Is the home care franchising world doomed by tech-enabled home care? First clue: Google’s $46.6 million investment in June in Care.com (child, elder and pet care to housekeeping). Then the Honor jaw-dropping investment of $42 million in Series B. The home health industry is a "fragmented" system that Honor aims to fix, according to its new investor and the Business Insider article: There are an estimated 2.5 million home care workers out there, and about 12,400 home health agencies managing them all. According to "Thrive VC Kareem Zaki, he told Business Insider that it was important that Honor owns the whole system." And per Seth’s vision for the platform, he said: “It'll be like a car: There's a lot of complex technology going on behind the scenes, but driving the car is easy enough for anyone to do."
What are the rules and what are the criteria? Look through these grouped press releases -- all posted here because they (or at least the reminder-to-drink-water concept that is represented) could/should be useful to an older adult or someone who cares for them. It is intriguing that we are at a perceived point in technology utilization for app-to-app communication between an adult child and parent. Also Tochtech is reminiscent ofCookstop, noted here in 2011. Comments are welcome.
eCare21 has opened an office in Florida to address the growing needs of the rapidly expanding retiree population in the State of Florida who are demanding more cost effective solutions to monitor and improve their health and wellbeing. eCare21 is quickly being accepted as a easy to use app with a powerful platform that first encourages and empowers self-care and then allows users to invite others into their private Community of Care.
CareCrew has been awarded the People’s Choice Award of the Hacking Health Design Challenge at the national e-Health Conference in Vancouver on Tuesday, June 7th.
Why does Sunrise Senior Living have a blog? Actually, it appears to have been updated today. You might think that a company in the residential senior care business wouldn’t. And further, Brookdale can be followed on Twitter. So can JoAnn Jenkins of AARP – that makes great sense – AARP is a content/media company. So what’s up when you can’t find any reasonably current content, or worse, the site offers up a suggestion to meet up in…2015? Or when the last tweet from a company that is still in business and is doing quite well – but their last Tweet was in 2012?
Eyes, ears and status matter nearly as much as care for families of seniors. Imagine having to hire a private duty care worker to visit your family member in senior housing, notice today’s status and provide an email about what’s going on for long-distance family. Seem silly? Yet there has long been a ‘tree falls in the forest’ communication problem for families of memory-challenged residents, whether in home care or senior living. Yet providing simple status of loved ones (did she eat, did he go for a walk, how is the skin rash) is so simple. For many of the circumstances in which assisted living or home care services are engaged, the care recipient cannot clearly communicate the activities of the day, let alone if a rash is healing. So are family expectations forcing a change in the way care status is communicated? No data exists. And that communication is not an attribute in care search sites like Caring.com.
