Company claims first voice-based service designed to improve quality of life for caregivers and care recipients.
The rapid spread of consumer voice-assisted technologies has spawned a host of start-ups seeking to leverage the capabilities of products such as Amazon Echo, Google Home and Apple Homepod to support health and care services in the home.
This week, Boston-based LifePod Solutions announced the launch of what it claims is the first proactive-voice caregiving service designed to improve the quality of life of both caregivers and care recipients. LifePod combines voice-first user interface technologies, AI and personalization capabilities to allow families and professional caregivers to customize their support and monitoring of loved ones.
LifePod provides the ability to customize voice dialogues, that are proactively spoken aloud by a smart speaker, in order to meet the needs of people who require care. The care recipient simply responds to each routine without any need to “wake up” the LifePod device or to remember how to say a command or ask a question. The LifePod service also enables caregivers to monitor responses remotely and can be configured to send text alerts, if required.
LifePod CEO and co-founder, Stu Patterson, said: “Our mission is to ease the burden of and offer greater peace of mind to caregivers while simultaneously providing their care recipients with an online service that’s not only easy to talk to but also helps them to stay healthy, both physically and emotionally, and to live independently longer.”
LifePod indicates its product is being used by providers including Wingate Healthcare, HomeThrive, Commonwealth Care Alliance and MobileHelp. The company is also working with the American Heart Association’s Center for Health Technology & Innovation on a study into the potential of proactive-voice caregiving to support care plan adherence among people suffering from chronic heart conditions.
