Senior Care Academy
Senior Care Academy is a podcast dedicated to providing valuable information and expert advice on navigating the world of senior care for both senior care providers, and families with aging parents. Hosted by industry professionals, each episode covers a wide range of topics including healthcare options, legal considerations, financial planning, and emotional support for caregivers. If you are a healthcare provider, have aging parents, or are a senior adult, this podcast is for you! Tune in to gain valuable insights and resources to help you make informed decisions and provide the best care for your loved ones.
Senior Care Academy
Enhancing Senior Care with Technology with Ezra Torres
Can innovative technology truly change the landscape of senior care? Join us as we sit down with Ezra Torres, the visionary CEO and founder of CareLife, a company that is revolutionizing assisted living through cutting-edge solutions. Ezra shares his unique journey from his roots in Snoqualmie, Washington, influenced by his missionary grandparents, to his career shift from the Seattle Mariners to elder care technology at Hall Labs in Utah. Discover how his background in international business management and his passion for helping seniors led to the inception of CareLife.
We delve into the critical issue of fall detection in senior care environments, a problem fraught with challenges and false alarms. Ezra discusses the importance of accurate, human-verified fall detection systems that prioritize privacy and independence for seniors. He sheds light on the practical hurdles and success stories of implementing these technologies in senior living communities, emphasizing the need for a customer-centric approach and the role of honest feedback from executive directors and administrators.
Finally, we explore the complexities of integrating fragmented data from various sensors into a unified system, simplifying operations for senior care providers. Ezra highlights the significance of hiring dedicated professionals with industry experience to drive innovation and success. He also extends an open invitation to anyone interested in joining CareLife’s mission, underscoring the value of communication and collaboration in creating effective solutions for senior care. Tune in to this enlightening episode to learn how Ezra Torres and CareLife are making a meaningful impact on the lives of seniors through technology and innovation.
Hey everyone, welcome to Senior Care Academy, the podcast for anyone in the aging adult industry who want to make the biggest impact possible on their clients. I'm your host, caleb Richardson, and the CEO of Helperly. Joining us today is Ezra Torres. He's the dynamic CEO and founder of Care Life, a pioneering company in assisted living technology. He has an impressive background that includes a master's degree in international business management from the University of East London and extensive experience in strategic leadership. Ezra is currently transforming elder care through innovative, non-intrusive resident safety solutions. Prior to founding CareLife, he held key roles at Hall Labs and Comfort Wall, driving significant advancements in technology and operational efficiency.
Speaker 1:Ezra's passion for improving the lives of seniors and supporting care professionals is evident in his mission to balance safety and independence for assisted living residents. We're thrilled to have him share his insights on the future of senior care. A few things we're going to touch on in this episode. We're going to discuss the biggest needs and benefits for monitoring seniors for their wellbeing, any advice for people trying to serve the senior living or senior care space, and what sets care life apart. So let's dive in, ezra.
Speaker 2:Awesome. Thanks for having me, of course, excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you. One of the first questions I like to ask is where did you grow up? Kind of talk through your journey of adolescence to getting into it. I think it's a special person that decides to pursue a career in helping seniors no, that's absolutely true.
Speaker 2:You know, something that's, I think, stands out in my childhood that made me focus on wanting to be a part of really this industry is my grandparents, and so my grandparents are probably the most important people in my life, and so just having them around to support me, give me guidance and life really left an impact.
Speaker 2:And so, growing up, I actually was raised in the Seattle area and so in the mountains in Snoqualmie, washington, and my grandparents were actually international missionaries, so they were living in France for most of their life and in other countries around the world, and so I'd see them every once in a while, and when I did, it was just, you know, the best experience I had, and so, I think, carrying that into as I grew up, I gained and valued their desire to live internationally and travel the world, and so that probably spurred me on to say, hey, I want to live in France for a while, I want to live in Europe for a while, and I ended up pursuing my master's degree there in London. Yeah, so that's, I think, maybe what spurred me into getting started with international travel and then touching a little bit on how I just wanted to be able to help people, just like my grandparents around the world, and so here I am.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So what inspired you to found CareLife and really focus on senior technology? Founding a company is a lot of work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no kidding, I'm sure you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So fortunately I landed in the right place at the right time. I think a lot of people say that sometimes, and for me what that meant is, after I finished studying in London, I had already some work experience under my belt. I worked in the sports industry for a while for the Seattle Mariners baseball team.
Speaker 2:And it was awesome and it was fun, but it wasn't rewarding. And so what could I do to maybe start making an impact or change? And what I ended up doing was moving here to Utah. And so I landed in Draper, utah, and ended up getting a job at a really neat innovation campus called Hall Labs down in Provo. And Hall Labs is all about building and developing what is required for the building blocks of a futuristic city. So that means automotive healthcare, it means smart home, it means all sorts of things. Hall Labs has been around since.
Speaker 2:Really, their early company wasn't necessarily Hall Labs, it was Novatec and Megadiamond and a lot of diamond technology. So over time the diamond technology was sold off to oil and gas giants around the world like Schlumberger and others, and they made a good amount of capital from selling off that technology. They had a dream and passion to build this futuristic city and I landed here at this campus where they're just doing, maybe, an engineering playground. So they had everything from toilets that scan your urine and stool and tell you what's wrong with you, maybe early detection for UTIs. They had everything from cars. They have a Vanderhall as a manufacturer here at their campus that builds cars and sells them internationally around the world through wheeled vehicles. Really neat. You'll have to check them out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's way cool.
Speaker 2:So I just landed in this really neat space and what happened there was the owner of Hall Labs is David Hall. He had a vision of how can we live independently, how can we stay independent, how can we spend more time in our own home and rather than, you know, having to move somewhere as we, as we get older, just because we need care? And his vision was how can we use modern technology? I mean, we have an iPhone that's more capabilities than people use to get to the moon, right? So how do we use that technology that exists today in environments that it's not being used? I mean, maybe maybe you already are kind of familiar that we feel like there's a gap in technology and in senior care and it just hasn't reached senior care yet. So is it because it doesn't exist? Is it because people don't know about it? Is it because you know what is it and how can we fix that problem is really what his vision was.
Speaker 2:So I took that vision and David Hall really funded us for several years. Wow, that's awesome, really, writing a check that was basically blank, saying I want not to make money right away. What I care about is just research, go out, learn, understand and build something that helps people and then we can talk about how we can make money from that in the future. But now, starting today, start talking to everybody you can and let's figure out what technology is out there and let's start bringing it into the hands of people who need it.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. So with CareLife, a lot of what you do now is you work with assisted livings, which is interesting because a lot of people, I think, see assisted livings as not that independence, living, aging in place kind of thing. So how have you been able to help people living in assisted livings maintain kind of that aging in place, freedom feeling that they want as the alternative of actually living in their home?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. That's a really good point. A lot of times when we think about assisted living, we don't picture a home. We really picture a place where we go after we're done living at home, maybe because our spouse isn't around or maybe we had a fall. That's significant. It doesn't make sense for us to stay home anymore. Let's go somewhere safer. It's so amazing how many people are passionate about this industry and passionate about making assisted living feel home. I think it early on got a bad rap related to, you know, snf, skilled nursing nursing homes.
Speaker 1:Nobody knows the difference. They all think assisted living is a skilled nursing home, which is basically like an extension of a hospital, but it's not these days, which is crazy.
Speaker 2:That's absolutely right, and I had no idea getting into industry that that was the case, as we found out that really assisted living is more like a home and the goal is hospitality. How do we just take care of you? How do we treat you guys as well as we can so that way you can just be as independent as you can? And how do we keep you independent is really the goal of assisted living is come join our family, come into our home. It's a big home, and the biggest thing I think that benefits seniors today in assisted living is really the sense of family that they get from having a lot of people around them. It's lonely to be alone at home, and it's lonely to be a senior alone at home, and so being able to have a place where you can gather with a bunch of other people that are like-minded, that are interested in getting to know each other, is an amazing thing. So the reason we landed on assisted living is actually because we tried several markets. We looked at skilled nursing, we looked at home health, we looked at independent residents that don't have any services, and we just wanted to find a place where we could provide the most impact today One thing that was really interesting to us is I believe, after talking with many seniors maybe thousands of them that the reason that people are able to stay home and independent as long as they do is because they don't believe that they're old.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're. Like you know, I'm not old. I think the moment that hit my mind was we were actually at an expo several years back and we were focusing on home care and the home market and we were talking to a 90 year old gal and we were explaining how our goal is to keep you at home. We want to just alert your family if there's anything that's dangerous or critical, looking for your health, and so that just will keep you home because they're not so worried that something's going to go wrong. And she says well, sorry, you know my mom's already passed away. I don't think I could use this, and she's 90.
Speaker 2:That's crazy so she's really thinking about her mom and like how can I use this for my mom, but her mom's passed right, so it's just this idea that this isn't for me, I don't need this, I don't need anything helping me, I'm fine, is really the mentality of people who are able to stay home and be independent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's true. I've seen that firsthand with my grandpa. Both of my grandpas. They're in their late 80s. One's 89. I think the other is 87. Same idea Like one's on a ranch. He's still feeding the livestock every day, going out and getting the milk. The other one lives in Salt Lake but he's still fixing his house all the things and it's very interesting that idea that they have. So, as you were, like you said, kind of a blank check to go and see what can we solve with technology. In the senior care space you created CareLife which is helping monitor any sort of irregularities in whether they fall or, I assume, vital pulses, things like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I can get a little bit more specific on it. When I started, I wasn't some technology, amazing, incredible person.
Speaker 1:You did marketing for the Seattle Mariners.
Speaker 2:That's right, that's right.
Speaker 1:I'm in charge of making money.
Speaker 2:Step one was really just getting people around me, a team of people who were highly capable at technology, at implementing technology, and so it started with a team, and then we actually built an assisted living community inside of our building.
Speaker 2:We built mock rooms, we put sensors in every single one. We called manufacturers from around the world who felt like they had something that was going to change senior living, and so I probably talked to about a hundred company owners, founders, operators, who had built some kind of technology that they weren't necessarily sure how they were going to get into the market or maybe they were already well into the market and just it was something that could help people that maybe others didn't know about. What we looked at were everything from lights that turn on whenever a resident gets out of bed in the middle of the night to air conditioning systems that actually had filters in them. So when COVID came around, people weren't getting sick in their rooms because they had cleaner air. We looked at medication administration systems. We looked at LEQ, which is a neat robot that is basically an AI assistant companion in people's rooms.
Speaker 2:So you can imagine, like just all these strange technologies that are being made and we actually tested over about 40 sensors. We brought them into our lab.
Speaker 1:Just like different sensors that automate things to help seniors. That's exactly right, wow.
Speaker 2:That's exactly right, that's crazy. And with that we really started with placing these in in residents homes. So this was my grandparents to start with, right. And it was people related to our organization that said, hey, we, we have a family member who could really use something like this, and we started with throwing out there just on the wall, the sensors. We thought that were most helpful when we put them in residence homes. They weren't, despite what maybe the manufacturers thought or what we hoped. It just wasn't that helpful in the beginning. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, after trying and trying, we kind of landed on a core set of sensors that were really beneficial for the seniors that we were working with, and so we landed on a fall detection system. So that means that, and probably core to all this you mentioned non-intrusive, the focus was how do we do all this without the resident learning anything? How do we help them in their life, with them staying the same way? They've lived yesterday, the day before and hopefully tomorrow?
Speaker 1:staying the same way they've lived yesterday, the day before and hopefully tomorrow, and probably especially in like memory care settings. You don't want them to feel scared or worried, or what is all this stuff? It's just like I'm going about my day.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah For memory care. You know it also comes to what can they learn at that point in time. You don't want to be teaching them, you just want to be assisting them the best you can, and so let's try not to teach them things they have to do in order to stay safe. Yeah, totally. So what we did is we started with fall detection. We tested fall detection sensors from around the world. We basically brought in about 10 manufacturer sensors into our assisted living lab and we tested about a thousand fall cases where you slip out of the chair. You, you know, you fall off the corner of the bed, you are reading in your chair and the chair flips back. Any fall you can imagine right, and what we found were some fall detection is amazing and detects every single fall that we tested. But whenever the person's sitting there in a normal day, it's also detecting fake falls. So what happens when a family receives a handful of alerts that say there's a fall, but there isn't?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And quickly. We found that's not acceptable in the market because it's just boy who cried wolf.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Seriously, and so much extra stress and I feel like more than the stress. Like I said, boy who cried wolf, If you're getting 10 notifications a week you're not actually going to.
Speaker 2:It numbs you to the alerts that you're getting of it numbs you to the alerts that you're getting. Yeah, exactly. So what we had to do was find something that was applicable and could help today, whether you're in a home or whether you're in assisted living, wherever you are. What's fall detection that works? So we landed on a company that we we felt their algorithm was capable of detecting all the falls that were necessary. They actually review the falls with a human verification team, a blurred stick figure version, so they're not seeing any things that would be considered private. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And really they review the fall events. If a fall does occur, then within about three minutes in the maximum, a caregiver or family member would know that there was a fall in that room where this device is placed. Wow, so you place them in a handful of rooms in a community or in someone's home and it would detect that they fell. So that's a really neat sensor that, you know, people may not realize, but falls are one of the leading causes of needing to lose your independence, and so we thought what are the reasons people move out of their home? On the top of that list was falls, and so we said let's tackle that one first, because we want to keep people at home, we want to keep people in assisted living and not in a sniff or not needing additional rehab, because that's ultimately going to make you less independent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and once they have a fall that injures them their life expectancy it's crazy how quickly they can decline Like. We had a client recently that experienced something like this. They fell and within like he's, they were doing really good and then, within a matter of like three or six months after he had his first fall, it was like fall, fall, fall injuries and he ended up passing away. It was really sad and really hard. I think that's a reality for a lot of people that don't have technology like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah it is. How did you approach leading care life with your business development marketing background? It sounds kind of like you went and found the technology and then you're like I know how to get this into communities.
Speaker 2:Right. So I think a great example of this would be we went into a community, we brought a fall detection system. We thought it was the best and it wasn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so, you know, the marketing pulse tells you what is the need that this person has in the community. And how do you supply a result for that need? Because you may give them fall detection, because fall detection is a problem, but if it's not solving the need, then there's no benefit. So we brought a fall detection system into a community that was radar based and it was going to be detecting falls. It was super private. There's, you know, there's nothing that makes you feel unprivate because it's just a radar, but it was super private. There's, you know, there's nothing that makes you feel unprivate because it's just a radar. But at the end of the day, it was causing a lot of false alerts. So they'd get, maybe, you know, 50 false alerts for every real alert that happened.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, you can imagine. How in?
Speaker 2:assisted living environment. If you're getting all these alerts to go to rooms and nothing's happening quickly, people feel like this doesn't work.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we had to have a pulse and say quickly, this doesn't make sense, let's switch to a different sensor. And that sensor made it so that there was never any false alerts and every alert is accurate. So you know, that's an example of saying how do we look at this from a marketing perspective and make sure that we're fulfilling a need in this community? We're not just putting a bandaid on top of a problem or maybe even causing a bigger wound than they even had before.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So I think that's probably one of the best things that we were able to bring from the marketing perspective into technology for senior care is is how do we just focus on providing something that actually helps?
Speaker 1:How did you implement that really well to go get real customers and then the cycle of implement, get feedback, adjust, implement like it takes a lot to to get to the point where you guys are Sure.
Speaker 2:Well, we worked with a lot of organizations that were billion dollar valuations, so huge manufacturers that are like this sensor is the best sensor ever.
Speaker 2:Every senior is going to love this, and what we were finding was that the the customers we were working with actually hated the technology, even if they were a massive company.
Speaker 2:So the perspective we took that I think was different from theirs was let's focus and this is actually something Y Combinator really really pushes why not focus on making maybe 10 or maybe a hundred people love you, rather than 10,000 people maybe like you? How do we find people who are passionate, just like us, who want to see change in maybe their community or maybe the homes that they work in? How do we help them and improve their capabilities of serving these residents? And so we became really best friends with administrators, executive directors, owners, operators, and we just invited them in to be honest with us, and every time it was like listen, we're not trying to sell you on something, we just want to know what's wrong with it so we can help you. And I think having that approach rather than taking something, building it as fast as we can and then trying to sell it to people you know that approach it seemed like it stopped innovation, it stopped the ability to actually build solutions for people.
Speaker 2:And so when we took away and really credit to David Hall and Hall Labs for having this approach of saying you know, we're willing to spend some money to learn. I think that's really what enabled us to truly help people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause you're able to learn and get to the point where you're like I know that this is the best solution, and so people are going to want to. And what? How did you know? I guess you have those best friend executive directors, administrators, but how? What was the kind of litmus test of saying, okay, now we can actually sell these things? And how did you grow?
Speaker 2:So it was actually really interesting because always we wanted to get a pulse on. You know, what do you think you would spend on something like this? And for several years it was. We wouldn't pay for this.
Speaker 2:You know it's just it's not good enough and and so what? That was really interesting to us because we knew that we weren't there yet. But then, as soon as people said no, if you took this away, I'd rather pay you than you take it away from me. At those kinds of moments it's pretty much pretty pivotal in our mindset saying, okay, these guys said that if we take this out, they're in trouble. So we know we've made something that's actually helping them and they're actually depending on now. And so, yeah, that it was years of just going back and forth, changing, tweaking things and finally landing somewhere where we saw some benefits.
Speaker 1:With the part of, yeah, we aren't going to pay for this or we can't. A lot of the time working in senior industries. How did you overcome? Because it really is a lot of the time working in senior industries. How did you overcome? Because it really is a lot of the time. I think it's a value. Obviously, when you have disproportionate value to cost, it's a no brainer. But when you're trying to get an industry that already has tight margins a lot of times, how are you able to get them to see the value in a fall detection technology?
Speaker 2:I think it's an interesting method that we took. Ultimately, what we decided was focused on first just helping the resident only. So oftentimes, when we look at a technology that's focused on senior care, they focus on helping the people who are going to pay for it, and that actually wasn't the people who were expecting to pay for it. We were expecting communities to say we need this in our community, we'll pay for it.
Speaker 1:I think a lot of people do when they're like this will help so many seniors. Where do you get a lot of seniors Senior living? Absolutely.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And so what we did that's a little bit different is, rather than focusing on solving the specific needs for the operators and owners first, like many companies do, instead we said how do we solve the problems for the resident? So the resident wants to be private, the resident doesn't want to have to do anything, the resident just wants to be safer, just by being there. And so how do we make that possible first. And so by doing that, we kind of labeled ourselves resident safety, because that's what we care about.
Speaker 2:Yes, we will help operationally, yes, we will help operators, but we start with helping the resident. And if we can add some value for the resident and they use the system and maybe they don't even notice, but they get helped by it then we create tremendous value in their eyes, the residents' eyes. So what we actually did was we went to communities and we gave them free trials of our system in every case, and even today we still do that. So we'll go install all of our sensors in a community and what we'll do is really get buy-in from residents. The residents love the system. It's helped them. Maybe they've had a fall, or maybe they got out of bed in the middle of the night and we ordered some staff to come into their room. Whatever it is that helped them, they remember that and the community actually tends to do a rent increase for the community if the residents feel like it's helpful for them.
Speaker 2:And so usually there'll be like a city or a community hall meeting or council meeting with all the residents, and the residents will give their input and feel like it's really helped them. And then the next person we focus on is the caregiver. So I think oftentimes the caregivers often forgot, and they have a job that can be pretty hard sometimes, and so how could we make their life easier was our next focus. And so the owners and operators are hearing from their residents, from their caregivers, that like this has changed their life and made their life a lot easier, and so if that was the case for the people that these operators and owners care about, then it made sense for them to move forward. So we really took a bottom up approach rather than a top down approach when it came to, you know, showing the value.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting and I think that a lot of like business to business technology companies. You know, showing the value. That's really interesting and I think that a lot of like business to business technology companies. They really they solve the business's problem and it's always bottom line related money but that's a really interesting like formula that has to be considered, I guess, not just senior living, but senior care and similar industries where, like, there are so many people involved and, if you can get the bottom up, the caregiver, the clients the people, that those that you want to pay for this technology are helping.
Speaker 1:if they can see the benefit, then it makes it so much easier. That's so smart, that's genius. It ended up working out really well for us. So, as you were doing your research, what were there any other big challenges kind of facing the senior living, senior care industry that you uncovered? Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Obviously you can't chase after every golden goose, but yeah, so I mentioned we didn't just start with fall detection, we did look at a lot of different sensors. The core system ended up being really a temperature sensor, an emotion sensor, tracking where and when they went into different rooms. We also looked at fall detection. Then we also had a sleep sensor placed in their bed. One of the biggest things we were noticing outside of falls, causing people to have to move out of their home, is really them, you know, first off, just getting poor sleep and that leading to a lot of follow on problems. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so we integrated a sensor that detects heart rate and breathing rate when the residents in the bed and with that we know first off when they're in bed. So it's instead of a pressure sensor knowing when somebody is in bed and not in bed maybe they got back from a rehab facility or maybe they're just a high risk resident. Sometimes you put a pressure pad in their bed so that way it sounds an alarm whenever they get out of bed in the middle of the night. So we wanted to, like we talked about before, bring modern technology into the space, and so we brought a sensor that also goes under the mattress but it stays there. It lives there pretty permanently and you don't feel it. It's between the mattress and the bread spring.
Speaker 2:But from that location it knows, like I said, heart rate, breathing rate, duration they spend in bed, awake versus asleep. We know their REM light, deep sleep cycles, we know overall how well they slept and are sleeping. Wow, we do generative AI on all of the data we collect from that to give a simple report to whoever's looking at it, so they're not trying to sift through all the data to figure out what's going on. And then we also provide like a color code green, yellow, red, depending on how well their sleep is. So in like a one glance you could see like months of trends of how well this person's sleeping and is it changing. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And so even yesterday, an administrator talked to me about a resident that actually, unfortunately, moved out of the community just yesterday and they ended up staying in bed for several days in a row. And they knew they stayed in bed one day fully in a row, but they looked at their sleep data and saw that four days in a row, this residence in bed they called their the provider and the provider immediately requested you know, a visit and it turned out they had pretty, pretty late pneumonia and needed to be put into some critical care immediately. Wow, and so finding out those kinds of things, that just lead, yeah, lead to to a change when there needs to be.
Speaker 2:And so that's another sensor we have. Is that sleep sensor for the, for the staff? It also enables them to be alerted if the residents get out of bed in the middle of the night. So they can say from 8 PM to eight in the morning. If the resident leaves the bed, I want to know or maybe this is a really independent resident, I only want to know if they leave the bed and don't come back for more than an hour or 30 minutes, you know.
Speaker 1:So being able to kind of set a parameter for a resident and say I want an alert if something out of the ordinary is happening, this is, I guess, a little different of a question, but I'm curious are there what are like key differences in marketing senior care technology versus other technology? Like you said, getting the buy-in, you kind of start bottom up to get to the person that's going to be paying for the technology.
Speaker 1:But, is the marketing different? Or is it kind of the same, where you're kind of you're going to the decision maker trying to target them, if you would, and you're saying we're going to help with better, with falls, which will help keep your residents there longer, keep them healthier? Help your caregivers not burn out Like. Is that kind of what the marketing looks like, or what? What differences, I guess, are there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think one thing that we focused on in the past and continue to focus on today is really our mission, which is to continue providing a more simple approach to to receiving care and then and then caregiving. And so how do we continue to to sell this dream of changing the future and I think that's really a lot of of what we're selling, more than even the system way it is today is there's a lot of plans on our horizon and caring care.
Speaker 1:That's interesting, that that's your like with what you're, what you sell or the technology, but then your mission is to help those receiving care and giving the caregiving, which is cool, I think.
Speaker 2:And so how do we, how do we continue to every day listen to the person that we're working with and continue adding things that are beneficial to them? So like, for example, lately we heard from every, almost every single administrator that on the top of their list and it surprised me myself the feature that they wanted the most was whenever somebody was requesting help by pushing their pendant. They wanted to be able to call into the room and just talk with them. Maybe it's because they're in the middle of helping somebody else, maybe it's because they know this guy is always asking for Diet.
Speaker 1:Pepsi and they just want to bring the Diet Pepsi the first time.
Speaker 2:So that was a feature that was kind of surprising to me, because every single person said it's the highest on their list of what they want.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:And I just gave them a list of maybe 30 options and they sifted through them, but all of them came to the same conclusion that that's the thing that they felt like was the most important. So I said, okay, that's what we're going to do next.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And we are constantly just having a pulse, and I think that is something that is really interesting to owners operators is they all feel like there's a million things that they have. I think one administrator, dave Fox, is an owner of Abington. He said to me the other day we're drowning in data, but we're starving for information, and so how do we help him? Right now, there are all these sensors. You could buy a sleep sensor, you could buy a fall detection sensor, you could buy all these things in the market today, and we encourage people to do that. But whenever owners and operators purchase these things, which are supposed to provide a lot of help, they are usually pretty disconnected.
Speaker 2:So they'll have maybe five different logins for their five different sensors. You know, because each of the sensor manufacturers says here's our login portal. Yet for all the sleep sensors, you can see them all here, and the fall detection company will do the same thing. Here's our login, here's all the fall detection sensors, and then what you have is a fragmented system in the market today, and so, at the same time, what our focus is for operators is how do we reduce your logins, how do we make it so you just log into one place and you have everything that you need.
Speaker 2:And so I think that's maybe how we're looking at this market a little bit differently. We see a lot of really neat technology fragmented. Let's group it all together and bring it. But you're right, it does ultimately depend on the decision maker to make the final decision of yes, we could use this, maybe we can't, and we noticed that decision makers who are less involved are less likely to move forward because they're not so like the owner operated, or where the owner's maybe one or two levels removed is all that's right.
Speaker 2:Maybe they have no touch on what the caregiver's residence or maybe the administrator of that building is saying about how it's impacted them In that situation. If they're not listening to the benefits that their bottom level employees are saying or residents are saying or maybe they're important administrators then it doesn't tend to move forward.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting. This is an interesting kind of discussion. I think you embody what an excellent CEO would be, in that you're really listening to your clients and the people that you're really listening to your clients and the people that you're trying to provide value for. Are there any other key qualities that you think are pretty essential in a CEO, but specifically a CEO working in the senior care space?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an interesting one. I think the probably the best talent that I have is really just bringing people together and kind of sharing a common goal and finding those people that are really passionate about chasing after that goal. So really I would say just building a team of people who are passionate, eager and kind of have the same drive as you, so that way you're not constantly doing all the work of others and that they're capable of kind of handling themselves.
Speaker 1:I love that. How have you been able to find those people, cause your team is growing.
Speaker 2:It's got to. We have about 15 employees now.
Speaker 1:What you guys are doing is awesome. How have you been able to find those 15 people that are all really aligned with you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's. It's a great question. I think something that we've done from day one is we're willing to to either pay people or, you know, if they're willing to just talk to us, that's great too. We're willing to talk to anyone or if they're willing to just talk to us. That's great too. We're willing to talk to anyone, so maybe that's why I'm here today.
Speaker 2:I'm just interested in meeting people who have a passion for caring about our loved ones, our seniors, whoever they are for you. Whoever has a passion for that tends to be pretty good people, and so I surround myself with a lot of those kinds of people, and maybe I don't hire them the first time that I meet them. But you know, if somebody really shows that not only do they care and have passion for this industry, but they're actually doing something about it and they're actually moving and shaking something whatever's in their space, those tend to be the people that we gravitate towards. So we even hire some executive directors and administrators.
Speaker 1:Wow. That's so cool? Have you seen that those people have been really successful where they, like they were on the other side of the services that you offer? So now, when they're on your side developing or selling or and so you don't choose them lightly. So already I think it's pretty neat to consider hiring administrators. Executive directors.
Speaker 2:I think my goal would be so we see a future that they don't want to leave their job. Unfortunately, I think many people know there's burnout that happens in our industry and so finding those people that are are amazing at their job, incredible administrators and executive directors we kind of get to pick the cream of the cream of the crop whenever whenever we're looking at at bringing on an executive director administrator. So definitely they are. There are some heavy hitters.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. So how do you stay motivated to continuously innovate and stay and I think you mentioned your story about, or how you're really connected with your grandparents and the impact that they've had on your life and I think that gets you into working with seniors and senior trade professionals but the thing that keeps you in it there has to be, like you mentioned, burnout is a real thing in the industry. So what has kept you going all the way through today?
Speaker 2:So I really think momentum is something that's so important. Whatever that looks like for you maybe a little bit different, for us that means really being able to capture excitement from people. That may be a sale, it may not be a sale, but what it is is. We have an administrator, executive director, operator, who looks at what we built already and you can see the excitement in their eyes. And then once we start talking about maybe their dreams and their visions and the things that they want to see for technology, it gets even bigger. It turns into a fire almost. I saw an executive director the other day, actually an owner of a group. He stood up in the middle of kind of a presentation talking about what he was interested in. We threw up some mock screens of how we could add the feature he's talking about and he jumped out of his chair, pulled out his phone. You know he's like I got. I got to take picture of this thing. This is crazy, and so you know, seeing the excitement from other people tends to keep me going.
Speaker 2:And I like, I guess, triggering that excitement in people.
Speaker 1:What are some things over the next five, 10 years of the industry? Some technologies that you're really excited about, things that well, I guess you don't have to share things that you want to implement if you don't want to, but some things that you're excited about and trends in the market.
Speaker 2:Yeah, definitely. You know. I think what I talked about before reducing logins and making it so there's a place for people to go to get a lot of information at once. We started that with saying nobody's taking care of hardware. Everybody has a really neat software solution. There's companies like Blue Step here in Utah and others who are doing an incredible job from the software perspective. But it seems like everybody's afraid of hardware and we just jumped in and said we are going to tackle this beast, we don't care how hard hardware is going to be, let's go after it. And so that's, I think, the unique thing that we're doing that maybe most others aren't is saying let's be quick to accept that there is cool technology out there and we can't reinvent the wheel. We're not just going to rebuild the cool technology out there in the world, let's just use it and let's just give that to the people that need it.
Speaker 2:The biggest problem we saw was not fall detection and it wasn't bed exit sensors, it was actually just nurse call systems. The last time it seems like they've been updated is 1986. And so you know, you've got a big, chunky computer that is running Windows 9, maybe, hopefully and we said let's replace that. So we actually just built a nurse call system. We put all of our other sensors into that system and so really when we work with communities they tend to look at us like a nurse call system or they call light system. They'll call us. We don't like to really take on and embody that name nurse call or call light but that's where we started today. That's where we are is. We are a nurse call system, so we directly replace call lights in communities today, and then they have that suite of sensors that just comes included in every single room.
Speaker 1:That's awesome.
Speaker 2:And so that's how we are working today. But where we're going and what we're really excited about is how do you take data from hardware which nobody's typing this data in, nobody's charting this, nobody's recording what they did? You have all this rich information and now let's bring that into the care plans for these residents and service plans for these residents. Let's make sure that we have data that no one ever had before and it's usable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how do you turn the data into the information, like you mentioned?
Speaker 2:That's exactly it.
Speaker 1:If you had three pieces of advice of somebody looking to get into the senior care space, but also services for senior care providers, what advice would you give to somebody that's fresh out of college looking to get into it?
Speaker 2:Definitely. I think that's a great question for me. I'm always interested in innovation in the future and so, and being passionate about that, and there's a lot of companies doing that, and you guys probably got to meet with a good handful of them. I saw on your podcast list that there were definitely some heavy hitters that are doing that that exact thing. So there's no shortage of of passionate companies that are going after this industry and saying let's, let's make some change, and so I would recommend to any young professional that's interested in going after this industry from the technology perspective, start researching technology companies that are currently working in assisted living or home care or any space that's serving our seniors, and just start reaching out to them, because there are a lot of jobs. It's a really huge market that's growing very fast, not only in the US but around the world, and our companies here service a lot of the countries around the world as well, so there's a lot of innovation happening.
Speaker 1:That's so cool. So find a company that is trying to innovate and do something new. I think there is a lot more popping up and it's a cool thing to see, because it is a little bit of a like an antiquated or a slow to change industry. So it's cool to see that there's so many innovative people in there who should reach out to care life. How do they reach out? I?
Speaker 2:talked about before. That you know. I think one of the things we prioritize and love to do at care life is talk to anyone. So if you have interest in anything that you know we talked about today, I would be happy to just explore conversation, and so that means that I don't mind if you're a student that's interested in pursuing a career in this, or you know you're an owner that's interested in their own vision and idea, or maybe you just like what we're doing already. I'm happy to really talk with anyone.
Speaker 1:That's awesome. So they just go to carelife and request a call or yeah, so you could do that.
Speaker 2:I can also go ahead and share my you know my email and phone number here. That can maybe be added to the podcast. So you know, happy to really make it easy as possible. That's awesome. Yeah, my email is eTorres at carelife.
Speaker 1:Awesome. Well, I've really enjoyed. Is there any other questions that you wish?