 Welcome back to Living Out Loud. I'm Susan Karp, the Executive Director of the Arlington Council on Aging. Well, I've got a couple of guests today, so stay tuned. Welcome back. I've got Steve Cohn and Dylan Cohn here from Steady Watch. Steady Watch is an interesting idea that I'd like to share with you today. And my question before we start, have you ever wondered if there's somebody that would notice that you didn't get up out of bed on any given day? Steve, Dylan, welcome. Thank you for joining our show. It's great for having us. Thank you. I'd like to know a little bit more about Steady Watch, and so let's talk about what your company's all about. Well, thank you very much. It's a pleasure being here. Steady Watch is, in simple terms, just a remote check-in service. It enables somebody who's living alone to check in on a daily basis, and if not, then they get reminded to do so. And if they don't, we notify their circle, their family members, their friends, whoever they have identified that they didn't check in so that those people can follow up. So that's what Steady Watch does, and it's aimed to serve elderly people aging in place. We have some users who are disabled and it's their parents who are concerned about them, and so it's a way for the parents to know that they have gotten up each day and seem to be okay. Many of those people don't really like the intrusion of their parents into their lives, and so this is a way for them to sort of keep their parents a little bit at bay and still assure their parents that they're living their lives independently as both they and their parents would prefer. And if you look demographically across the country, there are about 50 million elderly people, 65 and older, and about a quarter of them live in single person households. That means they're living alone, and somebody living alone doesn't have a partner to respond if they're ill or have an accident or something like that. So there's a large body of people out there who can be served, and what we're offering is peace of mind. Peace of mind to them that if something happened, their family members would know, and peace of mind to their family members who maybe can't for one reason or another be in touch every day, that mom or dad or a friend of theirs is okay day to day. So let me just recap. So it is a seven day a week, 24 hour, I guess it's not really monitoring, it's a check-in. It's not a monitor. So it seems like it stresses more independence than dependence. Right. What we're trying to do is to help enable people to live independently, which is especially in the older community, that's what people want. They want to age in place in their own homes, or they can as long as their medical condition allows that. So how does this work? So it's a daily phone call that you're making or that they're making? So it's sort of one and then the other, right? So it's whatever people want, which is a phone call or a text message or an email if they like, and they can either make that to us every day without being prompted, and that works just fine. And then on days when someone forgets or we have some people who just like to get the reminder, and then they call us or email us or text us, and as long as they've done that by a certain time of the day, which different users can set to different times. Okay, so it's individualized. So if I'm not getting up at a bed until 11 o'clock in the morning, you're not wondering why I haven't called in by eight in the morning. Absolutely. All right. So it's tailored to the individual. Yes, yes, exactly. You know, it's a thing that's tailored and, you know, most people just kind of work it right into their morning routine. That's, you know, the way that most people just use it is it's just sort of, you know, a thing that you do every morning as part of breakfast is, you know, place your quick phone call to SteadyWatch and then you've checked in for the day. Okay, so SteadyWatch, it can be a phone call. It can be an email. It could be a text message. So for those of you that don't have maybe cell phones at your text messaging, it's just sending a message right on your, I'm using my thumbs right on the phone. But a landline, somebody that still has their landline can just give you a call in the morning. Absolutely. So they're calling you. You're not calling them. It's seven days a week. They can choose their time. And you're right. I mean, when I asked the question in the beginning, who would know if you didn't get up out of bed? Well, for me, I still work. My office would probably say she's either hit traffic or she's done stuff. No, but it's interesting because you don't really think about it. I mean, on this particular program, we've even had conversations about if you're not feeling well, does somebody else know? Because you can spiral very quickly when you're not feeling well. But let's take this back. So Arlington actually had a program a number of years ago called Arlington Cares Daily. And we still care daily, but the particular program that we were involved with was an automated phone call to the person's house. But we only had 24 available slots. So it was fairly limiting. And we couldn't, for the money, we couldn't reach more than 24 people. So that's not a program that we were able to continue. And certainly our office as the Council on Aging oftentimes gets inquiries about things like lifeline or some product as such, where you wear a necklace or a wristband or something. So for your company, you don't wear anything. So one of the key strategies that Dylan and I pursued when we were developing the underlying technology was to not, to avoid having to force anybody to use or learn anything new. So the underlying assumption is that they probably have a telephone of some sort. Correct. Either it's a landline which won't do text or it's a cell phone that does do text, although there are plenty of people with cell phones who aren't that comfortable doing text. Right. It seems a little foreign to some. But in any case, I wanted to add to what Dylan said. It's a mix and match. So in fact, you could, if you're the person living alone, you could check in one day using a phone call and the next day telephone from a different phone as long as you've registered those phones with us. So if you sometimes visit somebody else and you're using their phone, some days you could use email, some days you could use text. So it's a mix and match and people, we have customers who can still check in when they go on the road. When they go traveling, they can check in from their new locations. Okay. So that actually, that made me think through a little bit more. So does this program or product that you have, can you stop and start? So for example, if you are away, either visiting family or you're on an African safari and or you're, you know, in Nashville doing something fun, you can stop it for that time period and then start it up. Yep. Absolutely. Okay. So they don't, so in essence, when you're on vacation or with your family, you don't have to have this check in. Right. Or, okay. So that is a really nice feature. Sometimes we found that with the other program that we had that when people were away that they might forget to let us know. So we would be doing well being checks on somebody who's actually with their family or off, you know, off doing something. Well, and you don't even, so if you think of the group where you have the person living alone and then their circle of supporters, yeah. When you suspend the service, the system notifies all the supporters that it got suspended. So they know, you know, if you was the person checking in, you don't have to contact everybody and say, Hey, you know, I'm going on a trip or I'm going to spend three days in the hospital or something like that. Yeah. And then we can put it in a state so that it stays quiet. No reminders, no alerts until the person then checks in. So they have complete control over when it starts up again. Okay. As soon as they check in, then it reaches out to all the circle of supporters and says, Ah, we just received a check and we're back on. And now, you know, that you're back to the sort of the. We tried to make it as simple to use as possible. Right. Now with SteadyWatch, if there's a trigger that someone doesn't call in. So you're then reaching out to the individuals that the, let's say client, all right, we can call them senior, but they're your client. You would be reaching out to their, what I'm going to say is emergency contact. You can say circle of friends, circle of family, but it's really their emergency contact. So then that's their step then to contact the local police for a well-being check. That's exactly right. Okay. All right. I've got that. Well, and also in the middle there, you know, you described the Arlington Cares daily thing and it making automated calls out. We, you know, we do that in the middle between those two things, right? So someone can check in with us and that would be it for the day. But then before we get in touch with their emergency contacts, as you call them, we call them supporters, but, you know, all means the same thing. We'll call them and make sure, hey, you know, did you just forget today? Which everyone, you know, everyone who's using it forgets every once in a while. So it is the same process of we still sort of reach out to you first before we get in touch with your loved ones or your emergency contacts. Right. Because honestly, folks are a little intimidated by the prospect of a well-being check. Number one, my neighbors will see the police car. You also get into, you know, what if I forgot to tell you and I'm just at the doctors and they break down my door because the police aren't going to be paying for your door. They're doing their job for a well-being check. So, you know, we've had a lot of conversations about this over the years, but now let me ask you, your company is how old? A couple of years. A couple of years. So how did you get involved with this? Well, this goes back to 2006, 2007. It was a few years after my father had died, and my mother, who had two beloved dogs, had moved into a new neighborhood. So she wasn't well connected yet in her neighborhood. And her concern was that something could happen to her and that her dogs would suffer. And so I was, you know, my background is high tech. I was busy working on a different startup at that time. And we agreed. She'd been a teacher. She knew how to use email that she would just send me an email every day. And that email said, I'm okay. That's all it said. Got spelled differently every day. But anyway. Yeah. You know what? Doesn't matter. It's a point of contact. And that worked very well. In fact, we ran it until about 2016. And the reason we stopped was that she moved into a continuous care retirement facility. And they have a little doorbell on the inside of the door of her little suite. And their rule is that she has to get up and push that button by 10 a.m. every morning. And if they don't, they're going to track her. If she doesn't, then they will track her down and find out why not. So they're doing the same thing. Right. And so she doesn't need that piece. Well, and also you forgot the one bit of the story, which is that it worked well until it sort of wasn't working well, which is that it was a daily email and it became such a routine of receiving that email and just filing it away that it was no longer registering as a thing that he was doing every day. Right. So it was this thing where it's such a it's such a routine that you don't even know whether it's happened anymore. Right. It's one of those things that that, you know, that you just it becomes sort of a background thing that you do. And so it became the thing where he could go days or even a week and sort of not really know whether you know, my grandmother had checked had checked in with him. And that was the realization that wow, you know, this is something that Internet technologies that the kind of thing that he spent his career doing are really good at. Right. They don't they don't slip up. And so humans, you know, we're much better at something has happened. I have to do something now because this is a pretty rare thing that happens versus this thing happens all the time and I have to know when it doesn't. And so that's that's sort of the founding, you know, the flipping of the script that was the the creation of StudyWatch. So I have to ask, where are the dogs? Well, the dogs have now, I mean, this was a long time ago. Okay, so the dogs have now both passed on one of them survived the transition to the continuous care facility, but they won't let you get a new dog. So yeah, I know. I mean, since the dogs started the story, we had to figure out where where they both had long and wonderful lives. They were great dogs. So was your so you're based in Massachusetts? Does that mean that your client base is only in Massachusetts or do you go nationwide? So this is a nationwide service. It is after all just telecommunications and computer services. And we have customers in as far as Wisconsin and Florida so in Canada. So it's it's pretty far and wide. Well, because when you take a look at it, even those that so you're, you know, we started the program by talking about people that are living by themselves. But we also have a lot of situations where people because I kind of wanted to get back to, you know, who could benefit from this? Oftentimes, if a senior might be living with their family members, and that family member goes to work, let's say they they leave at six in the morning, mom or dad, or aunt or uncle, you know, typically isn't awake when they leave, they would still benefit from something like this because, you know, it could be a long time between when somebody leaves for work in the morning and returns for something to go on. That's an that's an excellent point. And because you can choose the sort of the time window in which you're expected to check in, right, you can adjust that for that kind of situation. Right. And we also have adult children that don't live in the same community. So for example, my father, and I use his as an example, and he always wants to know if he gets any revenue out of this discussion. And I remind him, no, he doesn't. But my father, until recently lived in California, and now has made a decision to move to Tucson, which is closer to my sister, but he's still in an independent, he's in a continuing care property, although he has the independent cottage. So I used to have a deal, because I didn't know something like this. And my father at 90, I am not going to wear a necklace, Suze. I'm not going to, you know, I don't need that. So there was every objection in the world to using anything else. My mother died six years ago. So we had this, there was an app friends finding friends. So I did that for a while. So I could, you know, I would call him every day when I left because of the time difference. You know, so there's a lot of variables that come into play with how we reach out to our loved ones. It's not that we don't want to. I had a three hour time difference. If I didn't really catch him on my way home from my hour commute, there was a pretty good chance I between, you know, going for a walk or going to the gym or just getting home and doing that I may have missed like a daily phone call. So that app worked for a while until he figured out how to dismantle it. I don't know how that happened because we teach him how to do these things. And so now I do that. If I'm calling and I don't get him, now we've taught him how to text. So, you know, I text him and if he doesn't, he has to respond because there was a time that he in his period of being by himself and learning how to be by himself, he became active. And there was a three day period. I mean, I'm calling my sister, I'm calling my brother. Now, you might have said, well, why did you call the police? And I'm like, I don't know why it was just something like I didn't think. So I went through my old emails because he's he's notorious for sending these awful repetitive four words that he gets from his group of friends. And I tracked someone down and I had them. I'm like, have you seen my dad? And he's like, well, you know, I played golf with him the other day, right? So long story short, even Council on Aging Directors have their own dilemmas within the family and how to reach. I mean, my father has grown accustomed to me calling every day. So if I don't call, now the tables have turned, he thinks something has happened to me. And then he starts calling my adult children who all live in different states. So, you know, I could do study watching. And I see a cascader for him. No, it's just interesting how, you know, we as individuals, adult children and certainly coming up on the holidays, there's always family discussions about how you shouldn't do this and how you shouldn't do that. And I always say, well, if you've made it to like 80 or like my dad 90, you kind of have some coping strategies to get through. And it's not that I would feel guilty if I didn't, it's my own decision to make a phone call to my father every day. And I probably did that once my mother died because when you have a long term spouse or long term relationship that ends divorce or death, you're at greatest risk for death yourself the first 12 months. So I've known that for years. And so when I have an elderly family member that has been in a long term relationship, that's just something I automatically kick in and do. But this kind of thing I can see where, you know, it helps with the independence. It's a safety net. And it's not for everyone because there are people, like if my father had remained in his home on the golf course, it would have been necessary for him to really think about like a lifeline, one of those products. Because he lived by himself, he, even though he was socially engaged, he wasn't necessarily socially engaged every day. My father does not have any chronic illness. So at 90, he is, he's in a really good category, but he is one of the rare birds. So if you're listening, dad, I'm saying you're a rare bird. But yet on the other hand, something like this, it's, as you said, you wake up in the morning, you make your phone call, your email, your text message, if you're doing it. And that, and then from that, you send out, what is the notification of the family like when you check in? So go ahead. Sure. So when you do check in, we don't send anything to everyone else, right? It's only when you don't check in that your family gets notified, right? So it lets them know that no news really is good news. And so you actually, you bring it, you brought up a couple of really good points with the story of your father on the golf course. And there are a couple of things there with, you know, products like lifelines, which is that, you know, those are, those are really important for folks who are, you know, independent and at a point where there are, you know, there is a very high risk. But actually, there are a couple of ways that we are also valuable in that situation, which is there are some folks who, for whom the costs of those products are going to be somewhat prohibitive. And we have from the get go tried to build this thing to be at the far other end of the spectrum as far as cost goes. And the other thing is that even actually if you have something like a lifeline, StudyWatch could actually still provide a useful layer of sort of added safety, which is that, you know, the pendants are great and they are a really important resource, you know, resource for a lot of people. But if you end up in a situation where the pendants hanging on the back of the door, or you otherwise, or the battery has died, then if you also had StudyWatch, someone would still know about it. So there's actually, there's a way in which we still provide some actual help in that kind of situation, too. And that still doesn't mean we're for everyone, because we can't be. But that's, you know, that's a couple of things that, you know, we could actually still have given you and your father a little more peace of mind in that situation. Oh, my father had plenty of peace of mind. I am beyond that. No, he's like perfectly happy, which is good. I mean, honest to goodness, I'm very happy that he has made it, that we still have them at 90. But yet it does get complicated, particularly when family members live at a distance. And that is probably more common in communities than having your families right there. And increasingly so, right. I mean, if you go back a generation, you tended to have more multi-generational families living together. And that's, and that's disappearing. Right. But there are also what, you know, we say disappearing, and I feel a sense of sadness. There's also ways to maintain connection besides just this phone call. But no, this is really interesting. And I like that where the pendant is on the doorknob, because I think that's where it ends up being a lot of the time. Even though, I mean, and now, but anyway, so that's, that's good to know. So let's see. So anything else that we would want the community to know about SteadyWatch, about your, your hopes. I mean, I know the hopes would be that, that anybody listening would automatically give you a call, you know, the Council on Aging as a municipal department. We, we enjoy having our guests on, on set. We cannot endorse any particular product. So we want to know, you know, we want our, our audience to know that we've invited Steve and Dylan here today to give you some information about something that might be helpful in your life. It's not like your family can go sneaking around and sign you up without you knowing because it requires you as an independent individual to be able to make that phone call, that text message or that email to SteadyWatch. So you still have your independence. You have the safety and security of knowing that somebody will know if you're not up and about in the morning. So just a couple more minutes here. Well, it's up and running and available. And like everything on the internet, you can try it for free. You have to sign up and that's done on the web. So your business model is a standard. So it's not like you have to call today to get it. No, there's no, it's always, it's always free to try and always try to try. And the sign up is on the web. If you have trouble with that, you can telephone us and we'll see if we can help you with that. All right. So if they were to try to reach you, even though we're having it up on the screen, can you just give me the number? It's 7-8-1-5-8-3-1-5-8-3. And just one more time. It's 7-8-1-5-8-3-1-5-8-3. So it's 7-8 and the four digits repeated. All right. Well, I'm not certain that either Steve or Dylan will be on the other line, but certainly their company and all that they stand for will be. So I want to thank you again for joining us today on Living Out Loud. I will be curious, and because of confidentiality reasons, I will never know, but I would like my father to consider all of the products out there. And whether it's your company or whether it's Lifeline, so that he can make sure that his adult children are comfortable, because my father's in a different social environment now. So I wouldn't be surprised if there's some mechanism where he lives that he's got to press that doorbell from the interior. But I really have enjoyed getting to know SteadyWatch. I really appreciate you coming on set to share the information with us. And I wish you all the best. Thank you so much for having us. Steve, thank you so much. Really appreciate it. All right. Thank you. There's just one more thing I'd like to talk to you about today. And this is also for your independence. So Fuel Assistance began November 1st, and it runs through April 30th. So certainly with snowflakes in the forecast, I want to remind you that even though your heating bills aren't high right now, they potentially will grow as the season goes on. So give our office a call at 781-316-3400. I'd like you to ask for a fuel assistant appointment. And the deliverable fuels like oil and propane are priority first for fuel assistance. And then we roll into other means for heating assistance. I've got someone that never thought that he would qualify for fuel assistance because he got by, had his own home, did a lot of different things. His award last year was 1100. So I'm talking to you and not anyone else. So give us a call. Maybe we can help.