Interview with Stuart Patterson

Gary Barg: You were the first to come up with a proactive, voice-activated, AI powered virtual caregiver. So, tell me about LifePod.

Stuart Patterson: LifePod is the culmination of a lot of hard work and the dedication of the LifePod team to this idea that we should take state-of-the-art technology and make it work for seniors as they’re aging in their own home so that they literally don’t have to do anything but talk to it. I can use LifePod to proactively ask questions, give reminders, make suggestions to my elderly parent in their home and all they have to do is just talk to it. We’ve also got a small, but growing group of caregivers for younger adults with special needs who are using it successfully with them to get them grounded, to give them a steady source of information.

Gary Barg: LifePod is a perfect addition to the Holiday Board of Director email communique series because the concept is let’s all sit down as a family and talk about things to help keep our loved one living at home, safer, longer, better, and stronger. Walk me through an average day in the life of our loved one with the LifePod in the house.

Stuart Patterson: I can do that easily because I’ve got two loved ones that have been using it for a year or more. One of them is my mother-in-law, and another one is her best friend. My wife wants a morning and evening check-in with her mother. My wife set up a routine for her mom that says, “Good morning, Carol. This is LifePod. How did you sleep last night?” Or, later in the morning it might say, “Good morning, Carol. This is LifePod. Lisa wants to know if you’d like her to call you.” These caregiver check-ins can be worded in any way that is going to be the easiest for the care recipient to answer.

Then, they put a tag on that says; if she says she didn’t sleep well or doesn’t feel well or wants my wife to call her, then send me a text message right away. We’ve got another one for my mother-in-law, that’s a reminder saying, because she’s developed a little bit of edema, “Don’t forget to put your feet up on your chair by pressing the button” because my mother-in-law has Alzheimer’s, so she forgets that the chair can do that. We’ve added to that, a little check-in about 10 minutes later that says, “Did you press the sit button yet?” Then, when she says she didn’t, we get a reminder via text. 

Then, we put in other reminders like, “It’s 11:45, you might want to go down to lunch now.” There are other users who frequently ask something like; have you had a second cup of water or tea this afternoon because you know you need to hydrate” If they say “yes, I had my second cup of tea, you can give them positive encouragement with a LifePod dialog that says, “That’s great! That means you’re hydrating, and we all know how important that is.” 

Gary Barg: What’s the process of setting up this customized messaging system?

Stuart Patterson: We have a caregiver’s portal, and it’s an in the Cloud. We’ve been optimizing it over the past three years, so it’s very easy to use. It greets you with a dashboard, which first asks which recipient you want to configure because you can have more than one at a time using a LifePod. Then, it asks what routines you want, such as a check-in asking them , “How did you sleep last night?” or “Have you taken your medication yet?” Or, you can add reminders about birthdays, medication schedules or doctor’s appointments which don’t demand a response. It’s just a reminder.You could put anything you want in there, which is really wonderful from the point of view of personalizing how it talks to the care recipient. The care recipients don’t think of LifePod as an inanimate talking smart speaker, because they know their caregiver set it up using words that only the caregiver would know. We stress the concept of trigger words that are meaningful to that person who’s going to hear it because it’s been personalized by the caregiver.

Gary Barg: And it’s the comfort of your words that they feel even though it’s Google’s warm voice they’re hearing your message.

Stuart Patterson: Exactly, and because you can type whatever you want into a message about medication and because they use words that only the family knows it really just makes a connection. 

Gary Barg: What’s the breadth of purposes that people tell you they’re using it for? It seems like it’s amazingly personalize-able to a particular person from a particular family.

Stuart Patterson: Right. Almost everybody puts in some healthy living reminders, whether it’s behavioral or medicine-related, like “Did you take your pills when you were supposed to?" Everybody puts in one or two things that really function as a check-in and then almost everybody puts in reminders about events. The senior living facilities love that capability and they are testing the idea of broadcasting to multiple people with the LifePod such as. “You need to be down in the bridge club room in 15 minutes,” or “You have an appointment with an in-person caregiver.”  Then, there are personal reminders that only the family cares about, such as not forgetting to call a family member on their birthday  Some caregivers will as us, “Hey, give me that reminder five days in advance because I’d like to send a card.” 

Gary Barg: This could be used to help remind your loved one about their medication schedule.

Stuart Patterson: Exactly. Everybody does that who needs that kind of reminding. When we did our pilot Beta test with Commonwealth Care Alliance here in Massachusetts, they put a LifePod in the homes of 50 patients on Medicaid and Medicare with multiple chronic conditions. Once we told them what it can do, you could see them relax, because they no longer had to remember which medicine they should take and when. 

Gary Barg: Can multiple family caregivers customize LifePod?

Stuart Patterson: Absolutely. There’s always got to be a primary caregiver, but you could have almost as many other care customizers as you want, and they can even customize which routines or which answers to routines get alerted to them. 

Gary Barg: Care customizer? I like that. You’ve invented a new phrase.Stuart Patterson: We say that there are three things that this is able to do. It’s proactive, so I can actually care for somebody else as opposed to just using it for myself. It’s personalize-able, as you just said a minute ago, and it’s holistic care. It’s not just your medicine. It’s not a medical nag. It’s also your behavioral, social and emotional trigger points. Just by talking to you, LifePod contributes to your not feeling as lonely or disconnected.

Gary Barg: How much does LifePod cost? 

Stuart Patterson: For now, we don’t charge anything for the iHome clock radio that supports LifePod proactive and reactive voice functionality. All the customer has to is sign up for a subscription, or even pay month-to-month. The initial month-to-month cost is $49.00 a month. If they sign up for six months, I think it works out to $42.00 a month, and if they sign up for a year, I think it averages to $36.00 a month.

Gary Barg: Where can people purchase LifePod?

Stuart Patterson: Caregivers can order it from LifePod.com

Gary Barg: What’s the one most important piece of advice you’d like to share with family caregivers?

Stuart Patterson: A lot of older adults don’t want to be a burden to their children. What we’ve found is that when you ask them, “Would you like something that would be proactive and talk to you during the day,” they might say no, But, they know that their child loves them, and if their child says, “Look, I’d just like to try this. Let’s just set it up and see how it goes” their resistance dissipates. So, the piece of advice I’d like to give is to just give it a try.