat at the table from the very beginning. One of the things that I like to ask in these types of projects as soon as possible is what is your technology vision? So what I mean by that is when you think about this building, let’s just say with the example of brand new construction. So when this building opens up, what are you envisioning to be offered in this building when it comes to things like robots? Are you thinking about having robots in the building? Are you thinking about having smart home technology? Do you want to have Alexas in each room? And these are things that are not typically thought of in the scope of the IT piece of new construction. A lot of times when people think about the IT design, they’re thinking about just computers, they’re just thinking about switches, things like that. And they don’t think about what are the business side or the business purpose of technology and this building, and that has to be decided upon pretty early on because there’s things that again, that you wouldn’t normally think of as technology with robotics for example. So if you are envisioning having robots in your new building, robots can’t open doors, and I know that there’s some companies working on that technology but if that’s not available, you need to consider that. Does the robot have a clear floor plan or a clear pathway between where it’s going to be going? Do you have charging stations? And so I think identifying that vision upfront is the most important. And then from there you can build out the design to meet the requirements and the technology vision may be very basic. It may not be this, you know, very futuristic, forward-thinking robots and all that. It could just be we wanna provide basic network services to our residents and to our staff or maybe we only wanna provide technology to our staff and we’re not going to worry, worry about the residents. But I think making those decisions as soon as possible will help inform influence and help you budget and prepare for the rest of the phases of the project.

Patrick Leonard:
6:06

Awesome. That makes sense. And so where do we typically start? You just rattled off a lot of different things and a lot of different aspects and considerations to take into account when getting started. So where do you start?

Amber Bardon:
6:18

I recommend starting with that project kickoff meeting that I referenced earlier and bringing all the stakeholders together to talk about a lot of the things that I mentioned already. So first of all, that’s where we can talk about your technology vision. We can talk about what are your expectations for a couple of key areas. Wi- fi is the big one. I personally believe we’re in a Wi-fi crisis right now. We’re heading towards a Wi-fi crisis. I think more and more communities are really gonna need this wall-to-wall Wi-fi and that’s simply not planned for or budgeted in a lot of new construction projects that I’ve been involved in. And to me that’s a huge missed opportunity. Even if you don’t plan to have advanced technology such as wearables and smart homes at the moment you open the building, you wanna be prepared to be able to offer that in the future. And there’s also staff considerations to think about when we think about Wi-fi. So even if you don’t again wanna offer Wi-fi to residents, but you do want your staff to carry smartphones or devices that they can get alerts from emergency call systems, they need to be able to have Wi-fi throughout the entire building and have that be continuous. So identifying what are the ways you’re planning to offer network services Wi-fi? Are you okay with putting access points in the resident rooms? What is your security vision? How do you envision cameras being used in the building? Do you want them in the hallways? Do you want them in common areas? Do you want them external? How about door access? Do you plan to have key fobs on every door? Just the mudrooms. All of these things are gonna be associated with a cost. So the sooner we can identify some of these big decisions and how you wanna proceed, the sooner we can get to coming up with an actual realistic budget to prepare for these. Another thing to consider is if you’re adding a new building to an existing community, do you wanna use those same systems and extend them or are we starting from scratch? I usually see a couple of different combinations here. So if a community is building a new building and they already have existing buildings, they either love or hate the systems that they currently have. So they either want to extend what they have or this is a good chance for them to pick new systems to put in the new building with the intention to later retrofit those systems back into their existing building. So in that case we wanna go through a requirements analysis and help them select the best possible systems.

Patrick Leonard:
8:26

Great. Thanks for providing some concrete examples of systems and considerations to take there. So this all sounds super expensive,<laugh>, it sounds, it sounds very expensive. I’m sure there’s a wide range of costs associated with this depending on the community of course. But can you give us just an idea for a community that’s embarking on something like this, what are rule-of-thumb costs associated with a project like this that they should be aware of and building into their budget right away?

Amber Bardon:
8:53

I can definitely share some rule-of-thumb estimates, and I know you mentioned that this is very expensive and that is completely true. But the biggest issue I see is that none of this or very little of this is planned or budgeted for. So I would definitely argue that it is an expensive item but it’s gonna be a lot worse hit to your budget if you don’t plan for it upfront and then you find out later that you do need to put in that$200,000 nurse call system for example. So as far as some rule-of-thumb estimates when we talk about Wi-fi, if you take away nothing else from this meeting, I would like you to at least take away the idea that you need to do wall-to-wall Wi-fi, and it needs to be specked appropriately to handle all network needs from voice to streaming, et cetera. So wall-to-wall Wi-fi, we generally use$2 a square foot. That would include hardware cabling, subscriptions and licenses and all of that. Now that’s not always a hard-and-fast rule because it may depend on the construction of the building. If there’s a lot of cinder block or concrete or things like that that we see in older buildings, you may need more access points. But$2 a square foot is a pretty good rule-of-thumb for Wi-fi, and that can even be for an existing building placing the Wi-fi that you have currently. When we talk about other types of low voltage systems such as security systems for access control, which would be the key fobs on the doors, we can estimate about$2,500-$3,000 per door. Again, that would include hardware, cabling, power, all of that security cameras we can use about a thousand dollars per door, again includes cabling. And then for emergency call we can consider around a thousand dollars per room. So those are some general rule-of-thumb estimates that people can use.

Patrick Leonard:
10:31

That’s great! That’s super helpful. So we’ve kind of talked thus far about perfect world. If you were brought in from the start, from an IT perspective, if we budgeted all these things from the get-go, we have this perfect alignment between all the different stakeholders involved in this project. But what if that didn’t happen? What if an operator gets into a situation for a new construction project and they didn’t properly budget for these things? Your IT isn’t brought in at as early of a stage as you would’ve liked. What do you recommend doing that stage?

Amber Bardon:
11:00

Unfortunately, this is a pretty common scenario and this is one of the reasons why I wanted to do this podcast. We also spoke on this topic at national LeadingAge last year because this is often an afterthought or thought about way too late in the game. I was actually speaking with one of our partner’s architectural firm and he mentioned they had reached out to us because of this issue of not having IT involved and he mentioned that they’re taking out cabinets and things like that to try to fund the IT side of things too far down the road. That being said, it does happen that this is not thought of, it’s not planned for. So I would say again, if nothing else, I’m gonna sound like a broken record here, but if nothing else, try to get that wall-to-wall Wi-fi in, that’s gonna be your foundation. If you put that in to start with, it’s gonna be much more cost effective to do it at that time versus to go back and try to cable and install it later. So if you can, I would say the priority is definitely that wall-to-wall Wi-fi and then the networking equipment necessary to support that and then the systems that have to do with life safety, you wanna make sure that you can get those in. So emergency call, I know that a lot of communities are building AL IL and they’re not considering emergency call for IL. I’m starting to see that change. I’m starting to see more communities wanna put in some type of emergency call system in IL because residents are asking for technology that can be used to help keep them safe and that may be something a little bit outside of a traditional emergency call and maybe more like an active monitoring system or a life safety check-in or something like that. But I would definitely make sure that you have those things accounted for and if you need to cut other things, you know security cameras, you could always do later door access, you know, you could always just use keys. That technology is not as essential to the life safety and to the future of the building as the other systems that I mentioned.

Patrick Leonard:
12:46

So, we’re doing a handful of these projects right now with clients and we’ve done a lot, we’re learned more and more with each project because each one I’m sure has its specific nuances and and key kind of findings and learnings. But outside of just being brought into a project sooner, are there other common mishaps you see or things that you wish we would’ve or the operator or another stakeholder would’ve known sooner that would be helpful pass along to our listeners?

Amber Bardon:
13:11

I think a lot of it comes down to budget and schedule. I have yet to see any project that has an adequate technology budget to cover all of the different aspects. So what I would consider to be included in an adequate technology budget would be Wi-fi, which I already mentioned, the closets, so everything that needs to go in the technology closets from racks to UPS devices to switches, all the cabling that’s associated cabling between the closets, internal and external connections, all of the devices. So computers, tablets, laptops, docking stations, monitors the phone system and actual phones, mobile phones, printers, copiers, digital display, security cameras, door access and emergency calls. And then there’s other things like time clocks, point-of-sale, other business systems, things you may need to support the enterprise systems you’re using to run the community. So I’ve yet to see any budget that encompasses all of those things. So I think definitely having an appropriate, and you may not have the detail on all of those items, but to have an appropriate amount set aside I would say is something that is lacking, and then the other piece of that is schedule. So, because people don’t think about this, they realize they need it too late and then it’s a rush job so they want it within a few days or two weeks or something like that and especially if we need to pick new systems, do system selection, do requirements analysis, that can take some time. Even doing a Wi-fi design takes a couple of days. So again, bringing it in as soon as possible, making sure you have enough time to properly spec out the, the technology needs because these are, like you said earlier, Patrick, these are expensive systems and we don’t wanna just throw something in there without, you know, adequately having the time to vet it to make sure it’s gonna go the distance for the community. And then I would say just the last part of, you know, things that you know, you should know upfront or lessons learned is just the communication piece. There’s a lot of changes to schedules, there’s a lot of moving parts and sometimes the technology team, again is not updated on those things. So I think definitely having a regular status call, making sure that everyone’s in the loop is really important and I’ve seen that that that kind of falls off a lot of times or left out and then there’s a lot of scrambling last minute or things aren’t ready when they need to be. So I would just make sure that everybody knows deadlines for things like we need to have the nurse call system up and running by this state. We need to have the network up and running by this state. So making sure it’s clearly communicated to everybody as well as all the components that need to be done around those due dates and then keeping everybody updated as schedules may change.

Patrick Leonard:
15:40

So with everything happening in the new construction space and everything happening in from a technology perspective, where are things going next? I guess what new innovation consideration should communities be considering as part of this process? If budget were no option, what would the ideal teched-out community look like?

Amber Bardon:
15:59

This is a favorite topic of mine and I wanna refer listeners back to a podcast we did with Pi Architects firm because we talked about this topic a little bit. And I’m actually going to quote their president in what he said. So he, I asked him to walk me through if a new building was opening up with money, no object, what would the resident’s day-to-day look like? And his vision was essentially that the resident would be woken up by custom music playing. They would have a greeting, you know,”good morning, Mrs. Smith, here’s your activities for the day.” This is what’s on the menu for breakfast this morning. Here’s your reminder to take your medications as they were to walk down the hallway. They would have customized music playing for them. They would have pictures changing on the wall. They would be wearing devices that would be tracking their health and their vital signs. There would be experience rooms in the community, kind of like virtual reality so that residents could have different journeys and travel as part of their life enrichment program. So I think that that’s a really amazing vision. It sounds like an amazing place to live in the future. I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but I do think in the next 10 years we’re going to see a definite shift. I think we’re going to start seeing in the next 10 years, residents and family members go to a potential community and ask questions like, what technology do you have to prevent me from falling? What technology do you have to monitor me to make sure I get up every morning? What technology do you have for me to communicate with you if I do fall or if there is an issue? And so I think a lot of these things that are, we think of as innovative right now are gonna become expected requirements. I think residents are going to want to have whatever they have in their homes, if they have Alexa, they have Google Nest, they have things like that in their home, they’re going to expect and require that when they move into a community. I think they’re going to look for life safety technology like falls prevention, falls management, more innovative nurse call functions like the monitoring that I spoke about, the resident engagement applications, which will have a portal for all of their activities and information for the day and things about the community that can order meals right from their phone or place a work order, contact the front desk. So I definitely think all of that is coming along with the things I spoke about earlier with robotics and AI, and I think it’s an exciting time. But again, all of that comes down to having that core Wi-fi. I’m gonna mention that again at the end here because again, I want that to be a key takeaway for everybody.

Patrick Leonard:
18:18

Yeah, I was thinking about that previous episode as well and just kind of putting myself in the shoes of a potential resident or resident in the future, Senior Living, teched-out community and and how cool that would be as a resident, as an adult child, and really as a staff member. So it’s really cool to think about and that’s all that stuff you just mentioned is not far off. It’s happening right now. It’s just not many people have pulled all of those pieces together and and allocated the budget towards it. But I do think it’s gonna be become more cost effective to do all those things and it’s gonna be added into the budget sooner, which is really cool. So thanks so much for the conversation today, Amber. Are there any final thoughts or words of wisdom on this topic before we wrap up?

Amber Bardon:
18:56

I’ll just add what I say on a lot of different topics that we talk about here at Parasol Alliance that we present on is it all comes back to shifting this mindset away from when you’re thinking about new construction and remodel. Just thinking about IT as my computer or IT just as my switch account and how many switches do I need to, again, incorporating the idea that technology is a lot more than that. That it’s AI, business intelligence, robotics, all these things that we talked about on this episode, and shifting that mindset to how can technology help enable us as a community, increase resident engagement, increase staff happiness through technology, and how can we make sure that that’s all incorporated and accounted for in what we’re doing both today and in the future. How do we make sure that that’s incorporated both today and in the future?

Patrick Leonard:
19:44

Awesome. Thank you for that. Well Amber, thanks again for the conversation today and listeners, thanks for tuning into another great episode of Raising Tech. Hopefully you picked up some valuable information from our discussion today, and if there are any topics you want to hear about or want to be on an episode yourself, please feel free to reach out on our website at www.ParasolAlliance.com. Have a good one!

Amber Bardon:
0:06

Welcome to Raising Tech. I’m your host, Amber Bardon, and today our guest is Jeff Gray. Welcome to the show, Jeff.

Jeff Gray:
0:13

Thank you.

Amber Bardon:
0:14

So Jeff, you are with Age Tech Atlanta. Tell me a little bit about yourself and what exactly is Age Tech Atlanta?

Jeff Gray:
0:22

Well, maybe I’ll tell you a little bit about my journey in tech. So, my first business and my first successful exit was a company called ValueCheck, and we were the precursor. If you’ve ever gone onto Zillow and used the Zestimate. We were the early version of that. We were the first company in the country to automate appraisals, and we sold that to RealEstate.com, which was here in Atlanta. So I relocated from LA to Atlanta and experienced all the culture shock you can imagine from that move anyway, but, you know, got involved in tech before ValueCheck and it stayed with it ever since, and I got into Age Tech, which is, you know, really just technology that somehow designed to positively impact the world of aging, elder care, longevity as a result of my experience with Alzheimer’s and my mom diagnosed, went through the caregiver journey, moved to memory care and all of that stuff got me thinking about, you know, trying to innovate and make things better.

Amber Bardon:
1:22

It’s interesting how so many founders in this industry have that personal experience with a family member or someone else in their life that leads them to a leadership position or creating a company in the space. So tell me a little bit more, what exactly is Age Tech. How was it founded? What’s its mission? What’s its purpose? What are some of the key initiatives?

Jeff Gray:
1:43

Well, start with kind of the larger mission. I’ll tell you a little bit about how we founded it. You know, Age Tech Atlanta, you know, we are a community of innovators and entrepreneurs, educators, researchers, and leaders in Atlanta that are like reimagining what it means to grow old, what it’s like to age, and while we’re at it, we’ve expanded our mission. You know, we are dead set to make Atlanta the number one city to grow old in America. Feel like we can’t do one without doing the second one. Right? That would be crazy. So it’s a community, no barriers to entry. Anybody can join a very tight-knit, we exist to help each other learn and grow and scale and succeed.

Amber Bardon:
2:23

Can you tell me a little bit more about some of the things that you’re working on?

Jeff Gray:
2:27

Age Tech Atlanta does six in-person meetups a year. So that keeps us really busy. That’s where we get together and have speakers that present, you know, whether it’s, you know, our last speakers we’re from Bells Skye who services the needs of states and counties and cities and, Age Tech startup in the, you know, health and wellness space, and then another startup in the longevity space and, and sort of age management space. So we learn from each other six times a year in person right here in Atlanta. We endeavor to produce and or host a couple of large events a year. The next of those is coming up in March. So we’ll be hosting the Age Tech Challenge Innovation Showcase at the On Aging Conference right here in Atlanta in March, and then we’ll likely host a symposium or or summit. So those are kind of the day-to-day things that we’re working on. But as a team, we’re really focused on that second initiative, which is what does it take to make this the best place to grow old? And you know, we see that as a shared endeavor. So we’re networking with people all over the globe all the time. It’s not really competitive about making Atlanta number one, but sharing the things that we can do here and succeed at that other people can replicate. We’re learning from things that other people have done in terms of impacting the community of folks that are aging, and even really just defining what that means, you know, who, what is an aging person you could talk about. You mean that’s a confusing, that’s a confusing conversation all in itself.

Amber Bardon:
3:59

I know, I kind of want to go down that road, but I kind of don’t<laugh> cause

Jeff Gray:
4:03

No. So have you guys noticed that there’s this new phrase that now you’ve gotta use, which is older adults? Have you seen the older adults phrase?

Amber Bardon:
4:11

I feel like since I’ve been in this industry, I’ve seen so many evolutions of what the correct terms are, and that’s just, that’s,

Jeff Gray:
4:18

So now we’re on that one, but I don’t get it. I don’t understand what an older adult is. I don’t know. When did, when would you become older? Who would you be older than and how would one older adult be similar to another and in a way that would be productive to make their lives better? It’s totally baffling to me. So,

Amber Bardon:
4:39

Yeah, I personally like the elder term, which was really out of favor for a long time, but it’s starting to come back a little bit. I think it just has kind of a retro feel to it.

Jeff Gray:
4:49

Yeah, well, I don’t know that people who are 80 or 75 or know that they care. I feel, I don’t know if we talked about this when we had our first chat, but I think it’s interesting that people that are what we would categorize as older, stereotypically older in our, in our culture, are the only group of people. Like we, I belong to different groups of people. I’m an entrepreneur, I’m a bald man, I’m a divorced bald man, you know, whatever. But we’ve done, sometimes we kind of identify as certain things like a person might identify them as LGBTQ or African American or Asian American or anything doesn’t really matter. But every other group of people describes themselves except older people, and then the rest of us describe them, and so now we’re saying, oh, well now we’re gonna call you older Americans. I think it’s just kind of funny. I don’t think anybody really cares, but I do think it underscores the problems of succeeding, which is really our mission at Age Tech Atlanta is to help everybody succeed in their mission. If you don’t understand the complexity, complexities and differences within the community, you serve older adults, you’re gonna have a hard time having a successful business. You’re gonna have a hard time fulfilling your mission if your mission is to help people or to, you know, be disruptive or to change the world in, in some way, shape or form. So it’s a small, funny little thing, but it’s kind of important.

Amber Bardon:
6:16

Jeff, as part of Age Tech, I believe you’re staying up-to-date on some of the trends, some of the common things that you’re seeing, some of the gaps. Can you tell me a little bit more about what you see is happening today in aging services from your perspective?

Jeff Gray:
6:31

Well, I’ll give you some, we’ll kind of just tackle a couple. I think the first thing I would bring into this conversation around, and to the extent that I’m able to and frequently do interact with founders of Age Tech companies. One of my grounding principles is, and I learned this lesson the hard way, is that your story is not your business model, and so this is actually a big topic because so many founders burn off a lot of time and often a lot of money learning that lesson. So, I think more in this space than any place you said it when we started the conversation, almost everybody we talked to has begun this journey with a pretty profound life experience, right? And that’s put them into the space, but it’s very important that we understand that a story and a business model are two different things. And so that’s a huge weeding out process as companies figure out what, what their business model is and how they can be successful a part of that journey. Then it kind of goes to your question, which is what are the gaps? What are the opportunities, what’s going on? And I, you know, we talked about senior care and I’m not a senior care senior living specialist, nor am I really an insider, but many of our companies service the needs of that community, and I would say that, like if you look at the process around what, what adoption is looking like in that industry today, I think most people that are leaders in that industry would categorize their industry as lagging in technology adoption to some degree, and there’s nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with not being first in adoption that carries its own risks. But I do see some gaps. I think the biggest one in senior care, Senior Living, I think really is, is mobile. There has not been as much use of mobile and certainly almost no use of branded mobile apps. It is incredibly rare to see a provider with a branded mobile experience, which I find fascinating because if you talk to those same operators, they’ll tell you how important family satisfaction is, right? How happy is the family that’s not living there with the experience that their loved one has as a resident and also getting favorable reviews. And there’s no single tool that helps you do better in those two areas than a branded app, branded experience that puts, you know, your brand and the place where your one loved one lives, you know, right in your family member’s pocket. So I see that as a big gap, and I think, I think we’re gonna see adoption there take hold soon. I think you’ll see a handful of maybe larger operators do it, and I think a lot of people will follow suit very quickly, and I think, you know, there’ll be some growing pains, but I think it’ll be a win across the board.

Amber Bardon:
9:32

Yeah, I think that this is a really exciting time. I think in the next 10 years we’re really gonna start to see a big shift where we’re going to start seeing older adults move into communities or want to have services from communities that are going to expect them to look and feel and be different than they are today, and I think it’s gonna be a challenge for a lot of communities to navigate that. Starting with, you know, what you mentioned earlier is just how do you do that marketing and how do you tell that story but also have, you know, some of these processes in place and how do you prepare and, and how do you manage the financial impact? Because a lot of the technology out there specifically is gonna rely really heavily on Wi-Fi, and that’s a huge cost for pretty much every community that I interact with, and it’s an insurmountable cost in a lot of cases. So I’m curious to see how, you know, as an industry we’re going to approach, um, some new and native innovative things, but also have the infrastructure to maintain and manage those effectively.

Jeff Gray:
10:37

I would agree with you there for sure. I mean, you know, it’s, these are not small projects and so if you are looking to deploy technologies that rely on, you know, great bandwidth and in every single room, whether it’s a resident room or a public space, you know, that can be a challenge, and it’s not, it’s not a trivial cost to bring that infrastructure in for sure. You know, I do think when you look at the builders of technologies, and these could be everything from a startup to ventures that start to scale, but it definitely at the earlier stage where the major innovation tends to be taking place. I think in our, in our space, we see for some reason, and I don’t know why, but I think we see a lot less co-creation. Real, you know, real true blue, creating the value, you know, creating the application, whatever that is with your end user, especially when that end user is a senior, right? So that is somebody who’s gonna use the technology and being smart about it. You know, there is a difference between, let me give you an example. We’ve all seen charts on, you know, mobile adoption. So depending on the last one you looked at, we’re gonna probably agree that adoption for people over 65, so mobile smartphone. Let’s call it smartphone adoption. That’s gonna be like 65%, 70%, and I mean, that’s close, right? But so here’s the miss, don’t interpret that as proficiency. Don’t interpret that as willingness to install and use a mobile app. So those, those behaviors are discreet, they’re separate from just the possession of the phone. But these mistakes happen all the time. We’re like, well 65% of people have have a smartphone so we can have an app and they’ll all use it. This is definitely not the case, and so that lack of granular, nitty-gritty approach definitely causes people a lot of pain and suffering for sure. You know?

Amber Bardon:
12:45

Yeah, that makes sense. I haven’t thought about it too much from that perspective, but as you were saying it, I was like, obviously<laugh>. So, what would you say are some ways that organizations can make inroads on this? How can they, are there some characteristics that can help operators help their clients leverage technology more effectively? Really both on the business side and on the resident side?

Jeff Gray:
13:11

That’s a lot to talk about. I mean, I definitely think, you know, look, staffing is a problem for everybody today, but I do, you know, I do senior living operators across the whole spectrum, they have unique problems, right? They are operating three types of business in one, in one property, or one structure or one enterprise, right? So food services and resident being, you know, residential services. So, a restaurant and a hotel and a hospital. As you hear many people say there’s, you know, there’s lots of budgetary pressures, and so adding more staff, another staff position is not a trivial thing. So all that as context, I think you’re going to, you’ll see the, the smart operators looking to have people on their technology teams that have experience in data science, in data analytics, real data scientists, or maybe even hire those positions because if there’s one thing we know, whether you’re capturing it or not, as a senior living operator, there is a lot of data within the walls of your property or across the enterprise. And you are probably, today, I hazard to guess, you’re not capturing that data and you’re not analyzing it and you’re not gaining insights from the data on how to make decisions. And those decisions could be around care, they could be around activities, all kinds of things. But I talked to somebody on the phone the other day that said they had recently hired a data scientist and I was stunned, but I mean excited, but I think those things are gonna be needed. If you look at enterprises rare now to not have competency in that area, if you don’t have that competency, I think it becomes very challenging to look and to see if you’re getting the ROI, you want to see if you’re getting the impact. If you’re looking for outcomes now, those things can be challenging. If you don’t have that competency, I think you’ll see that start to come along.

Amber Bardon:
14:56

Yeah, I agree with you 100%. This is something that’s been on my radar for a long time because I think it starts with just process efficiency because there’s a lot of communities using systems that don’t even have a good way to capture the data, and then those that do have, you know, more robust systems aren’t using them effectively, and so it’s, it’s a multi-pronged issue from both, you know, are we capturing the data, do we have the ability, and then how are we actually using that data? And it’s something I’m starting to hear a lot more need for when I go onsite and I do interviews, which I’m doing all the time, is this need to wanna be able to make data-driven decisions and to have that information, and I feel the industry as a whole is just, is pretty behind other industries from that perspective, but I am starting to see that become more and more of a need and an ask for most communities.

Jeff Gray:
15:47

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, look the schedules that everybody’s, you know, the demands on the workload demands in this environment are very high. So, you know, finding people to, to do pilots and to then I think if you are an innovator a nd from an Age Tech perspective, you feel where you can help change things, where you can change the world is in an environment, right? Senior Living, independent living, skilled, that whole area. If that’s your realm, you would be wise to invest in finding ways to give your operator clients and your pilot, your operators that p ilot your p roperty, give them data and give them analytics and give them insights that they’re probably not, they may not be capable of getting on their own. You m ight need to bridge that gap for them because it’s not obvious that they w ould be doing it on their own. And, you know, so having that kind of competency and under and being able to, you know, they say what some of the most successful SaaS models, some productivity software will tell you every time you use it’ll, it’s calculating how much time you’ve saved, right? At every iteration, you know, how much money you’ve saved, how much time you’ve saved, essentially. It’s almost like a Fitbit model, how many steps have I walked? So being able to constantly give that information to somebody who’s using your product for, so you’ve got either better adoption or better retention. Mm-hmm.<affirmative>, I think you’ll see that.

Amber Bardon:
17:08

Yeah, Yeah. No, yeah, I agree, and I know there’s technology out there to do that today. So that leads me into my last question for you. If we were imagining five, 10 years in the future, what technology is gonna look like? What the impact is gonna be on the day-to-day? Again, both on the operational and on the resident side, tell me, tell me, what’s your vision? What do you see in your, in your magic mirror for the future?

Jeff Gray:
17:30

Oh, the magic mirror. Well, I’ll tell you what I do think this might is maybe not incredibly precise, but I had an opportunity a long time ago when I was creating a product to sit with one of the lead engineers at Snapchat, and he explained their philosophy around minimizing all of the touch required to use their app anytime they could get rid of any touch. How can I minimize that? And so you see that apps that are used heavily, especially by younger people in a social media environment, they can navigate these apps very quickly. And I think what you’re going to see are more and more technology that’s used by caregivers, by managers, by executive directors. I think you’re gonna see more technology and more mobile technology that’s just that fast where we’re not navigating menus and putting in data, but we’re swiping, we’re learning from the social apps around just how to navigate, how to have an experience that accomplishes goals very quickly, you know, in seconds versus minutes. And there are things today that are taking 10 and 15 and 20 minutes at a crack that are relatively small tasks. I want to provide some feedback to a resident’s family member in the form of a photo that reinforces a reminder I was given that sort of says,”Hey, we’re, we’re following guidance here,” and all of that takes quite a bit of time. And time is really in short supply. So technologies that allow people to just, you know, essentially be a staff multiplier, I think are the things that we’re really, really gonna see, and I think some of those, we can’t even think what they’re going to be right now. And then I also think you’re really starting to see people coming in and bringing data together and so that people can start to have one uniform dashboard that they can look at and navigate without having to log in and out and in and out. So I think this is a problem in every enterprise for sure. But if you look at the demands and workload in Senior Living, senior care, those gains, in time, can be really huge because we’re not, we don’t have robots yet and we don’t have clone, so we can’t replicate human beings and we don’t have sensory robots that could take over. So the main thing we’ve got to do with technology right now is expand caregiver capacity, and the second thing, and this is really a third rail, is where possible eliminate the need for the caregiver, and you can get why that’s scary because we don’t want the end result to be that people don’t get cared for but making sure that a caregiver’s not needed, whether they’re not needed, that’s just going to be really critical. Well, it already is.

Amber Bardon:
20:09

Yeah. I agree with you. I’m nodding my head along with what you’re saying because these are all the things I hear day-to-day at the sites that I work with, and I was working with one of our clients based out in California. So they have, I think about 35 communities. They’re all pretty small, but they have about 3,000 people in their Senior Living division, and I met with their head of HR who told me that he’s come to the realization that 10% of open positions he will never be able to fill and what are the alternatives? And so we had a conversation about robots and where that’s at and some of these automation tools that you’re talking about. But I also get a lot of pushback when I bring this up that, you know, from what you just mentioned is t hat sort of this fear of, you know, providing person-centered care and this, this in-person, you know, hospitality and caregiving model that’s been around forever a nd, and t he, a lot of fear of change that’s gonna g o along with that, and then I think there’s the whole regulatory side too. So is the regulation going to keep up with the technology changes that are coming?

Jeff Gray:
21:10

Yeah, you know, at Age Tech Atlanta, we see innovators in the workforce space, you know, companies that are, you know, helping to find more, more people who, you know, what is a company here, ProsperCare that’s really done profound in innovation around the demands of filling those positions in Chattr in Tampa. Then you see innovations in CRM for Senior Living and, you know, and in onboarding, credentialing and visitation, you know, so companies that are large like Accushield and Welcome Home and then folks that are in activities. So I would, it’s amazing how many, so Age Tech Atlanta is not about Senior Living. It’s not about senior that, you know, it’s not about that specifically, but it’s amazing how much innovation is happening there, and by the way, I will tell you this is, here’s a common pathway that you see started a company, maybe raised some pre-seed capital, got my product out there, it tested really well with one-on-one failed at B2C. And then what’s the big idea that we come up with? So version one product a nice MVP or better test, well, everybody likes it. Go to market, B2C fails. Now what are we gonna do? We’re gonna sell to Senior Living. So somebody has that idea, you know, every minute of every day. And, and it’s just not always feasible. You know, you can’t just say, well, we’re gonna walk that in because what does the, what does the non-experienced entrepreneur know? Well, we’ve heard what prices are and it’s obviously expensive, so they must have a lot of money to spend. They must buy a lot of technology. They’re a great buyer, we’ll go sell them. And so this pathway is very common. What we just, that we just laid out and fraught with peril. And you do see a lot of people who, I will say this is common, everything, but I think you see people who innovate and they have great ideas and so forth, but they are trying to address a market that they know absolutely nothing about. This is nothing. And so that is really challenging.

Amber Bardon:
23:05

Yeah, and the biggest pitfall I see there, again, going back to the Wi-Fi issue, is that they’ve built technology that’s, you know, completely dependent on having wall-to-wall Wi-Fi and they try to implement it at communities or even in people’s homes, and that’s just not there, and then it’s a failed experience all around. So that’s, you know, I think there’s, I’ve definitely seen that lack of understanding from what you’re describing.

Jeff Gray:
23:28

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think there’s a, a tendency to try for one size fits all, or silver bullet. So this one thing is gonna do all of this. Fall detection’s a great example of that. Everybody wants to have some one thing, it’s gonna detect every fall, everywhere, all the time, time, no matter where it is. That’s just not possible. It’s not possible today. It’s not going to be possible soon. I mean, you could deploy a solution that would work, it would be a massive deployment. So rather than saying, Hey, we have goals to predict, prevent, and detect falls, and we think our greatest risk for falls that we need to detect are in public spaces that are poorly attended or low traffic, someone falls in the kitchen or the dining room. We’re gonna probably know that we probably don’t need to worry about a fault, a radar fall detector in the dining room. And really being smart about that and thinking, where do these things go and how can, how can we move the needle, right? How can we really, really improve versus how can I detect all falls all the time throughout the property? And those are, those are just really different exercises.

Amber Bardon:
24:32

Yeah, I, uh, I feel like we could talk about that topic for a long time as well. But Jeff, we are running short on time, so I wanna thank you for coming on the show today. It’s been an amazing conversation. Is there any last words of wisdom you want to leave our listeners with?

Jeff Gray:
24:46

Last words of wisdom? So that’s a, you threw a curve ball at me.

Amber Bardon:
24:52

That sounds very ominous, actually.<laugh>.

Jeff Gray:
24:54

Yeah. So there’s some words of wisdom my dad gave me in a letter when I started my first job out of college, and it basically said, when you’re having a terrible day and nothing’s working, go get your shoes shined. It’ll do great things for your attitude, and I think, so the advice is we’re all gonna have really bad days. Sometimes you’re gonna have a lot of them in a row, especially if you’re trying to sell in a Senior Living and you’re getting a lot of noes and nobody is piloting your product. So if you have a really bad day, do something nice for yourself, go get your shoes shined. It’ll do great things for your attitude.

Amber Bardon:
25:25

All right. Love it, love it. Love the ending words! Well, can you let me know where can our listeners find you?

Jeff Gray:
25:30

The easiest way to find me, I mean, you know, on LinkedIn, Jeffrey Gray, my main product is The Memory Kit. So Jeff@TheMemoryKit.com, But anybody that’s looking to get involved in Age Tech Atlanta, www.AgeTechAtlanta.com or.org, you can find us there. All the information you need about events that are coming up, how to get involved, how to participate, and you’re welcome to join our community wherever on the planet you call home.

Amber Bardon:
25:55

Thanks Jeff for joining us today.

Jeff Gray:
25:57

Thank you guys. I really appreciate it. It was a lot of fun!

Amber Bardon:
25:59

And listeners, if you have a topic you’d like to submit or you have feedback on this episode, you can find us online at www.ParasolAlliance.com, and as always, thank you for listening!

Patrick Leonard:
0:03

Welcome back to Raising Tech, a podcast about all things technology and Senior Living. Today. I’m your host, Patrick Leonard, and I’m really excited to welcome our guests, Charles Herman and Jessica Bradley from Somatix, Charles and Jessica, welcome to the show.

Dr. Charles Herman:
0:16

Thank you for having us.

Jessica Bradley:
0:17

Thank you. Happy to be here.

Patrick Leonard:
0:18

So I’m excited to learn more and educate our listeners on our topic today, which is really broadly around artificial intelligence and the power of AI and remote patient monitoring in senior living communities. Obviously, this is something that’s constantly a topic and there’s a lot of innovation happening in this space, I feel like right now. So really excited to get you all’s perspective and tell us a little bit more about Somatix. So before we dive into all that, Charles and Jessica, would you mind introducing yourself and your background and kind of role with Somatix?

Dr. Charles Herman:
0:48

Absolutely. So, appreciate being here. Look forward to a really engaging discussion. I’m the CEO of Somatix and working with the company for about four years. I’m a physician by training. I’ve worked in a variety of different roles from startups to venture capital through hospital and health system management, and Somatix is on the cutting edge, I think, of all three health systems and the way that medicines practice, the way that healthcare is invested and in and where startups are going in terms of leveraging technology and unique ways to bring patients together. So for me, it’s particularly rewarding to be in my role to, to bring all the pieces together in bringing a, a new technology to help patient lives.

Jessica Bradley:
1:30

I’m Jessica Bradley. I have spent my entire career in medical devices and the healthcare world. I recently joined Somatix last year as the full-time, Director of Sales, and I am very heavily involved with strategic partnerships as well as working with local long-term care communities, assisted living communities, independent living communities, bringing remote monitoring to their residents. I have extensive experience with remote monitoring, specifically in the world of diabetes and continuous glucose monitoring. Prior to joining Somatix, I worked for Medtronic for a decade, and I’m excited to be here now to bring remote monitoring more so than just in the diabetes realm, but to bring more insights and predictive analytics to, to our most at-risk populations than people that need it the most.

Patrick Leonard:
2:23

Awesome. Thanks for the intro to both of you and what amazing backgrounds to talk on this topic. So thanks for sharing that and giving that background to our listeners as well. And, and this may be a question for either or both of, of you, but I always love to hear, particularly in senior living, I, I’ve grown up in this industry on the operator side my entire life. And now kind of more on the business partner side, if you will, like you all. But I always love to hear how companies who are innovative come into this space. What is their entry point of steering living? Why and how did they get here for what you all know? Do you mind sharing how and why Somatix came about in the first place?

Dr. Charles Herman:
2:58

Absolutely. So, you know, as you know and have, have just said, the healthcare space in general, not necessarily the easiest market to break into. And the first priority I think, in analyzing the market to evaluate is, is there a need? Is there a need in the market for a service that you can provide Without the need, you can’t provide a product that someone is gonna use and, and potentially then provide value and and to whom you’re selling to. So we’ve seen for better or for worse in the last three years, how important leveraging new technologies are to taking care of the population because of covid. And two areas that have become catalyzed are remote monitoring and telemedicine. The need to extend the capabilities of our workforce, which is healthcare workforce is more strained than ever and to deliver services now that, you know, remotely efficiently and remote patient monitoring plays right to that need. So we had this technology that we created a number of years ago that it was very unique in that it leverages gestures, movements of the body in ways that other technologies can’t, to provide very, very powerful clinical insights purely from someone’s wearable, what they’re wearing on their wrist. We’re talking about very powerful insights like smoking, risk, of falling, hydration, pill, taking, sleep analytics, very, very powerful insights. And I think the clearly now the need for that is greater than ever before. When we first started looking at this technology, we looked at where could it be leveraged to provide value to patients because the technology in and of itself is not valuable unless there’s a need for it. And we saw that some of the highest risk members of our population, like patients with complicated medical problems older patients, elderly patients that have very unique risks, could benefit from having that angel on their shoulder, a technology that can monitor them more safely, keep them aging or healing in place better. And that’s what has driven Somatix over the last few years is taking a technology that was unique, finding the market for it, and now in the last three years since COVID really catalyzed by what’s happened in the last few years to deliver value to those patients who are most at risk.

Patrick Leonard:
4:58

Thanks, Charles, and that kind of leads me and may seem like a stupid question since it’s being talked about advanced in so many ways right now, but if you could just humor me for a second, and, you know, you can’t help but notice and and see so much these days, AI-powered artificial intelligence power. Can you talk a little bit more specifically for our listeners who maybe aren’t as familiar and for my own benefit as well, what does that actually mean, and particularly in this sense that you all are using it for today?

Dr. Charles Herman:
5:27

Sure, It’s a great point. We’ve heard a lot of promises of using AI, artificial intelligence, particularly in healthcare. A lot of them have been empty. We’re finally starting to see value from artificial intelligence. Now, what does artificial intelligence mean, right? It can mean many, many different things. Essentially it is taking big data and using computers to find insights, analytics, patterns in that data that could then be used in an application that can augment what we’re currently doing. So we’re finally starting to see things one another, another phrase that often goes along with artificial intelligence, machine learning, and that’s the a machine, a computer software learning something so that it can then deliver value based upon what it learned. So I’ll give you a, a concrete example of how we leverage it and artificial intelligence is that we have these gestures that the software in our band analyzes 24/7 and then goes into the cloud and gets analyzed again. Those gestures in and of themselves are not very useful. You know, it doesn’t really help us that we know that the person took their hand and moved it to their mouth 12 times in the last hour, or that their gates changed, that they’re using the bathroom more frequently or they didn’t put their hand to their mouth in a way that could have been them taking a pill. However, if we train the computer to learn the patterns in that behavior, give it an artificial intelligence to now know that that gesture was somebody falling or taking a pill or smoking a cigarette or how much fluid they drank based upon their movement. And now we’re training our algorithms to using machine learning to be able to provide these insights purely from these data that which is the signal from the band. That’s powerful. So we’re seeing many use cases now that suddenly are starting to provide value. We’ve seen in the last two years, FDA approvals for artificial intelligence around imaging of the chest, the lungs, the breast, and in many cases, I hate to say this, being a doctor myself, a lot of these artificial intelligence algorithms actually outperform the doctor in finding breast cancer and finding collapse of a lung or a lung cancer in colonoscopy. There have been several devices recently where the computer could look at the images while a doctor is doing a colonoscopy to pick up on any potentially cancerous polyps that might be missed and actually outperform the doctor and find things that augment the doctor, he or she doing the actual procedure. So the future is bright. A lot of the promises that were empty have now moved on to real value in, in finding ways to leverage, uh, machine learning to provide insights, analytics that otherwise human eye isn’t capable of doing. So if that, you know, giving you a few examples, giving you an explanation, I think the future is, is really, really bright for where these technologies can be leveraged in the coming years.

Patrick Leonard:
8:08

Thanks for that, Charles. That’s really helpful. Like to think being in the technology space myself that I knew quite a bit about artificial intelligence and machine learning, but even some of that explanation there really breaks it down practically and makes it real, and I learned something from that myself. So that kind of leads me to what, while you were saying that, I was thinking, and particularly with the application of senior living, there’s always a human element to this, and you know, you even said it yourself as a doctor, sometimes this technology is so powerful, can outperform the doctor or the human element in these cases. Can you talk to me a little bit more about how the human element is augmenting the artificial intelligence in the machine learning in the case of Somatix and what you all are providing? Cause I assume it is still prevalent.

Dr. Charles Herman:
8:50

Absolutely. So none of the technologies that are there are being developed really should be looked at as replacements for the caregiver. Computer can’t replace the human touch, can’t replace human intuition, can’t replace, human experience. So the way that you can, you can look at Somatix and other artificial intelligence powered devices is they augment what we can do. I’ll give you the example. We did a large study with several facilities affiliated with the Catholic church and the University of Pennsylvania a few years ago, and as part of that study we looked at how the technology’s being used, how it was perceived, and how outcomes were being changed by adding remote monitoring to what doctors, nurses, aids were currently doing, and the feedback we got is that number one, the data now that the caregiver is getting are data that that caregiver didn’t have before. So think about having a wearable on someone’s wrist. This is now a 24/7, 365 view of that patient. If you take someone’s vital signs or you check in on them and do an exam, that’s a snapshot. But providing a wearable that gives a longitudinal view of how someone is doing that is, you know, not just the trees, that’s also seeing the forrest, and we have a more comprehensive, larger view of how that patient’s doing. So now there’s more data that the human, the caregiver can act on. If we can, if we can use AI machine learning to predict if something’s gonna happen before it actually does and see someone’s risk, we might be able to prevent that person from getting sick. If we know based on our algorithms that they’re at a higher risk for falling or a urinary tract infection. If we can act and make an intervention sooner and keep that person from getting in trouble, we might be able to then, as we saw in our study, we reduced hospital admissions by double digits. We reduced falls, we reduced urinary tract infections. It’s the human making the decision, the technology is what we call a clinical decision support system or CDSS. It’s providing you another tool, it’s a blood pressure cuff on steroids. It’s another way of getting more information that’s more comprehensive, more insightful that the caregiver can then act on. But the eventual decision to administer the care to decision to, to help someone to deliver the care to someone comes down to the human. And I think that is never gonna be replaced. This is a another tool that that person can use in delivering hopefully better care to take care of that person. Jessica can speak a little bit about that in in the space she was previously in. If you wanna talk a little bit about Jessica, how technology really changed the way diabetes was taken care of. They’re very good corollaries there and how insulin pumps and, and blood and glucose monitors, you know, that got more advanced and some artificial intelligence got into those devices where they actually get dose people based on trends that didn’t get rid of the endocrinologist, the nurse or the aid. But maybe Jessica talk about a little bit, you know, how you saw that change that industry and how that might compare to what we’re doing at Somatix. I think it’s a very good case study as well.

Jessica Bradley:
11:39

Yeah, you know, Charles, I’ll follow that and one of the, the first things that when I meet someone new is I make sure that they understand what’s our, why<laugh>, why do we get up in the morning and do this and what do we really believe in? And something that I tell everyone is our mission statement. We truly believe in the power of developing artificial intelligence technologies that provide insights that empower people to thrive in their health and wellness. It’s ultimately about those insights. And like Charles was referring to, it is whether it’s an insight into a glucose level. I have diabetes myself, I’m a global diabetes advocate. I meet with people, you know, with all of these, these health conditions and comorbidities all the time. And it doesn’t matter what discipline you’re talking about or you know, is it diabetes, is it cardiology, is it nephrology? If you can provide insights into whether it be a glucose level or you know, what we’re doing with a hydration and showing people the risk of UTI, if you can do that and you can step in to provide predictive analytics before an adverse event occurs, that’s where the solution becomes valuable. And that’s truly what our smart pans provide to people living in Senior Living communities. It is, you know,<laugh>, I laugh, I do a lot of open houses and I meet with people and they say, you know, when I tell them that we can give insights to predict a UTI or a fall or pressure sore or something, they’re like, oh, can you predict a stroke too? It’s like, yes, we’ll get there, I promise. You know, as the technology advances a thousand percent, because truly that’s what they want. They want that safety net and they want something for their care teams and even themselves to understand more about their health, understand the quality of their sleep. It’s pretty powerful for them to really use it as a communication tool that they don’t need to communicate. They know that their care team knows already. So it’s, it’s, um, pretty impactful from a predictive analytics standpoint.

Dr. Charles Herman:
13:43

Yeah, totally. It’s, it’s empowerment. As Jessica said, what you do with the data is up to the caregiver and the patient, but certainly more information is better than none. And if we can predict things and prevent them from happening, we really can help, you know, make a significant change in how people are treated and, and keep them safer and healthier.

Patrick Leonard:
14:01

Absolutely. Yeah, it’s exciting to see with all of this and particularly, you know, the technology that’s coming out in this space, we’re continuing to learn and get better, as Jessica just mentioned, it’s coming, it’s coming and it’s just cool to see how this has really just taken us to a whole different level of healthcare for being preventative and proactive opposed to what we’re used to is, you know, calling the doctor, ignore the doctor reactively once a problem already occurs. So how can we touch this thing, you know, these symptoms and these signs of whatever it may be earlier and earlier. So it’s, it’s really exciting to hear you guys talk about this stuff. Can you, so in order for this, for the magic to work, right, obviously, you know, you mentioned the wearable, the smart band, obviously we’re reliance and dependent upon the residents to wear this for it to be effective. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about how they’re responding to this? How are they reacting to it? How are we ensuring that they’re using it and they’re charging the battery and they’re keeping it on 365 days a year so we can get all these insights?

Jessica Bradley:
15:00

I’ll tell you, I think ultimately I work with communities and directors of nursing and executive directors on communication. Communication is absolutely key from a really, what we have to do at the very beginning is just tell people the why behind it, what’s in it for me and why should I wear this? If you can successfully communicate the peace of mind and what it does for them, not only to the resident but their family members as well as to staff, the staff needs to understand how is this gonna help me in my day-to-day? That is really important because depending on the level of care that you’re talking about, if we’re talking about skilled care, the staff is the one who’s throwing it on the charger every few days, you know, so they need to understand why am I taking this extra step? What is it doing? You want to think that they care only about, you know, the residents, but it doesn’t matter what you’re talking about. People wanna know what’s in it for them. So I think that I, I will tell you from an implementation and deployment standpoint, that’s my job.<laugh> that’s what I help the teams to do, is to help them develop those communication. We give them marketing tools and we have videos and YouTube and all of those things. But I think what’s really important is that the residents understand this is going to help their care, their care teams to have a bigger insight into their old, their overall wellness. It can help, like Charles was referring to, it’s a support system to help them potentially predict adverse events before they happen. I will tell you family members love it because it’s a safety net. They know that their loved one is, we have real time alerts, we have predictive analytics that they will, that they’re just, they have an angel on their shoulder ultimately, that if they can’t be there, that somebody else will be notified. So I think that that’s really powerful. And then from the staff standpoint, I’ll tell you, I really think it ultimately comes down to better communication. We saw in the study Charles was referring to earlier that, um, you know, we measured hard and soft metrics and some of the soft metrics that we saw was a greater empathy that staff had for the residents themselves because they had a better understanding of how that person was feeling. So it really helped with their communication and the relationships that they had from staff to resident as well.

Dr. Charles Herman:
17:17

Yeah, absolutely. We, we actually have data to study that. One of the greatest barriers to adoption and remote monitoring historically has been patient adoption. There have been a lot of barriers. Mo a lot of the earlier remote monitoring technologies required hardware, cameras, sensors in patients rooms, homes, servers there, the fact that we’re all cloud-based and that the band speaks to the cloud or through the phone to the cloud really helps and the other thing we spend a lot of time on is messaging to the patient and the patient’s family because remember a lot of older people, the families are driving a lot of the, the healthcare decisions. What’s the value? You know, there’s been historical lot of paranoia around collecting personal data, right? So it’s very clear for people to understand that the data we’re collecting on the risk is to keep them safer, healthier, allow them to age more independently in place. This is what people want. It’s not to check their buying habits out on Amazon or their commuting patterns to the local bar. This is to really keep them safer and think about it also engages their social network. Not only do we have the wearable, we have these very mature apps that a family member can go and see how their loved one is doing just through their app that’s connected to their band. They could see when they woke up in the morning, how much sleep they got last night, how much fluid they drank, get warnings if they’re at risk for a urinary tract infection, fall, poor sleep. So really engages the social and family network of the patient as well that gives buy-in. So we’ve seen very high adoption. We’ve seen 80% to 90% adherence over long periods of time because it’s an easy solution. It’s almost entirely passive. It doesn’t require any additional hardware. And Jessica is on the frontline in her role of communicating effectively to the families, the patients and the caregivers, that this really is valuable and, and can keep someone safer. And now, you know, it’s in other advantages we have the data to, to be able to back that claim up.

Patrick Leonard:
19:02

Thank you both for that. So I’m gonna ask you a question now. It, it just got me curious because you know, we, you do see more and more solutions coming out on the market today that are really at their core looking to solve some of these similar aspects, at least bits and pieces of what you all are talking about today. And I’m not asking, not not asking to put you on the spot or can you, I’m just out of curiosity, can you talk a little bit more, are there, is there something different in the technology that you’re doing? Is there something different in what you’re analyzing or measuring than some of the other more general, you know, remote patient monitoring or, or false prevention tools or anything like that out there in this space today we should be aware of?

Dr. Charles Herman:
19:41

Yeah, well I think there’s, yeah, I think there’s two differentiators. Number one is the ability to get such comprehensive, powerful insights purely from the wearable itself. The fact that we’re taking unique signals that other companies aren’t taking. The, the core of our technology is the gesture detection. There isn’t another company out there that can tell you whether someone missed a dose of their medications purely from the movement of their hand or how much fluid they drank purely from the movement of the hand, or how many cigarettes they consumed purely from the movement of the hand. So that’s our proprietary, our patented technology is leveraging those unique signals that another no other companies can do in creating unique insights based upon those signals, which as I said earlier, are otherwise worthless signals to know how someone moved their hand. It’s the insight that we can provide through the artificial intelligence algorithms. The second value is the big data. So every patient, every second, every day that goes by where someone is added onto our system uses the technology, the technology gets better, the technology gets better because it’s increasing the data that we have that we can now create more insights, update our algorithms, learn the patient, learn different type of patients. So, and then we can find patterns in the big data. We can find signals in the data that might predict whether someone is decompensating earlier. And so it’s finding patterns in the data that can predict and provide insights from that big data that as we grow our base, as we grow our patient population, we know we can create even more insights over time.

Jessica Bradley:
21:05

I will say there’s, there’s three things I always ask everyone to remember when they walk away. I say, one, we have passive remote monitoring. So a lot of times sometimes you’ll hear passive versus active. What’s the difference? It’s that like Charles has mentioned, you wear the band, you don’t have to do anything, right? It’s very easy. We’re not asking someone to check their own blood pressure. We’re not asking them to check their SPO2 value with you know, a thermometer or something to check their temperature. It’s doing it automatically. That’s number one. And I will be honest with you, that’s probably the number one reason why people reach out to us is we are looking for a passive remote monitoring solution because we’ve seen how difficult it is to get people to do things on their own. So that’s number one. Number two, like Charles referenced is that AI. The AI is so impactful, it’s so powerful. The insights really, it’s not just the data because frankly people don’t know what to do with all these data points that he is talking about. Well, you know like I can have, I can know how many hours I slept or what the quality was or how much I drank, but what does it mean? They don’t know, and that’s what we provide them through the AI, and then the third thing is those proprietary gesture detection patents that we have to monitor. Things like Charles referred to. We’re the only company that can monitor whether or not somebody took a pill, how much by gesture, what their fluid intake was. Did they actually smoke a cigarette or fall algorithms or very robust in the actual algorithm, but as well as our predictive capabilities to predict a fall from happening. So those three things, passive nature, AI, and gesture detection, I think are what really set us apart.

Patrick Leonard:
22:39

Fantastic. Thank you for that. So I feel like we, we’ve covered a lot today and I feel like we can go on and on about this. So interesting and particularly, you know, to get two people with your backgrounds talking about this subject and clearly so passionate about it, it’s a lot of fun. But I did wanna kind of end on and give you all an opportunity to, I always like to ask people, you know, what’s, we’ve talked about so much and how far we’ve come today, but what can we expect in this space next? Do you guys have any insights or predictions as to what’s coming next? We’ve come so far but would love to hear that and or any other words of wisdom as it relates to adopting this technology or thinking about this for folks who haven’t kind of dove in yet.

Dr. Charles Herman:
23:19

Absolutely. Well, I think number one, the technology continues to improve and we’re able to do things with our technology and we will be able to do things that we don’t even can’t even imagine today. We’re already working on next generation features, not just cigarette use, but e-cigarette use, detecting tremors and responses to medications. So there, the technology that we have is very, very versatile. The algorithms can be leveraged in ways that can detect new clinical insights that we might not even think of today. So that’s one beauty of the technology is it’s not limited to one particular use and that can provide even more value to a patient going into the future. The second thing we’re doing, which I think that which we’re seeing, which I think is very important, is that the adoption has finally started to accelerate. As we started this conversation, we talked about how it’s difficult to find markets and bring new technologies into healthcare because people are often set in their ways. But I think now finally the ice is broken and it’s very exciting now that we’re actually seeing value from new technologies like remote monitoring and that the caregivers, the patients and their families are appreciating it in the technology starting to get adopted. So that is particularly rewarding and exciting and I think as more people see the value and more patient lives are improved, the adoption will continue to increase. I think that that’s clearly the trend and that goes with other things in artificial intelligence and remote monitoring. I think it’s an exciting time. We’re finding all new ways of leveraging machine learning to bring value to patients that augment, that empower what we do. And never, as we said, it’ll never replace the caregiver, but we’re finding new ways now to augment our powers and be able to detect diseases better earlier and intervene better. And I think that it’s an exciting time to be in healthcare. It’s an exciting time to see what’s happening in remote monitoring. And I think, you know, this is becoming now part of standard of care. We’re seeing a lot of not just assisted living nursing homes, skilled nursing facilities adopt us. We’re seeing hospitals adopted into their remote monitoring, into their population health programs a nd into home care because, you know, we we’re getting to see that it’s not just what happens in the hospital setting that matters. I t often just as important as what happens to that person when they leave the hospital. And if we can keep them safer in their home environment, uh, that can often improve the health of the person. So it’s changing the way we look at caring for people. It’s making it a much more continuous process. That’s better I think, in the long run. And I think Jessica and I and the company of Somatics i s, you know, really provision excited to be part of that change.

Jessica Bradley:
25:37

Absolutely. I I say often that I think since COVID, like Charles had mentioned, remote monitoring has absolutely taken off. And the majority of people that I talked to, they just simply didn’t know that it was an option. They didn’t know that there’s a passive wearable out there that monitors gesture detection and can give insights. They had no idea. So at this point, I think what we’re, what we’re looking to do is partner with, you know, other business partnerships, work with groups like Parasol. Thank you so much for having us because I think ultimately it is getting the word out that this technology is available and that residents can, can use it to their benefit. So thank you so much for having us because I think platforms like this are really what are gonna help us to expand and bring this technology to people in the market.

Patrick Leonard:
26:22

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you both for being here. I am one of those people, by the way, Jessica, who didn’t know about this pre-COVID, really to the extent and the advancements that it’s made and, and the adoption that it’s starting to get here in Senior Living. So I am super grateful for both of you for being here and educating me and our listeners. I know they’re gonna get a lot out of this episode. So thank you both so much for taking the time to be here. I’m excited to release it.

Dr. Charles Herman:
26:47

Right, happy to be part of it and appreciate what you’re doing and thanks for having us.

Jessica Bradley:
26:51

Thank you.

Patrick Leonard:
26:51

Absolutely. And listeners, thanks for tuning into another episode of Raising Tech. I know you’ll pick up some valuable information from today’s discussion with Jessica and Charles. If there are any topics you want to hear about or want to be on an episode yourself, please feel free to give us a shout or reach out on our website at www.parasolalliance.com. Have a good one.

Patrick Leonard:
0:04

Welcome back to Raising Tech podcast about all things technology and senior living today. I’m your host, Patrick Leonard, and I’m really excited to welcome our guest today, Todd Owens, who is the co-founder and CEO of Kevala. Todd, welcome to the show. Thanks,

Todd Owens:
0:18

Patrick. Great to be here.

Patrick Leonard:
0:20

Yeah, we’re really excited to have you. I’m, I’m really interested to learn more in educate our listeners today on our topic, which is really around workforce management. Obviously this is currently and likely always will be a huge topic for the senior living industry. But before we dive into that, Todd, can you take a minute just to introduce yourself, your background a little bit, and tell us a little bit more about how Kevala came about?

Todd Owens:
0:42

Sure. Yeah. So my roots go back to the Navy. I actually grew up in a Navy family and, and, uh, was a submarine officer for about five years back in the 90s, realized that bureaucracy is not my thing. And so went to business school and, and became a product manager. And I would say, uh, product management experience at Oracle set me down the, the technology career path. I’ve always gravitated towards more growth stage companies, and that ultimately led me to my first CEO opportunity. So I guess I, you know, I, I I, I am either crazy enough or lucky enough to have been a CEO four times over, this is my fourth, again, I’m the co-founder and CEO of Kevala. After exiting my last business, uh, which was Azuqua was a future of work integration platform. Found myself on the beach and, you know, kind of wondering what what am I gonna do, uh, with the rest of my life? And, I, I paired up with Pioneer Square Labs. It’s a startup studio here in Seattle. There’s a great guy named Greg Gottesman, founder of Rover.com, our our favorite pet sitting site. He said,”Hey, Todd, you know, let’s sit down, you know, it’d be fun to build a business together,” and I knew I wanted to, to do something related to the workforce. I guess, you know, now I’m in the back half of my career, I’ve decided that I’m, it’s pretty clear to me the quality and the engagement of your workforce is really what drives success in business. And so I wanted to get back to doing that. It was the first company I ran, but then there were two others and they were more infrastructure and technology platforms and, and they were great. They were very exciting, but they didn’t touch people the way that I had always wanted. And so, you know, we sat, sat down in early 2020 looking at workforce dynamics, things that are going on, like for example, the increasing gig economy, the aging population, compliance and regulation, and how much friction that adds in the, in the kind of the, the process of, of building and engaging a workforce. And lo and behold, one day in February, maybe it was late January 2020, covid started to spread, and so, that, that notion, I think sort of was the icing on the cake that we, we should really dig deep into healthcare. You know, you turn on TV, CNN, and they were saying facilities needed to hire more nurses, right? And so we wanted to explore that and, and that’s how we did. We, we started talking to healthcare facilities whether they be skilled nursing or senior living. We spoke to hospitals as well, and we found the same thing. They were all looking for nurses. And so then what’d we do? We went to the other side, let’s go see if we can recruit nurses. And so we took a, a social media approach to recruiting nurses and we asked them, what are you looking for? Lo and behold, they had a capacity and a willingness to do more. And so that was the big aha moment for us today in healthcare, the way that healthcare facilities connect with various labored pools is very manual and it’s very fragmented. And oftentimes the operator doesn’t realize that right around the corner there’s a nurse that would love to pick up the shifts. And if we could get right into the middle of that and do that using technology, not text messages, not emails, not phone calls, that we might be able to be a better, do a better job of, of matchmaking, fill more shifts, um, and keep costs down. So that was the, that was D1 of Kevala that came out of Pioneer Square Labs.

Patrick Leonard:
4:09

That’s awesome! Thanks for sharing that background. I think that’s really helpful. And, and I learned a lot there just in that short nugget. And I think it’s interesting what you said and really valuable how you took really dove into depth on both sides and both perspectives of the operator as well as the nurse or caregiver. Cause a lot of times I think there is a huge disconnect and misunderstanding that, you know, people may say things like, there’s, there’s not enough demand for these jobs. These people don’t want to work, or, or whatever it might say. That just, you know, clearly when you hear things like that, you understand that they don’t necessarily know the interest of the industry or have taken the time like you all did to understand both perspectives. So I think that that’s really helpful and valuable that you shared that with us.

Todd Owens:
4:52

Yeah, no, for sure. I think that, you know, the workforce is changing and, and organizations that recognize that and adapt to meet the workforce where they are, are gonna thrive. So for example, in esp, and this was all exacerbated during COVID, their, their need for flexibility and control over their schedule, right? Whether they are student or a stay-at-home parent, you know, or maybe they, um, you know, aren’t looking for a full-time job or don’t want the pressure of being worked full-time and then asked to do overtime. An increasing percentage of the workforce wants that flexibility and control. So what we’ve seen is that there’s almost been a, a shift away from perm roles where they don’t have as much flexibility and they’ve got a lot of pressure to roles that give them that flexibility. And some of those are labor marketplaces. And you know, and candidly that’s how we, that’s how we cut our teeth at Kevala, right? Was as a labor marketplace ourself putting qualified, certified, um, RNs, LPNs and CNAs into shifts. You know, where are they coming from? It’s possible that they were coming from our, and they were, were looking for that freedom, that choice and that control, that option to work when and where they want to. And so the key here, and this is, you know, what I hope we can talk about is that, you know, we need to develop software that helps the industry deliver that same flexibility to their own employees so that they don’t have to go elsewhere to get what they’re looking for.

Patrick Leonard:
6:17

Yeah, that’s fantastic, and, and that kind of dovetails well into Kevala, hopefully, and, you know, the problem that you all are trying to solve. So for our listeners who aren’t as familiar, can you just give us a high level overview of what Kevala actually does and what it hopes to accomplish as it relates to all these things we’re talking about specifically in the senior living study?

Todd Owens:
6:39

Yeah. Highest level, the mission of Kevala is to improve the quality and cost of healthcare through smarter workforce management, right? If you look at the cost structure in the industry, over half of it is labor. And so it goes without saying that by bringing more intelligence, more data, more automation, more efficiency into that we can actually make care more accessible, whether it’s private pay or whether it’s, you know, a state funded facility. You know, we need to do more with less, not just because the talent’s not there, but because we need to keep it affordable for everybody. So that’s, that’s what we’re doing at the core of what we do. It’s about connecting, it’s about connecting labor pools to a schedule in a very inde, uh, in a very intelligent way. So as to whether or not it’s a permanent staffer that fills the shift, or if it’s a third party agency or another labor marketplace or the Kevala’s Care network, right? Our, we’ve got several thousand W-2 nurses that are there to fill shifts as well. We put the controls in our client’s hands so that they can achieve their outcome, right? And ultimately, I think we all know that the goal is to get agency to an absolute minimum, right? Especially in this industry. There’s not a ton of volatility as it relates to the census. And so we’ve gotta be smarter about making sure that those shifts are exposed in a very convenient and friendly way to the internal staff before they get opened up to, to third parties. And that’s what our ho our software’s gonna do. It’s interesting because on one hand, you know, we, we built our initial revenue stream around a labor market. And on the other hand, what I’m telling you now is that our objective is to, is to get to the right mix of agency, which may not be zero by the way, right? There’s, there could be the right mix. You could, you could argue that zero agency, you might be overstaffed too much agency, you’re probably understaffed, not recruiting well enough, but we wanna help our clients get to the mix that is right for their, their operation, their business.

Patrick Leonard:
8:34

Yeah. That’s interesting cuz you do hear about all those different factors, you know, the, the internal labor pool, the labor marketplace agencies. And so I haven’t heard a, an approach today that kind of integrates the best of all the worlds together. Are there other folks like you out there doing this? And can you tell me a little bit, bit more specifically about when you work with a organization, how do you work with them to find that magic mix between those different parties? Right. Can you tell me a little bit more about

Todd Owens:
9:05

That? Yeah, it’s interesting. So first of all, um, your various to, um, the, the unique value proposition of Kevala is that we are able to bring all of the facets of the workforce together. So there are vendor management systems that can help to bring the agency side under a single roof. Although VMSes tend to be more appropriate for hospitals cuz they tend to be big clunk, and there are scheduling applications that do a pretty good job of the, the permanent staff, right? Scheduling them. But how, you know, at the end of the day, it’s one shift, right? It’s one audit, one compliance audit, it’s, you know, it’s one P and L. And so how are you going to actually measure and understand where you are and where you wanna be if you don’t bring it all together? And so that’s a very core aspect of our strategy. We ha we have no choice but to go broad all the way across the workforce as it relates to, you know, how do we help to establish that proper mix. A lot of it is, you know, helping them to know where they are. You know, if you look at, um, the, the scheduling mix today, there’s a pretty good understanding of where, because you know, whether it’s on shift or you know, Paycom or Smart Links, they, they have really good management reporting and so you’ll know exactly what’s happening there. But then there’s everything else. The agency A, B, and C that each sent a nurse in as well. Oftentimes they don’t know who worked and when and how much until the invoice arrives. And unfortunately the invoice can show up sometimes 60 to 90 days later. So in a world where you’re trying to match the, you know, the schedule to the, to the census and the acuity and you’re trying to control costs in a very sort of thin margin business, and you have to make sure that you’ve got the right staffing ratios to, to sort of deliver the care and stay compliant, you know, it’s, it sort of, it’s do that without the data. And so by virtue of bringing it all together and creating these dashboards at the, at the community level, but then also at the home office level, at least they know where they are, right? They can identify problem areas or locations that might be struggling or they can identify opportunities to recruit a full-time person because you’re using agency in the same pattern week over week. There’s an opportunity to hire. If you don’t have the data, that stuff just isn’t gonna jump out at the scheduler. They’re, they’re sort of struggling to survive, right? 24 by seven job really. And so I’d say a, it’s data and second of all, um, you know, we um, we have a, a sophisticated tiering engine in our product, which effectively allows the, the shift to hit our platform and then go through a very sort of sequential marketing process to agencies. So the worst thing you can do is get into a rhythm where you take shifts that are four or sometimes even eight weeks out and publish them to agencies. Agencies should be there for a last minute use. It’s not there for eight weeks out because geez, eight weeks from now you might be able to hire three or four people to fill those shifts. And then you say, well, well then we’ll cancel the agency. But in reality, schedulers know that you can’t just start canceling agency cuz then the agency won’t work very hard for you. They’ll assume they’re gonna get canceled. And so, you know, I believe that this problem is, it’s a scale problem. There’s simply too many shifts coming and going with too many agencies, too many communications, all manual that you just can’t technology helping you. And that’s so setting up the right tiering so that shifts are exposed to agencies in a logical order so that they’re working on only the shifts that are of utmost importance and that ultimately you get the highest quality, lowest cost nurse into the shift is what the industry needs. It’s automation over, you know, it’s kind of the future, right? Is let technology do what it’s good at so that, you know, people are left to do the rest.

Patrick Leonard:
12:58

Yeah, definitely. So you, you talked a lot about the data from the operator side and there’s a lot of different systems and workflows going into play here. As you’re just talking, I’m thinking about the different stakeholders within an organization that this might impact. Can you talk a little bit about does your platform fully integrate some of these solutions so that all the data is in one place? I assume there’s some reliance on other platforms out there as well, whether it be related to, you know, HR, time sheets, scheduling, things like that, other platforms people might be using the conjunction to Kevala. Can you talk a little bit about that kind of data management and workflow management from that perspective, if you will?

Todd Owens:
13:42

Yeah, so we are ultimately a system of record for the, the shift. So, you know, what, what, who filled the open shift and we also have a time and attendance aspect, not attendance, but a time sheet aspect to it. Why? Because it’s better than paper, which continues to be the primary source of tracking time, you know, across the agencies. Sometimes there’s gonna be a scheduling system in place, not always surprisingly, you know, but you know, sometimes it’s, it’s still a spreadsheet, but sometimes there’s gonna be a scheduling system in place and that could be a, a system like an on shift or a Kronos and that’s going to, it’s gonna be necessary that we integrate with those systems. In fact, you know, I would tell your audience, like we absolutely can and we’ll integrate to any scheduling system that we need to so that we can marry together the permanent staff in that scheduling system with the site system so that you can get a combined view, right? That’s gonna be necessary in the cases where there is a preexisting scheduling system. If there’s not, we intend to develop the capabilities so that they can use, use our system as well. So that’s, that’s a big one. As you think about intelligent scheduling, it starts with knowing what census and acuity is in the building and knowing what the staffing model is based on the, the physical characteristics of the building, right? Number of floors, long hallways, teams zones. And so we’ve got a budding new partnership going on with point click care to, to look at how we can integrate the two systems of care data into Kevala so that we can create the most efficient schedule in the first place. So it’s constantly changing and I think the right answer is not to simply copy and paste what you did last week or the week before, the week before that, and then find that, oh you’re, you know, either you’re understaffed or overstaffed, there’s like drift that happens. The right thing to do would be able to have real-time data come in from the EMR and that’s a, that is isn’t gonna be an increasingly important point of integration if we’re gonna truly realize this goal of being intelligent. Then lastly, I’d just say, you know, by virtue of being in a position to touch the shift or the, the workforce in total, but also those that are on the shift, all of them, including permanent staff as well, we come, we become kind of a last mile point of connectivity to them. And so when you think of all the signals that are kicking off from around the, around the building, whether it’s a fall detector or whether it’s a, an alert coming out of an EMR, we’re uniquely positioned as a system that can deliver that message to those that are on shift at that point in time, and so that the, I guess I’ll, I’ll leave you with this, that, you know, the ecosystem of integrations is gonna be incredibly important to our ability to deliver value to our clients.

Patrick Leonard:
16:18

Yeah, absolutely, and I think that’s been a common thread for the last few years, but it just increasingly becomes more and more important with so many innovative solutions that are specialized in different areas of the operations of the community. You know, everybody has to play nicely together these days to really benefit the industry as a whole. So it’s, it’s really cool to see that happening more and more and then the, the depth of those integrations as well, getting better and better as well. So that’s fantastic. So this is a call to everyone out there<laugh>, to continue to do that, to continue to integrate and open up your platforms to play nicely with Get together. So we, we’ve talked a lot about, you know, and getting a pretty good sense from an operator’s perspective, how this kind of all works and comes together to, to manage these shifts. Can you talk a little bit more about kind of the nurse perspective? How are they feeling about this? How are they interacting with Kevala and what is ultimately the impact on that perspective that it’s having back to the operators and is that being communicated?

Todd Owens:
17:17

Yeah. Well because we started as a labor marketplace with our own W-2 nurses picking up shifts, we get their feedback every day. And the level of satisfaction that they have with Kevala as an employer is, is unlike anything I’ve seen in my professional career. So here we are in a segment of the workforce that is burning out, you know, treating quickly and yet they are incredibly happy. You know, our NPS has gotta be a nine point on average, if you use the true NPS of a hundred to minus 100, we’re at like an an 80, NPS which is exceptionally high. And what it is is flexibility. That’s that’s what it is. That’s what they like and then they like to be treated with respect. And so I think we’re pretty good at, you know, because because we are process-oriented people and we’ve got technology working to help us out, we’re able to manage our, our team very well, even with a light touch. So I, you know, last week we put 400 unique nurses into shifts across the country. Next week it’ll be a different set of 400 and it’s not us telling them where, where to work, it’s them picking the shifts they wanna work at. And so they’ll leverage technology to scale and to do it with a, with incredible loyalty from these these nurses is, is, is high. So flexibility is one, and then I think the other one is, you know, with technology we’ve gotta build highly usable software, you know, and I think it’s a real advantage to companies that are coming out of the gate more recently that we have all of the lessons learned from the last 10 years from the mobile economy, right? You know, the iPhone and apps and, and the gig economy and what it’s like to, to work, you know, a different, you know, gig every day and, and how your software and technologies should behave. So we, you know, our first hire at Kevala was a designer, and it’s something that, you know, we continue to take great pride in is designing a software that is designed first and foremost around the frontline care team. There’s a lot of software out there that, you know, just isn’t usable and therefore becomes shelfware. And so, you know, I’d say that that’s, that’s another perspective. They, you know, we wondered whether or not they would be able to embrace technology and there has been no issue with that thankfully, cuz that would’ve been really difficult to get’em off paper if, if they don’t really want to move off of paper, they all have smartphones and you know, that is how they communicate via text messaging. They’re on Facebook, I need to give them technology that is, that is just as usable as the software they use in their daily lives.

Patrick Leonard:
19:41

Thanks for that, and This might be a segment here. I was just thinking of this question as you were talking about these different, all the different 400 plus shifts being filled last week, I think you said across the country, it made me my mind go to just different labor laws and different credentialing or I guess the compliance side of things across the country. I don’t know if this has necessarily a huge amount of impact of what you all do, but it just made me think of that. Can you talk a little bit about that and how you all manage that, if that is something that you have to keep a pulse on?

Todd Owens:
20:13

Yeah, it does. Thanks for asking the question. Not everybody wants to talk about compliance<laugh>.

Patrick Leonard:
20:19

It’s not the always the most exciting topic, but it’s very, very relevant obviously and important in this industry. So I couldn’t help but think about it as you were talking about that and thought it might make sense to touch on it real quick.

Todd Owens:
20:30

It’s very relevant. I mean, if you don’t know who the individual is, not just where they are and what license they have, but what qualifications and skills and whether or not they’re current from a compliance perspective, it’s pretty hard to put people into shifts. So it’s actually kind of a core capability of our platform to marry up a workforce with a set of policies so that you know, whether or not somebody is either red, yellow or green red, meaning they can’t work yellow, meaning that something needs to be addressed in the next 30 days. And green meaning they’re good to go for for you, they may not be green for somebody else, but they’re green for you because of your compliance requirements or your state’s re compliance requirements, which could be different. So, you know, it is, it is very much a an aspect of, you know, making sure that you’re, uh, dotting your eyes and crossing your t’s with regulators, but it’s also relevant to making sure that you help to schedule so that people are working at the top of their license. So one of the things that we heard early on was, you know, if I, I, you know, if I can do with a, you know, a CNA, I, don’t need a med tech or somebody to pass meds. If I can do with an LPN, I don’t need somebody that’s that’s got a RN, and so again perfect with regards to the profile and the compliance status of the workforce in is a really big deal when you think about optimizing the schedule and getting the most out of your workforce, you know, that you possibly can.

Patrick Leonard:
21:56

Thanks for that. Thanks for, for touching on that side of things. How does it look like if I were a senior living community and, you know, I list this podcast<laugh> and all this sounds very interesting, obviously. What is the, can you break it down practically a little bit to how does, how does an organization go about implementing a solution like this based off of where they’re at today? I’m sure it depends a little bit of course, but, you know, take your, your typical, if there is senior living community and they want to go through this transition to really empower their workforce management solution after community. Can you tell me a little bit about what that process looks like?

Todd Owens:
22:31

Yeah, you know, so from the community-level perspective, it is pain free. So this is, you know, really a decision that, you know, I as a scheduler or an executive director or a GM want to unify and digitize my agency’s schedule so that everybody’s working off the same page. It’s the decision to do that. When we get engaged, we typically do, the agencies that our client work works with are invited to the platform very soon, you know, in the next month they’ll be able to invite their permanent staff employees as well so that they can see shifts before those same shifts get exposed to the agency and they can be up and running, you know, immediately. There’s no extensive configuration. It’s really just a matter of, you know, inviting the participants to the table. And so one of the things that we do to make that super easy for our clients is, you know, we let them make the invitation to the agency, but then we give the white glove onboarding treatment to that agency. And so of course there are questions, what is this technology like? Why are we doing this? Is this going to, is this gonna disintermediate me? And, you know, we’re able to very quickly get them on the same page too. So when we talk about net promoter score, customer satisfaction, our agency satisfaction is very high for the first time, they’re actually looking at a real-time view of the current needs of that facility, right? They’re not working on outdated information or shifts that have already been filled by somebody else. When they apply a few mouse clicks, they can apply a name to the, to the, the, uh, schedule and it can be approved so they, they don’t have to go to a phone call or to a text message, which again, takes it out out of band offline. And, and now you lose all of the efficiency and the trackability of the process, right? Time sheets. Now that time sheets are, are part of it. We introduced to them the ability to actually digitally, so now you and your client are looking at the same approved time sheet, talk about making it a lot easier to get through the, the revenue cycle, you know, in terms of the billing process and the accounts payable process for that agency. So we take them through that and by the end of the conversation they’re loving it. But the, from the, from the client’s perspective, it’s an intro introduction to the platform. We tell them how to, how to, uh, to create open shifts either in bulk or one at a time. We, we go through the process of inviting digitally the agencies into the product. We then take, we go offline and onboard them and they’re off to the races. The question then is this play in this, right? And, and ultimately this is really where the greatest success has happened is when the home office, usually the CEO, COO, CFO and sometimes the VP of HR agree that it is in their organization’s best interest to standardize around a digital process and one that will serve up all of the real- time data that they need to run a more efficient and effective business. And when we have that top down sort of, not pressure, but conviction and maybe a little bit of pressure that we’re, we’re going to the deployment process across a large chain can go very quickly. If that’s not there, then it’s sort of left up to the technology platform to convince every one of the locations. And that just delays progress. That’s all we can do it and we do do it, but I think that this industry is getting to a place here post COVID where change system, systematic strategic change, is gonna have to originate at the home office.

Patrick Leonard:
25:58

Yep, absolutely, and thanks for adding that on there and that, that kind of leads to where I wanted to end our time today, which is what’s next? You know, right now, obviously I don’t even like mentioning the COVID crisis and the, the subsequent staffing crisis as people are calling it, but you know, that is what it is. But looking forward, what, what’s next? Is there light at the end of the tunnel? And the second part of that question is, are there any other words of wisdom for our listeners, particularly the operators who are going through this and living through this every day? You know, if you can kind of leave yeah, and part them with one word of wisdom, what, what would that be?

Todd Owens:
26:33

I think there’s a ton of hope. So I think my sense is, and I I’m new to the industry, I’ve only been in senior living since 2020, so I, I’m only in for three years myself, was that it was a fight for survival, really. And it, it feels to me like we’re coming out of it and now learned as to what was working and what was not. There’s sort of like a, an opportunity to take a deep breath, rethink and reinvent for a better tomorrow. And you know, I think a big part of that is gonna be technology, right? Technology that helps the team be smarter, the team to do more with less, bring visibility and transparency and connectivity to the organization. And so, you know, uh, there is so much innovation going on in the world and when you poke your head into a typical healthcare organization in your living is no exception. There’s still a lot of that is sort of thankless work. And I think that with the right alignment and the right sort of ecosystem of, of innovators and startups and suppliers out there, you know, that we’re gonna be able to lock arms and, you know, and make real progress. So I would say better software, more intelligent software that, that helps to make recommendations, but also software that automates the, the mundane, repetitive task so that, so that, you know, a senior loving community can do what it really wants to do, which is focus on care.

Patrick Leonard:
27:54

Rethink and reinvent for a better tomorrow. That really stuck with me and your sign off there. So thanks for, I wrote it down and I’m gonna revisit that later. But, Todd, thanks so much for being with us today and for your time. I really enjoyed the conversation and I know our listeners will too.

Todd Owens:
28:08

Thanks, Patrick. It’s my pleasure!

Patrick Leonard:
28:09

And listeners, thanks for tuning in for another episode of Raising Tech. I know and hope that you’ll pick up some valuable information from today. If there are any other topics you want to hear about or want to be on an episode yourself, please feel free to reach out on our website at www.parasolalliance.com. Have a good one!