The First AI Tech Support for Older Adults: Apo by Carevocacy!

Stefano, welcome to the podcast!

Hi Keren. Thank you so much for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Thank you for joining! Tell us a little bit about APO.

I would love to kind of step back and talk a little bit about how we got to upo, which was actually with my grandma a few years ago when my family and I decided to bring her to the States to take care of her. I remember at the time her Alzheimer’s wasn’t so progressive, or wasn’t really the worst moment now, but she would basically speak to us and she would mention the word apo, which was something I never heard of before because this was the first time I, or any of our grandparents lived with us.

And I actually thought it was an interesting word at the time because she would always say it, but we didn’t really know what it was until our mom told us. I thought that was just an interesting name. And you know, I never knew that, you know, fast forward that would be something I would use for a future product. But ultimately it was really something that my grandma, who’s living with Alzheimer’s just kind of used to call us. Unfortunately she doesn’t call us that much anymore. But it was something that I thought it was an interesting. Meaning or word to it.

And then, as you probably know, if you don’t follow me already through LinkedIn, I launched a company back in 2020, which that I’m working on right now called Carevocacy to provide digital literacy for older adults.
And in the beginning, before I even launched this, my background was always in marketing, not necessarily a technical founder, but I wanted to provide a service that ultimately solved a problem not a that a lot of people were ignoring, which is the fact that there’s a huge digital literacy gap.

With older adults, and that’s when we launched our individual private sessions. And then over the years pivoted to working with organizations, b2b senior living, healthcare, primary care providers and things like that. So I think. What we’re working on, which is this interesting new product, our first artificial intelligence product.

Our first tech-heavy product, I would say has really been a culmination of what we’ve learned for these three years. And as well as just an inspiration from, you know, as a caregiver to my grandma. What it basically does is it’s a, it’s a tool. It’s a tool like in everything that we use today for older.
Their loved ones for organizations to be able to have something where it doesn’t require a physical person to help learn about technology, but to really help answer those questions that sometimes older adults feel uncomfortable to ask when it comes to a real person. Right? And so that’s what that is.

It’s a, it’s a simple chatbot that really, really identifies those things that older adults want to learn about. Technology answers. It even provides recommendations it provides. Ways for them to learn and just gives them that kind of support system that may not be available to a lot of older adults who don’t have access to someone like a grandchild or anything like that.

And brings back to the name. So the word is a Filipino word and it actually translates into grandchild. And that’s really just a fitting name for what we’re doing. We’re not trying to replace the grandchild. We’re here to actually supplement that. And even a grandchild could use it to introduce technology to their grandparents, right?
So that’s what really what APO is.

So how does actually work? What types of questions can I ask 

Right now we’re in the testing phase right now. We actually have a wait list going on. If anyone’s interested to sign up, I’m sure I’ll be able to share that towards the end of this episode.
But what it basically does, you can ask a variety of questions. So for example if you are a person that’s unaware. Send attachments to an email, you could simply ask it and say, how do I send a picture or a file to an email? And it, it’s so intuitive enough that it will even ask you, what kind of email provider do you use, right? Like it’s gonna ask those specific follow up questions so that it better understands how to actually help the learner.

You could ask it a variety of questions, like even basic things like how do you send a text and how do you provide certain information about topics around technology? And it, it really depends on the person.Something that’s been interesting that I, we encourage, that I hope that a lot of our future users will use is to actually ask it to create a, a plan on how to. A specific technology or device. We actually just tested it last night about how I asked our apo AI to basically create a step-by-step seven day plan on how to learn how to use the iPhone.And it laid it out, right? It said, okay, this is what you’re gonna tackle first.

And then they’d also provided options for the learner to say, do they want to start with this first, or do they wanna start with other things first? And it was interesting to, to see it break it down and the fact that it can retain that context.While you’re asking specific things, because I think ultimately what happens is when you help somebody learn how to use the technology, you know, we have people that will go into tangents and so it’s able to maintain that conversation even when the person who’s asking goes into a tangent on, on a different topic, but it’s still within that frame.

Honestly, I would love for you to just ask it anything. It does have some sort of let’s say control over what type of things you can. You can’t ask anything inappropriate. You can’t ask it to search things in the internet. So there are certain limits to it. But basically if you have any technology questions, this is really a product that could really help somebody learn those things and really dig a little deeper.

How has your work on care advocacy over the past two or three years informed the building process for this product? Like, did you build your roadmap? According to the frequently asked questions, you get in care advocacy classes. 

You know, I would like to say that that’s what was meticulously planned.Keren? No. I think, you know, as a non-technical founder, I think there was always aspects of like like having what we’re doing as a service, a, a tech-based service to really have a component that was more technical than anything else. I think the biggest question we have, especially with what we do, is about scale, right? And how do we address that? But then also, you know, we’re not afraid to be very niche and specific if as long as we’re solving a real recurring problem that no one seems to really wanna fix.

So it wasn’t necessarily an issue, but I think from the beginning I always saw as, as look from the stepping stone Carevocacy is one of the many products.That we hope to create that will address the, just the underlying the infrastructure of what’s really happening in aging and longevity, which is the fact that there is no digital literacy. Right? And as, as you can probably relate, Keren, there’s so many products in the space that have the intention to provide something for older adults, but what ends up happening is that the end user never uses it, right?Or they just have a difficult time in even adjusting or adopting to it. And so Carevocacy was always something where, you know, we have a service that’s, that’s provides the basic things and what a person needs, which is. A tech tutor matching them with somebody that is able to learn technology. And I think the idea, or something I wrote in my journal years ago was, could we take what we’ve learned, the data, the feedback, the sessions, interactions, and create something from those moments at, into an actual scalable technical product.

Carevocacy was really trying to solve the infrastructure of the digital literacy gap. And now we’re able to take all those sessions and those moments that we’ve had with our learners and and our past work to be able to take what we’ve learned and apply it to our new product, which is APO ai. This past year, open AI launched an interesting product called Chat, G P T. And you know, I think. There’s a lot of conversation around it, but I think there’s really no conversation about the practical use of it and how it can solve these problems that I think that a lot of, again, people ignore. I’m, I’m, I’m as, as you probably know, I’m a very pragmatic optimist, and. to, in my, in my simple head, I was like, wait, why not? Like, use something like this. We, I, we don’t think it’s ever gonna replace our existing line of work, which is still matching seniors and older adults with tech tutors. Again, it just, it’s a supplement to that.

It may be a much more affordable route for someone rather than hiring actual private tutor.
So yeah, I think we’re taking what we’re learning from our current product. It’s not like, leaving our, our, our tech tutoring service. We’re just basically taking what we’ve learned and applying it to that. And, and, and this, for example when you interact with apo, there are certain things where.

The actual AI is coming in with a mindset as, as a tech tutor. Right. And a lot of the, a lot of the things that we do, especially when we train our tech tutors or the way we go about with our learners, that’s AP applied onto the actual AI as well. So yeah, there’s a lot of learnings. But did I ever come to say like, oh, this was always gonna happen?
Like, no, it was literally three, four months ago where a friend of. an engineer was, he brought it up with me and I was like, okay, I think this is a great idea. And I just kind of drank the Kool-Aid and started this snowball effect. So speaking about supplementing your existing service Yes. Who is the ideal user?
You know, we’re still figuring that out. The marketer in me is always is always gonna say it depends. Because you know what I, what we’ve learned from Carevocacy Learner Plus in our tech classes is that. age never defined like the type of learner that we had. And every time we were asked, okay, what were your target audience?What were this, we really didn’t have enough to, like, we didn’t really have anything to say because we had, we had sixty year olds learning how to use the emails, but then we had a 92 year old learning how to use TikTok. And so we had different ranges of users and ages that ultimately. You know, we, we were like, at least from my marketing event, like who cares? We don’t, there’s no point of really targeting one specific age. I think we look at the psychographic more than anything else instead of the demographic. So if a person is intently curious and they want to learn how to use things, and they will do it regardless of their social economical status. We welcome that. And so for any anyone’s just asking like, what is APO for? As I mentioned before, it could be used by the grandchild to help their loved ones, you know, learn about technology as a way to supplement those conversations. Two, it can be ultimately for the learner, right? The older adult, let’s say in the United States of America that.

60, 65 a plus above. And so if they’re able to be able to use it because as when we come to launch, we’re not only creating a web version for it, but we also will have a texting version of it too. So we will be able to provide that service for those who don’t have access to a browser or they’re just not comfortable with that yet.

And then, other organizations who are just interested in applying something scalable for their members. So whether it be community partnerships agencies, organizations like senior living or primary care providers, or healthcare, I think that’s the kind of like the down the road of the types of users we might have or the people that we work with.

But ultimately anybody who wants to learn something new wants to learn technology and are inviting themselves to the fact that they’re actually kind of the first users of, of something like this, right? And they, and if they enjoy that kind of feeling, then they’re the right fit for our AI

How do you envision organizations utilizing APO someday?

I think for how organizations will use this, I think it will go back to supplementing what their existing products are. Right? When we talk about health plans and the fact that their members are not engaged because they can’t even get onto. The, the member dashboard portal, or they don’t have access to the communications of a health plan. You know, having something like this that could be provided as almost like a benefit right.

To their members could be something, could be a good use case for that. Right. And we’re talking about an amazing product that again, they can text to, they can send a message via website.In that way. That could be something used for when we’re talking about senior living or other things like that too. Same thing, right? If they’re looking for engagement opportunities with their members if they’re looking to engage their patients, something like that.

Like having an actual AI chat that kind of learns from way, the way that you ask the questions would be an awesome interactive activity for them as well. There’s many ways to go about it, to be honest with you. I we’re not sure yet. I think at this point it’s like we want as many people to be able to use it, to test it, to, to almost really break it. Because we wanna see what we can really do, and I think over the time we’ll be able to provide features that will really benefit the learner in itself. But as of right now, We’re looking for actually partnerships with organizations that are just interested in, in testing it out, like creating a pilot program to see if we could be able to apply that to older adults. 

I’m actually incredibly curious to, to see and to hear. What would be the response from older users to APO?

If you haven’t signed up for a wait list, that would be the best way to really see updates on what we’re trying to do with it. And obviously if you don’t follow me already on LinkedIn, that that’s really usually where I post a lot of our updates. But have we tested that with older adults? Not necessarily. We have provided certain prompt questions that we’ve had been asked in the past before. So for example, like we have a support number that usually older adults text to anyways. Or they either we have we kind of keep track of the questions that we get asked through our classes and we put that into.

The APO ai or like we ask the, the actual, the way that they actually ask those questions. So we’ll see. I think in the coming month or so, we’ll be able to really test it out with older adults. And I’m kind of excited about it because in a way I’m like nervous. It does give the right information. I just think in my head it’s that kind of transition and that adoption that we’re looking for. And what is the right piece of like responses, the right kind of questions that, that we could ask it. But it’s really exciting because I think, again, as I mentioned before, if anyone’s interested in just trying something innovative and new, I highly, highly recommend it because , it could save a lot of time for a lot of people. Right. And we all could relate to the fact that, you know, when we have to help somebody with technology, it can be a, a, it can be sometimes a burden, but then it could just take a lot of time on our, on us, or someone else, right?
And if we’re able to create a product that reduces that time, makes it even accessible and easy for the learner.

I’m super excited to try it out. I wonder if I can break it and if I can get it to lie to me. My past experience with these chat bots, they do make things up. 

I welcome anyone to break. It’ll be great.

So where exactly can people sign up for the wait list?

So it’s, it’s pretty simple. If you go to carevocacy.com/apoai it takes you directly to the wait list. But if you’re interested about what we are doing and how that’s gonna be affecting our other products, then definitely I would say Carevocacy.com, and then there should be on the menu bar that says APO ai.

Awesome. Is there anything else you would like to add? 

I want to just reiterate and remind people that even though this is a new, innovative product and, and things like that, we’re, we’re really trying to solve a reoccurring problem that should have been solved. Before, during, and post pandemic. Right. At it, at its basis. It’s I want everybody to know that it’s, it’s built with a lot of heart and personal attachment to it, and I think.

I hope people will appreciate the purpose and the, the story behind it, rather than just looking at it as it’s just a, it’s just a robot for, for people to use or, or just like a we’re just disregarding that human connection. I don’t think that’s what we’re doing. I think there is a lot of human touches that we’re gonna add to it to really bridge that. And I think it will just help people learn and just feel like they can. Tackle or accomplish their goals because of it. So that’s what I want the take away from that. And if anyone resonates with that, please, please, please sign up for the wait list or support our other products because that’s ultimately what we’re trying to do. And . Yeah, I just wanted to say that. Thank you for asking, Keren. Thank you. Appreciate that, thank you so much.

Stefano, thank you so much for coming on the podcast in such a short notice. I’m very, very happy that we got to have this conversation. I’m super excited to try APO.

Yes. Thank you so much again for it. I’m happy to come back anytime and share any updates.