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Technology and innovation have truly changed the senior care industry over the past decade. Many newcomers to the scene, like the leaders at Aloe Care Health, are caring for aging loved ones themselves, giving them a glimpse into their target market’s needs and challenges.
Recently, we had the opportunity to chat with Ray Spolijaric, Co-Founder & CEO of Aloe Care Health, to see what it is like serving seniors and their loved ones with the technology they need.
How long has Aloe Care been an option in the medical alert space?
“Aloe Care Health, the first comprehensive digital assistant for elder care, became available for consumers in January 2020.
In March, the company fast-tracked production of Essentials, responding to heightened demand for ways to keep elders safer, more connected to their family and professional care teams, and living independently. The Aloe Care Essentials offering was designed specifically for people who would benefit from additional support and preferred a contactless-set-up in light of COVID-19.
The pandemic has underscored the deep needs for many, particularly in the areas we solve for: safety, connection, and peace-of-mind. Aloe Care Essentials meets the needs of this time with an accessible, effective safety net — effortlessly employed.”
How has caregiving in your leadership team shaped Aloe Care products and the customer experience?
“We’re technologists and businesspeople. Seventy percent (70%) of us working on this transformational suite of services at Aloe Care are also personally caring for aging relatives, so we understand the unique needs of our audiences. We’re living it.
We created the world’s most advanced, voice-activated care system from the ground-up to give older adults and caregivers freedom when they want it, support when they need it, and peace-of-mind all around. We’ve taken a pragmatic, comprehensive, and proactive approach to the very real, everyday issues surrounding elder lives and the people in their circle-of-care.”
The Aloe Care Hub is voice activated and easy to install. Photo credit: Aloe Care
What are the family caregiver challenges you are looking to address with Aloe Care?
“Aloe Care is ideal for remote caregivers who want to ensure elders’ safety, and need an improved way to communicate and collaborate with other caregivers. Our five-star accredited professional call center can swiftly triage situations and can secure emergency services if needed.
For the primary personal caregiver, the ability to share information & align care teams eases a significant logistical burden and ensures better care. It also helps flag inadvertent gaps in care. Seeing when others’ have or have not checked-in prevents assumptions/oversights. When people do check-in and share status updates, e.g., “Mom sounded kind of sad today,” it can be a useful prompt to adjust the frequency of check-ins. Caregivers can “check-in” by initiating a conversation using the Aloe Care family app directly into the Hub. The older adult needs only their voice to respond. This frees elders from having to rush to answer a phone or ensure their phone is charged. In keeping with the new Medicaid mandate for caregiver electronic visit verification, the Hub informs the caregiver team when professional caregivers check-in and out.”
What is the feedback you are hearing from seniors and their family members about their experience with Aloe Care?
“Feedback from our customers and professional reviewers like PCMag and Amie Clarke at the Senior List has been overwhelmingly positive. They seem to appreciate that, despite the behind-the-scenes complexity, Aloe Care is extremely user-friendly, for caregivers and older adults alike.”
Remote caregiving, or caregiving from afar, has been more common due to the pandemic. Can you talk more about how Aloe Care steps in to make that remote caregiving a bit easier on the senior and the family member?
“Eldercare is at a crossroads and we think there’s a role for great tech to do what it does best – simply and intuitively enrich the human experience.
The need to improve the ways older adults are cared for, and the ways caregivers are supported, was brought into sharp focus with COVID-19. For us, it underscored these deep needs. It also increased the importance of contactless set-up: a technological challenge we accelerated in March and have been offering since July of 2020. If you can plug something into an outlet, you can set up Aloe Care – it is literally that easy.
Aloe Care is focused on holistically solving three critical challenges for older adults and their care teams: safety, communication, and care collaboration. We have created the most advanced and comprehensive solutions available in the market today. Our mission is clear: Everything we do is intended to provide a better way to give and receive care.”
The Aloe Care app is a big part of the customer experience. Can you talk more about the app itself and what family caregivers can expect from using it?
“The Aloe Care family app consists of three major components: Dashboard Overview, In-Home Events, and Care Collaboration.
The Dashboard Overview (Top of Screen) [offers]:
- A view of the weather and temperature based on the zip code of the home
- The indoor temperature and air quality inside the home
- Time and location of recent motion detected in the home by Aloe Care sensors
The In-Home Events (Middle of Screen) [offers]:
- The most recent times and locations of motion detected
- Check-in notes, which gives caregivers a quick way to see when others have checked-in with the older adult. The person checking in can also leave notes for others in the Care Circle here.
The Care Collaboration [offers]:
- Messages: To communicate & collaborate with all caregivers in the care circle
- Check-In: Central bottom purple checkmark to establish a check-in (call)
- Health Card: Save or look up all pertinent older adult information”
I’d love to hear anything else you’d like to address regarding what makes Aloe Care set apart from other systems/devices.
“Our solution is the first of its kind – no other company offers the level of technological advance applied to elder care and caregiver support. To come close, you would need to create a mash-up of several other solutions, some designed for use-cases and it would still not achieve parity.
Because we are caregivers ourselves, we are hyper-focused on delivering exceptional customer service. We just found out (today!) that we’ve won a Stevie Award for our customer service, and it’s a distinction that we will earn every day. It begins the moment you pick up the phone to learn more about Aloe Care. The people answering our phones aren’t salespeople – they are Professional Care counselors, with decades of experience guiding people to the right solution – EVEN if it’s not Aloe Care. They have no time limit for calls, nor are they commissioned. They are there to help people ensure they have the best solution for aging independently and safely, and for caregivers to get the support they need.”
Our Final Thoughts
It was refreshing to speak with Ray and hear his passion for serving seniors and their loved ones. Aloe Care Health is a strong company to watch, recently receiving the IoT Health & Wellness Product of the Year award presented by IoT Breakthrough and has been widely acclaimed in Real Simple (December 2020), PCMag, The Senior List, Today’s Caregiver, and MD Tech Review, and others. One thing is certain: they are determined to positively shape the medical alert system industry and we are excited to watch it happen.
