Ashley Beleny
Gary Barg: Ashley, what is Guardian Angel?
Ashley Beleny: Guardian Angel is our wireless vitals monitoring and alarm system. There are no cords or wires. It takes a person's vitals once per second and will send you alarms whenever anything is wrong. You can also put it on your phone, so you can make sure that your loved one is taken care of and doing all right, for adults and pediatrics. You can monitor your loved ones at home. We also have another system that is for remote monitoring, in case your parent lives in a different house but you still want to be able to check in.
Gary Barg: This seems to be a great way to keep loved ones at home longer and safer and not make them feel like you’re overstepping what they consider your position. It allows really a transparent bubble of care.
Ashley Beleny: That’s really the goal. As more and more people are staying in their homes longer and a lot of responsibilities are shifting to family members. We want to make sure everybody is living the highest quality-of-life possible. For the people receiving the care, part of that is not being corded up and just having something simple in your hand and helping ensure peace of mind. So far, the majority of caregivers using the system are adult children taking care of their parents. We’ve gotten great responses saying how much more easily they can sleep at night and that they don’t have to worry about their loved ones in the middle of the night because they know they’ll be alerted if anything happens.
One of the great things about this product line is that it uses the same FDA-cleared technology that is in our medical-grade products, so it’s a really accurate system that you can rely on.
Gary Barg: Tell me about the folks behind Guardian Angel.
Ashley Beleny: The founder of our company is Augustine Lien and this is his sixth medical device company. All his previous companies have been purely in the medical space. One of the companies, Cardiva, is used in heart surgery. The first one was started back in the 80s and is the platform that’s used for a lot of vitals monitoring.
Gary Barg: Visualize for me how Guardian Angel works in the house. Walk with me in a house where your loved one lives and there’s a Guardian Angel.
Ashley Beleny: Let’s say that my mother lives with me and I want to be able to keep an eye on her. Maybe she’s just gotten out of the hospital or maybe she has some chronic issues. It’s just something that she wears on her hand. You just turn the monitor on and her vitals will pop up. I can either leave the monitor in the room with her or take it outside of the room. It’s a Bluetooth connection, so there’s about a 25-foot distance.
If I want to go further than that, there is a QR code on the screen, so anywhere I go in the house, I can view on my phone exactly what’s happening on that monitor. I can tailor the vitals limits to what I specifically want them to be for my mother. The doctor has given some recommendations, but otherwise there are presets. Whenever her vitals start to trend outside of that, I would get a notification on my phone so I can check on her immediately. All that matters is that my phone and her display unit are on the same Wi-Fi system.
Even if you don’t have Wi-Fi, it can be on your phone’s hotspot. It’s really flexible and versatile in the way it can be used and extremely simple to use. Things of this sort can tend to be more complex than they need to be. You just turn the sensor and monitor on and that’s all you have to do. It also has a 22-hour rechargeable battery.
Gary Barg: How do people get the Guardian Angel?
guardian angel
Ashley Beleny: We sell the Guardian Angel on our website: Aulisa.com. We would like to provide your listeners and subscribers a special discount coupon code. They just enter the coupon code “care” at checkout to receive $100 off plus free shipping.
Gary Barg: We really appreciate that. That’s terrific. What if you’re a long-distance caregiver and you still want to keep an eye on mom’s vitals?
Ashley Beleny: That’s the second system we have. It includes two-way audio/video and sends the information into the cloud, so the caregiver can have that display unit wherever they want, wherever they are. They can also still have that app on the phone, so wherever they are, they can see what’s happening on the monitor. They can’t control the monitor from their phone but they’ll still be receiving those updates. Because privacy is always a concern, if the person who is wearing the sensor doesn’t want to be seen, there’s a cover, so the camera can be turned off.
The remote system, like the local system still tells you when the vitals begin to trend. It will alert you on both the display unit and on your phone. Also, whenever the alarm goes off, it triggers a recording 30 seconds before and 150 seconds after and it stores that in the unit. That way, you can take that to a doctor or whoever it needs to be shown to. You can see what is happening to that person when the alarms are going off. It’s a nice feature to have to more than just alert you, but to also record some of those things so it can lend to improving the quality of care.
Gary Barg: What are you looking for in future iterations?
Ashley Beleny: Currently we have it for adults and pediatrics. The first of 2020, we will have an infant product as well. It will have all of the same features for both local and remote monitoring, but we’ll have a special infant sensor. Currently our systems monitor blood oxygen saturation and pulse rate, and in the future we’ll be incorporating other vital signs, as well.
Gary Barg: It can grow with you as your needs grow?
Ashley Beleny: All the sensors are interchangeable. If I want to be able to monitor my grandpa at home but then I have a baby, I can purchase the infant sensor module and start using it with my baby. It’s can provide health monitoring and close attention for your whole family.
Gary Barg: That’s great for sandwich generation-ers and actually it seems like you can even monitor healthy loved ones and healthy infants.
Ashley Beleny: You can monitor anybody who you want to, whether you’re worried about an allergic reaction or whether somebody is sick and you just want to keep an eye on them. Once you have one of these systems in your home it can really grow with your family. There are a lot of ways that you can use it.
Gary Barg: With the holidays coming up it sounds like exactly the gift you want to give to someone with a child or someone who’s a caregiver.
Ashley Beleny: It’s not only health monitoring. It’s peace of mind, it’s increased care and that’s something you can share with any of your loved ones, of your family members, or your friends. We all have an increasingly high number of responsibilities, and so we need the technology that grows with us as our responsibilities do. This really does that.