Best Tech Solutions for Family Caregivers
While working on the Gerontech Market Map, I couldn’t help but notice there are some great startups out there, providing amazing tech-based solutions for caregivers. According to the Family Caregiver Alliance, 1 in 10 Americans have provided unpaid care to an adult age 50 or older in 2015. The following companies are on a mission to help family caregivers beat the challenges of caregiving. Let’s dive in and see how.
Torchlight takes an innovative approach to meeting caregivers where they are – in the workforce.
They provide caregivers with the expert guidance, tools, and action plans that solve even the most complex family challenges. Torchlight has covered the full range of caregiving challenges, from depression to dementia, housing to holistic care.
Their solution aknowleges the fact that caregiver burden is a serious issue, that can make even the most dedicated employees feel stress and disengagement. They address modern caregiving challenges as the real root cause of employee stress and disengagement, helping leading companies like Amgen, Dell/EMC and TripAdvisor, among many others, support working families.
Two more companies that enable employers to help their caregiving employees are Wellthy and Cariloop. They help individuals and families manage and coordinate care, using online platform enables families to have a dedicated care coordinator, that is skilled and trained to help families navigate and manage all aspects of care, from legal and financial to medical.
Carely
Carely is a free app that brings families together around the care of a loved one. It enables families to organize and track a loved one’s activities and appointments by planning and sharing visits, send direct messages to members of your care circle and to your loved one’s care teams, and explore local resources to support the caregiving journey.
Wisdo tackles the caregiving issue from a different angle, offering peer support.
Simply, the app allows you to connect with people who’ve walked your path, get advice and share your own.
Using private messaging, it provides peer support without the exposure involved in posting on traditional social media sites like Facebook.
Although it’s not a caregiver-centric product like some of the other startups on this list, it’s worth mentioning because of this innovative approach to social media, an approach that got itFast Company’s 10 most innovative startups in the social media category.
TCARE
TCARE (which stands for “tailored care”) addresses the issue of caregiver burnout. Through their 35+ years of research, they’ve discovered one major contributor to caregiver burnout – the role revearsal or shift within the family. TCARE’s algorithms analyze a caregiver’s social determinants of health, identify specific goals and strategies to combat caregiver burnout and connect them with the right interventions, at the right time. Their care management platform enables care managers to tailor care approaches.
Two startups using Amazon’s smart speaker, Alexa, to make caregiving easier are Livpact and Lifepod.
One of the challenges of caregiving is care coordination. Livpact’s care coordination platform is conveniently built to work on smartphones, computers and voice assistants.
It provides a simple way to facilitate coordination, communication, monitoring and service provision for caregivers and their loved ones from whatever device they’re using.
Livpact’s advanced AI care companion helps create a care plan, keep the whole care team up to date, find the support needed, and organize and prepare for the future.
Lifepod
Another company using voice to help caregivers is LifePod. It is the only proactive voice service designed to improve the quality of life for caregivers and their loved ones. By monitoring and supporting daily routines, LifePod assists older adults with ageing-in-place.
Offering a personalized, voice-enabled service built on top of popular smart-speaker technology, LifePod proactively assists family members and caregivers with managing a senior’s day-to-day schedule, medications, appointments, activities, and entertainment.
Envoy
Anyone who’s ever cared for a loved one knows that it includes plenty of time-consuming tasks, that don’t necessarily require the presence of a family caregiver. In come – Envoy.
This Family Concierge service is bringing peace of mind and a trusted helping hand into the lives of families who are balancing career, kids, and older loved ones.
Sometimes just a little help is all that’s needed to maintain independence and help older adults age-in-place.
The service is based on a community of local assistants, called “Envoys”, which can be contacted through the “service desk” using a phone or app.
Want to find more tech-enabled caregiving tools? check out AlzYouNeed, this cool web-based questionnaire will help you find the right tech-based tools for you and your care recipient’s needs.
Know any other companies that belong on this list? Feel free to contact me on LinkedIn or Twitter!