How AI Is Reinventing Elder Care | Chia-Lin Simmons of LogicMark

One in four people over 65 will experience a fall, and for most of them, the technology designed to help is a device that hasn't meaningfully changed since the 1980s. Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of LogicMark, joined Craig Smith to make the case that this gap is both unnecessary and solvable, and that AI is finally making it possible to shift personal safety from reactive to predictive. Her company's Freedom Alert Max doesn't just detect falls after they happen, it builds a personalized digital twin of each user, tracking steps, sleep patterns, and medication adherence over time to identify the subtle signs of health decline that even daily caregivers often miss. The conversation is one of the most grounded and human discussions of applied AI you'll hear, covering why Apple Watch fall detection was engineered for crash detection, not elderly falls; why AI can flag a problem but a human needs to hear the breathing on the other end of the line; and why the 700,000 caregiver shortage in America makes technology like this not a luxury but a scaling mechanism. For anyone navigating aging parents, their own future, or the sandwich generation pressures in between, this episode is both practically useful and genuinely moving. Subscribe to Eye on A. I. for weekly conversations with the people building and deploying the future of AI.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Craig S. Smith?

  To figure out how to use an Apple Watch for an elderly person is a big ask. Everything is so tiny and the touchscreen is overly sensitive.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  But I want a real person with, you know, intuition, mortality, fragility, experience of having been fragile and listening, right?

• 0:19Craig S. Smith?

  Where do you see this going? Where people can stay in their homes much longer than they can currently? Because there will be enough monitoring around them that people don't have to worry as much.

• 0:33Speaker 01

  For people over fifty, more than ninety percent of them want to age at home. One in four percent over sixty-five will experience a fall. So how do we help you not have that fall? How do we get predictive? And that's where AI plays a huge, huge role.

• 0:51Craig S. Smith?

  Shailen, could you begin by introducing yourself? And give a little bit of your background and how you got to Logic Mark?

• 0:58Speaker 01

  My name is Shailen Simmons, CEO of Logic Mark. I joined the company in June of two thousand and twenty-one as their pivot CEO. The company has been around since two thousand and five and was actually created by an innovator in technology who had a firm belief that personal safety is, should and should always be available for all seniors. And so at the time, subscription-related medical products were very expensive on a monthly basis. And so he created a product that if you pushed a button, it would go straight to nine one one, much like, you know, giving your cell phone, old cell phone away to emergency services.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  It sort of connected directly to nine one one. And that's providing, you know, personal safety and medical safety for a lot of low-income and fixed-income seniors. And so when I joined the company, the company was in a bit of some major changes. Certainly was in a bit of a pickle. Hadn't created new products in, you know, I would say since two thousand and fifteen. And did not really have a connected product in a world where eighty percent of Americans had a Netflix account. And so subscriptions were definitely going down and pricing became more prevalent. And but the company hadn't really been caught up in that. And so the

• 2:26Speaker 01

  board brought me on board as a pivot CEO, and I have much more of a product background, having done work in connected I O T, connected vehicles, and in A I. And so I was very much interested in this category space, because like a lot of people, the one in three millennials and more than half of Gen Xers out there, I'm a sandwich generation caretaker. So I actually have my own personal experience, much like everybody else, with a beloved family member having some, you know, not wonderful experiences with a medical product. And so remember filing at the time I was working at Google, thinking, somebody needs

• 3:10Speaker 01

  to change this. And it turns out in June of twenty twenty one, I was given the opportunity to do that. And so I I took it upon myself to sort of join the company. So and that's been where I've been ever since.

• 3:23Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, well, very, very timeless. I'm sorry, very timely, also timeless, because the my generation, I'm not the sandwich generation, I'm I'm at the tail end of the boomers, my parents have passed away, but but I'm going to be needing something like this. And I have siblings that that need something like this. As a matter of fact, I'm talk to my brother about this, because he he's fallen a few times. But let's talk

• 4:00Craig S. Smith?

  about what Logic Mark does. It's a it's a personal emergency response system. And it's

• 4:11Craig S. Smith?

  Connected, it has some AI capability, maybe that's what I'm particularly interested in is the AI capability. So if you could describe, I think the product's name is Freedom Alert Max. Uh, describe what it does, but particularly how AI is is used in the product.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely. So, um, you know, I grew up like a lot of us with, you know, the iPhone and Kekidup. Uh, understanding what medical alert is, you know, you kind of fall and, you know, you have to be conscious. And moving in order to basically push that button to get the help that you need. And it makes a lot of sense. This industry came out of, um, home securities. And so it became sort of a thing where they're protecting your home with all these devices and sensors. And so why not slap a device on your, you know, parents and be done with it? And you're you're using the same call center, right? And so the reality is, is, you know, for a lot of people, especially, um, you know, late stage boomers like yourself, you're active.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  You're out there. This is not kind of what you want. You do not want to wear a garage opener hung around your neck. And the reality that it makes a lot of suppositions around this concept that you're going to be conscious. And that you're capable of moving. Um, half the time people fall in a shower. And, you know, if you look at common communities and senior independent living facilities, like I think their solution is a product that mounts to the wall. And has like this really long string and then you have to actually crawl it and be conscious and crawl to it. And then pull that cord because it's also very difficult, right, to access that, um, fall detection.

• 5:55Speaker 01

  And so, you know, the feeling was coming out of I O T as a business and AI, um, you know, as a business, um, as a tech executive. My feeling was like, wow, like this whole entire business is totally stuck in the nineteen eighties. And so everything else is evolving, even connected cars. I mean, those folks are like working and cascading like, you know, waterfall models of like seven to eight years. And even they're moving faster with connected cars, like what? What's happening here? And so when you really look at it, it's because, you know, there is a real sense that this is a category area that's not too sexy. And so people are allowed to development against it, but in actually, you know, in a real sense, like this, you know, this concept of personalized, hyper personalized,

• 6:40Speaker 01

  you know, health monitoring and care has been really prevalent already. You know, if anybody who has an Oura ring and Apple Watch, you know that it's, you know, it's tracking remote sort of data on you to help you get better health. And so this is really not that far a step from it. And so what we've really done is to look at what does it mean to bring that sort of personal safety and security and health monitoring to a category area that people, I think with the aging, you know, boomer population have an expectation for that. Right? You guys are living through an experience where you have your eye watches and your Ouras and your connected cars, right? And so why should you be, you know, taking care of something for yourself that's so personal and so important?

• 7:23Speaker 01

  You know, your personal safety and suddenly go back to the eighties. And so when we talk about the application of AI, really what we're talking about is a shift from this industry of being a reactive technology. And let me just state that, like, we have to be really great at it. So applying our AI to fall detection and really understanding like, is this a fall or were you just sitting down too quickly? Right? And not triggering falls positive is really important. And why that's crucial is everybody will tell you, hey, so like, why would you bother with one of these things, right? You have an eye watch. And so my feedback is like, well, there is that New York Times article about how, you know, an entire sort of town's nine one one got shut down because everybody was skiing in that ski town in Colorado.

• 8:08Speaker 01

  And so when you're going at a high velocity, you know, not to geek out here, using an accelerometer that's on your watch and you stop. Right? That's crash detection. That's what eye watches are great at. Right? And that's because you're trying to serve an eight year old all the way to like a seventy year old with an eye watch. That's a huge audience and like no person, eighty year old person I know was moving at such a fast velocity and stopping so suddenly that they could potentially trigger that type of fall. Right? The reality is, is that when we speak to the Veterans Administration, it's the largest hospital network in the United States, right? The clinicians tell us stuff like, hey, like, can it predict a slump?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Because typically when people fall, it's kind of slower. And so having great AI apply to understanding what's a fall and what's not a fall, and then actually tailoring, using the AI to tailor to your personal experiences. Um, and understanding, for example, from a reactive technology that, you know, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, what looks like a fall, and we're contacting you like, hey Greg, like, did you have a fall? Are you okay? And you're like, no, no, I'm just in a yoga class. And we look at your GPS location with this. And I'm like, oh, you're okay. And then Thursday happens, you're like, hey, are you okay? So we see this happening. And then now your digital twin, we created something via AI to say, Tuesdays and Thursdays at ten, Greg's doing yoga. Looks like a fall, but not a fall.

• 9:32Speaker 01

  So now we're not going to bother you. And we don't have these false positives, right? Making you not want to wear the device. So second joke, so that's us being really good at fall detection and reactive technology. But what really I think AI um is so exciting in terms of application in this industry is predictive analytics. And that's where I get super, if I don't seem excited enough already, I get super excited about this because, you know, when you think about, you know, falls, one in four person over sixty five will experience a fall. And, you know, it actually has catastrophic sort of like, you know, responses after, because typically people will just say, oh, my gosh,

• 10:10Speaker 01

  I had a fall, so I don't want to do too much walking. And so they'll be less active and there's much like muscle atrophy and a lot of things that can happen, you know, from a cardiovascular perspective as well. And so what you really want to do is encourage people to walk and be active, but there that initial fear then triggers. And so how do we help you not have that fall? How do we get predictive? And that's where AI plays a huge, huge role. So when you look at FA MAX, like our Freedom Alert MAX, we put things in such as, you know, medicine reminder. And we do that because, you know, poor Medicareans, you know, it alone contributes about, you know, five hundred

• 10:51Speaker 01

  billion, I think, in avoidable healthcare costs and affects about a hundred twenty five thou, like. Sort of thousand like predictable deaths, right? So meteirance is important, but meteirance also gives us a sense of like whether or not you're ill, you're much more prone to like being dizzy and falling. It gives us one sort of anchor of a sensor data um on understanding whether or not you're more prone to that. We put in, you know, what is fairly typical of this idea of like activity tracker. So you usually wake up at ten, eight, eight o'clock in the morning and you know, you take your device and you sort of carry it with you and then you go to sleep at ten and you

• 11:31Speaker 01

  typically take around like five thousand steps a day, then suddenly we're slow attrition. You know, you're getting up at ten, going to sleep at eight, you know, slowly but surely. And then your steps went from five thousand to four to three. Sometimes it's very hard for caretakers, we're seeing every day to see that sort of gradual change. Um, you're not there all the time. And so being able to see a longitudinal sort of like analysis that's personalized to you to say like, we're seeing this pattern. And then taking that and building it into a digital twin and saying, hey, so when I've seen this on a sixty five year old woman who's on Coumadin, which is a blood thinner, and saw this pattern of recognition.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  What happens with a similar sort of age and sort of demographic of person? What happened to them three months after this pattern, six months after that pattern? And so perhaps we see six months after that that they had a fall. And so that gives us to your caretakers, both professional and personal to say, hey, so this is what we've seen in aggregate. So is it time to put in a walker? Is it time to get in a cane? Is it time to do more physical therapy to strengthen? Is it time to take a look at, you know, the meteirance issue? Because um mom seems to have missed like, you know, three of her blood pressure meds, you know, every week. And so what are the other ways to do it? We've reminded her and she doesn't take it. And she doesn't tell us like we're gonna.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  And so all of these things in combination gives us a sense of potential predictability. And looking at it longitudinally and hyper personalized to you. As well as using a hyper personalized data to then compare it to a larger anonymous aggregate to say, hey, are we seeing a pattern of recognition here? So.

• 13:20Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah. Yeah, and it's interesting because there has been a lot of research about these longitudinal studies that that can show patterns that lead to declines. I spoke a couple of years ago with Fei Fei Li, who was working on ambient intelligence and the idea there was that rooms would be fitted with sensors and cameras and and learn the patterns of of people in their homes.

• 14:04Craig S. Smith?

  And she was thinking about elderly and over time would be able to detect changes in pattern that are indicative of cognitive decline or physical, physical decline. What models are you using to do this? And is it a single model? Do you have multiple models? And are, I presume the models are in the cloud? Or how much of this compute is happening on device? And why could this not be an app? As opposed to being a separate device?

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Sure, I think that's some very good questions, quite a few, so I'll sort of address it. So. First, related to Feifei. So we actually are in current beta on a non-wearable sensor. As we've mentioned, and I think you mentioned camera, the privacy is a number one concern for us. We actually have a Freedom Alert Max. But in order to protect people's privacy, we do a couple of different things. So one is that we tend to process on the edge, right? So we're looking for pattern differential. And most importantly, because like, you know, for us, like, safety is like, is one of the major drivers of people wanting to put anything into their home or wear anything, right?

• 15:29Speaker 01

  So it's important for us to feel that, you know, our, our customers and our users are, that's the center of everything we do. Human-centric, you know, product development is very key to what we believe in at this, as this company. And so, you know, in order to trigger some of that data, sort of, you know, pattern recognition, we actually do the edge processing. So you'll see us do things like processing in, you know, whether or not sort of things are changing sort of in the device, but then the data is that we're transferring is actually pattern. And it's tokenized, so we have patterns around tokenized data traveling, because we also have to get it to a call center and get that.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  The call center needs to be able to see it and then get it to the EMT who's advised that knows that you are on Kumadin and here's some of the issues, and then it has to disappear from the service, right? So all of those things are, from an edge computing perspective, is really important, especially as, you know, for folks like Feifei and myself, like, we're looking at trying to put more devices into people's homes. Privacy is on, on our mind. And so Freedom Alert Max has a camera. You'll see us, basically, we're actually doing, can't really talk too much about it, but we're in the middle of doing beta for a product that is AI-driven. And it's multimodal sensing, so we're utilizing, you know, our own sound-based.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  AI algorithm to help us detect a large, a very heavy, or if it's a slump. And it's, you'll, you'll see us actually start implementing some of these things that's more sensor oriented. That could be including like vibrations, it could include potentially in the future cameras. Cameras are very, very controversial thing to put into a home. So, you know, our initial sort of foray into a beta tested sort of experience is to try to make it more privacy oriented. But getting a hub in the home is something that we're rapidly working on and is in currently a beta with

• 17:34Speaker 01

  a couple of different, you know, retirement communities and, you know, living facilities as well as they're evaluating and helping us sort of evaluate that data. And it would work with a wearable device because you're not going to be in your home all the time. And so all of these things should be connected, the data process on the edge using multi modal sensors, sound, you know,

• 17:55Speaker 01

  you know, accelerometers, like, like altometers and gyroscopes and all of these sort of, you know, vibrations, all of these things in combination to help us actually get a better understanding of what's happening from a health perspective. And so you'll see us moving towards things like, you know, we'll be launching a watch product. And that watch product will be much like, you know, an iWatch, but we're really, really focused on trying to create a product that's really for the right audience. I spent quite a lot of time looking like I'm some kind of loiter in the Apple store, but trying to listen to what they're saying. And I often hear people wanting to buy a, you know, Apple Watch for their aging parent,

• 18:39Speaker 01

  deciding not to do it because they asked the salespeople, like, can you remove Apple Pay? And remove this, this, this, and this. And they're like, no, like this is part of the Apple Watch experience and Apple experience and. You know, my feedback is I one hundred percent stand behind Apple for that because you know they're a watch for everybody. We're a watch for um somebody who's more senior and our interface is meant to do that. And our services are tied to personal safety, right, and medical. And so, and that's, you know, you'll see us look at even like blood pressure, blood ox potentially in the future. And like bringing partnerships into a cloud um to help us um connect more sensors into an environment.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  I will say that I am a bit of a, you know, a a Google girl, for lack of better word, a Zoogler. Um I'm a believer in having an ecosystem that is very much encompassing partners who are very good at what they do. I will never ever want to create a blood pressure monitor. I think it's very difficult. Um blood glucose, very hard, um not my expertise. Um but believe that those things are quite crucial for the success of monitoring people's health, especially in aging. And so you'll see us look at, you know, what it means to, you know, bring a hub into the home.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Do what we're good at, which is fall detection and, you know, personal like sort of, you know, predictability of health and all of those things. But everybody has a piece of the pie. I mean, today, what's calling is that down to like McDonald's, everybody has their app and that data sits in like. What the geek part of me says, like, isolated positive data suck. Right? Like, I hate that, like, because you're just kind of ruminating on your little piece of the puzzle. And so what doctors and healthcare providers are doing is trying to bring together these little disparate pieces. And so it's very difficult to do that. And so I'm a believer in that, like, you know, you put out the APIs in a safe sort of a HIPAA compliant environment.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  You use this AIs to basically gather this data to actually help us do what they do best. Which is AI is looking at pattern recognition, is looking at longitudinal sort of like anomalies, all of those things. Versus what I think we're seeing in terms of the application of AIs today. And when people talk about aging, which is like, let me get an AI, you know, caretaker in front of you. So like, meet Ava, who's going to like answer your fall, you know, now and like, did you have a fall? I'm like, you know, honestly. I've been in a customer support loop with AI.

• 21:25Speaker 01

  You know, when I'm in a time of crisis, I might have broken my hip. The last thing I want to do is talk to, you know, the Ava AI.

• 21:33Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 21:33Speaker 01

  Right? I want a person, I want to be able to detect the sound and say like, that sounds like it's probably a fall. But I want a real person with, you know, intuition, mortality, fragility,

• 21:47Speaker 01

  experience of having been fragile and listen, right? Because your AI will tell you, you know, I don't hear a sound, I don't hear utterance. You know, when I'm running my LLM, which we do as well. And I don't hear the word help in any like language format or what sounds like help. Um, so there is nothing here. Right? That's what the AI would do. That's what we teach it to do. It's recognizing. Right? But a person probably say, you know, get on, like, once we sort of identify an issue, that person will sit there and will listen. And they will, I don't hear any words and there is breathing, but it sounds like it's heavy breathing and sounds labored. You're, that nuance is very difficult.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  And we will still be working on that from an AI perspective, you know, obviously. But I think, you know, that initial application of AI as an agent, I think is much more difficult in the initial.

• 22:49Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah. So, so how, as it stands today, what is, describe the device.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm happy to. So, and I will do a little bit of show and tell. So it's small. Um, it looks like a cellphone because it is literally a cellphone plus a medical alert product. And it's small because if we want it to be portable today, when you ask a lot of older people to hold this phone, it's really hard to grip the older you get. And it's got a lot of functions, it's got a lot of things that happen. And it's a lot of stuff that you don't use. I mean, even as a, you know, former, you know, Google person, we You know that only like people only use like thirty five percent of their apps on their phones, right? So we make this easy.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  You know, you could program your, there's a caretaker app that happens on an Android and an Apple phone. And you could program in all the phone numbers. I could say like, you know, Chris and like son and like grandson. And it's all sort of like easy and you don't have to sort of like fumble and like do all of that. So all easy to access in big screen. Um, it has a emergency, um, you know, mental health crisis hotline because actually ironically, um, seniors are actually been shown to be a little bit more prone to suicide. Because it's so loneliness, it's isolation. So we have that sort of pre-programmed in.

• 24:15Speaker 01

  Um, we actually have fault detection, um, already built into this one particular product. And it has a camera front and back. So if actually fault detection is triggered, that's the only time that you as a caretaker could actually then see what's going on. And if you can see that it's down, you could sort of change camera perspective and you can see that from your parents down. Um, the apps themselves for caretakers allow you to build your village, as I call it. Um, because reality, um, a lot of us live far away from our parents, perhaps in another state. And so your village, um, people who love you and care for you can be the next door neighbor across the street from mom.

• 24:58Speaker 01

  My sister who's, you know, forty minutes away, um, by car and I'm in another state. And there's nothing worse than when there is an accident and people don't know what's going on and somebody's not on call. So what we actually provide is what we call triple protection, which is, you know, family members, um, can schedule. Um, and say like, you know what, I'm gonna be traveling to Paris, you know, my family and the next door neighbor is like, you know, not gonna be around. And so like my sister in another state is on call. And so they're the first person that, you know, such something happens, they get triggered. And everybody gets notification, but they're the first person called. And then also our twenty four seven monitor service, um, which is US based, um, is the backup as well.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  And then nine one one. So you have three layers of protection, um, and that's what we hope for, right?

• 25:46Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, uh, uh, particularly on, on the, the, the Apple Watch.

• 25:53Craig S. Smith?

  Uh, and and you know, trying to build this into a phone, uh, you know, I went through this with my uh, aging mother. I mean, uh, you know, to figure out how to use an Apple Watch for an elderly person is uh, is a big ask. Uh, particularly, everything is so tiny and uh, and the touchscreen is overly sensitive. And so, uh, the, yeah, I can see that, uh, the, the, yeah, it makes sense for this not to be an app on one of those other devices.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I mean, that's not to say that we won't put out a wrist-based product. It just will be, the user interface just has to be tailored towards, I think, an audience that's different. My mother-in-law had, um, you know, Parkinson's, like early Parkinson's. And so she started out using iPhone, but her hands were shaking too much. And so we really needed a screen-based, touch-based product that is like you're doing this versus trying to do this sort of thing. Aspect. So we learned from, you know, really focusing on what we're seeing our, you know, customers go through. And we are believer that your, you know, your experiences is just, I mean, there is a great product for,

• 27:13Speaker 01

  there is somebody who's developing a product that's meant to be for everyone. And so there's always a bit of a compromise when you're using an eye eye watch, right? It's not meant for, it's meant for just as many people as possible. And I think, you know, the reality is, is, you know, this product, we will probably never, well, you know, we'll roll out services that are really intensively focused. So geofencing is one of those, right? Six in 10 people early memory care issues and Alzheimer's will wander. And so you can use our app to sort of create a geofencing um, experience so that when, you know, your family member wanders out, then, you know, you get alerted and you can actually find them. So

• 27:55Speaker 01

  I just literally read this morning an article at the San Jose Mercury about how silver alerts are on uptake. And it's because, you know, there's opportunities here to sort of try to find people. You have to find them within the first twenty four hours. There's too many like scary stories about not knowing that your parent had wandered. And that that not being triggered. And so then they have been gone for two or three days and they pass, right? And so we think about that and we're like, look, you know, you should set up the geofencing and having the camera front and back. Then, you know, assuming they're running the device, then actually then you can see a little bit that they're definitely moving somewhere. And so now we can, you know, give you the GPS locationing of your parent.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Right? And they're definitely not in a home and, you know, there is no indication of why they would be leaving the home. And so you could contact them, you could do a number of things because this is also a phone. So then you can actually, you know, make sure that everything's happening. And God forbid that you're in a meeting and you can't. Then our twenty four seven monitor service will go there and say like, hey, Mr. Smith, how are you doing? Like, you know, is there anything I could help you with? And so on last or like, who are you? Like, and sort of, you know, we can start making some of those opportunities to ensure that you're not going to be, you know, a tragedy waiting to happen. Like, we're not going to find you within not twenty four hours, like silver alerts, but literally within, hopefully, minutes if we can.

• 29:21Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 29:21Speaker 01

  And so that's the.

• 29:23Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah. And where are you in the development? Because, uh, so you you spent a lot of time on on fall detection, uh, on refining that. Um, and and you're saying that detection happens on device. You're sending, uh, data, as you said, a pattern data to a a mother model. That is that right?

• 29:51Speaker 01

  So we have what we call the, um, caring platform as a service or a CPaaS, like SaaS, like CPaaS system. And so that does pattern recognition, like analysis and all of those things. But the initial sort of analysis for like falls, um, those algorithms, they reside within the device themselves. And so Freedom Alert Max is already in market. Um. It already has geo fencing. It has all of those services that we talked about the, you know, um, suicide prevention, again loneliness, you know. If there's three pillars for success for aging, it's like physical health, mental health and financial health, right? So, you know, we're really barely touching the mental health portion, but then, you know, but that's there. Um, the capability to sort of, you know,

• 30:35Speaker 01

  jump in during an emergency when it is triggered to make sure that your parents are safe, like all of those things already out. Like we work with the Veterans Administration. We have devices out there, not necessarily to Max. Max is not on our GSA's contract schedule. But, um, but these devices are out. And so, um, we actually have a product that's more button based because again, some people, they really just love buttons. We have a device there that's for that, that we're rolling out, um, the activity tracking so that we can actually try to get some of that sort of predictive analytics into even a lower cost device. And, and we're, so we, most of our devices are out. The,

• 31:18Speaker 01

  the watch product with all of these features, again, all of the, all of the features are built out. They will, um, the watch product, because by sheer sort of form factor, it will have some of the features already included. Um, and it'll be like the predictive analytics track, the activity tracking predictive. And, you know, I think we're rolling out medicine reminder as well, um, in a risk-based sort of format, fall detection, all of those things. It all connects to the app that which then connects to the cloud. So all of those things are ready. The one product that's in beta currently, um, and, you know, it works. We're just wanting to have more people try it. Um, it's in beta is the, um, non-wearable

• 32:01Speaker 01

  sound-based in-home, um, experience. So.

• 32:05Craig S. Smith?

  Right. Yeah. And, and the device, uh, whether it's a watch or a, a phone-like thing that you could wear on a, on a lanyard. Uh, it, can a caretaker or a family member uh, talk to the, the wearer uh, without them having to answer? I mean, is there a, a way to just?

• 32:32Craig S. Smith?

  You know, uh, say, hi, are you there? Uh.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  So, um, it really, it actually differs by device, I will honestly say, like, you know, this product is a phone, so your kids could call you anytime and check in. Um, we see in the future, you know, I'm a personal, you know, my people will not want me to say anything like this, but I would love to see in the future, and but they will not guarantee you building anything, just because I'm the CEO doesn't mean anything. Um, we will probably data test other features where you can just do something where people could know that you're just thinking about them, right? Like, I think that's a nice thing. I think for me, that's a mental health thing, knowing that even if I can't talk right now, that my kids are thinking of me, that would be great.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  I would love to see that future, future in the future, um, no guarantees, you know. The team, you know, is looking at, you know, beta testing everything. I think it's much harder for a much more sort of lightweight, like, less complicated device, because again, some people just love a button, you know, this will have the analytics in built in. Um, we're looking at whether or not we think there's a probability of putting like medicine reminder, because again, the medicine reminder allows us to tell you, like, you're taking Coumad, like, on the screen, like, you need to take Coumad, and it's ten o'clock, right? Um, a little bit harder with this, um, we need to sort of think about how best to do this because the processing is smaller, it's not, there's no screen.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  And so we're looking at ways to sort of deliver all of those services in different ways. And my interest has always been to push as much of these sort of feature-rich opportunities down as um, as much as possible to our lower-cost products as well, because, you know, um, fundamentally.

• 34:29Speaker 01

  You know, we're a company that is, you know, shareholder driven, like all corporations, but we're also mission driven. And I don't think those two things are in opposition. You know, I really believe that, you know, we're here to do better things in the world. And so we can push more features and save more lives. You know, we want to hear that. The thing that actually excites us all the most is when we get, you know, those updates on customer support and we get feedback, you know, already from a veteran that said, you know, this device already saved me twice. You know, but it's what drives us. And, you know, when we wake up in the morning, you know, as much as I love working at Google and Google Play, like, you know, I don't get those nice notes,

• 35:12Speaker 01

  you know, of, you know, Google Play might have so much easier.

• 35:17Craig S. Smith?

  That's right.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  I'm sorry, but just not in that direct impact. And that's really our goal is to push a lot of these, you know, AI features, a lot of these predictive analytics features, down to even the lower cost product devices. It's just, it's a, it's actually more of an engineering sort of capability of, you know, whether or not those chipsets and, you know, the cost structure would allow us to push the type of, you know, features and services we really want to make, you know, more robust into those devices. The smaller they are, the more difficult it is for battery consumption and processing. And so, you know, we have to balance sort of the wearability of these devices

• 36:02Speaker 01

  and how long they charge in a world where most people don't like to charge, you know, as much and for these types of products.

• 36:11Craig S. Smith?

  Yep. And that's a question. Right now, how are you? I mean, you were talking about a call center. Is it, are there different levels of service?

• 36:24Speaker 01

  It's a subscription product, um, so because we're now all subscription based people, which is great. Um, back in the two thousand and five days where subscriptions were really challenging when I worked at Audible, like people like subscriptions, what? Um, so yes, um, we are subscription based, the, um, the base product is thirty four ninety nine. Um, it's basically the twenty four seven monitor service. It comes with the apps. You know, and geo fencing, you know, is extra. Um, mainly because we actually have to use additional sort of products and features to sort of make that happen. Fall detection is like extra as well. And so it's pretty in line with basically what's happening in an industry. And so your basic twenty four seven monitor service is there and it's ready.

• 37:09Speaker 01

  And most people, like they pretty much turn on fall detection for additional nine ninety nine a month. And so, you know, the, the sort of village app, the popping in, you know, and seeing whether or not your parents are okay during an emergency. All of that is part of the twenty, you know, the, the basic sort of product feature. And that's just the fall detection and geo fencing where there's more data processing and GPS locationing work that we have to do. Um, there are a little bit more extra for that. And mainly just because, again, we have to pay, um, for some of those services ourselves, so.

• 37:47Craig S. Smith?

  And, and how much is the device itself?

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, um, the devices are, off the top of my head, I cannot remember the pricing, but they are, um, like.

• 38:00Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, that's okay, but, but I mean, you, you buy the device and then you subscribe.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, for the consumer, absolutely, yeah, that's how it works. And so, um, we do have products that are non-subscription based. Again, um, we as a company have made it a mission to never get rid of, um, as much as we can. Our, um, one button, um, direct to nine one one products. In that particular case, like you don't have fall detection, you know, actually even that one, we've actually, this is my commitment is to cascade down technology. So that one comes with automatic fall detection. So that one button will get you to nine one one and the fall detection, we've, um, integrated the price on that device. Um, it's called Guardian Alert nine one one plus. No monthly subscription, it will just come with a fall detection for life.

• 38:52Speaker 01

  And so it's our commitment to never get out of the one, you know, pay once and live twenty years. Um, just because we don't believe that anybody should be stopped from feeling safe because they're on fixed and low income. Like, I feel this is just not our mission as a company. And so, um. Yeah, so I mean, I'm pretty much like this is our most expensive product because it's a cell phone. It comes with, um, so you have to pay for the cell phone service. So it's twenty dollars and it's limited talk. And um, all of the system features of uh, you know, that service is there as well. So, yeah.

• 39:31Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, if uh, and when do you expect the watch to come out?

• 39:37Speaker 01

  Well, so don't hold me to this, Craig, because I'm I'm sure like if my product team and engineering team is hearing me talk right now, they'll be screaming at me. But it'll be the beginning of Q three this year.

• 39:48Craig S. Smith?

  Okay, yeah. Um, and and does this? Connect? I mean, a lot of people already have an iPhone, even elderly. Does it connect to your iPhone? Uh?

• 40:02Speaker 01

  Um, so it does not. It's just completely independent. So this is just a straight out. You just replace your iPhone with this and it's easy to carry. I know a lot of people, I've seen a lot of like ladies who walk in my neighborhood. I just happen to live near a lot of seniors. Um, they wear it in that sort of like waterproof pouch and they wear their iPhones on their neck. It's really heavy. So like when they see me wear this one, they're like, oh, like that's really small. And I was like, oh, and it does this. They're like, oh. So I give them, you know, after seniors, we actually have the Astro product for safety. So we, it's a button and it connects to an app. And, you know, honestly, if you're the hiker, and and this is actually good for eighteen year olds going off to college to like women going on a.

• 40:47Speaker 01

  You know, Tinder date to, you know, after seeing a, you know, walking around the neighborhood and you just want to carry an iPhone, we actually have. Um, a product that is called Aster and. It allows you to, when you go on a hike, tell your family, like, I'm going on a hike from ten to eleven. So if you don't hear from me at eleven, like, you know, check in on me. Um, and then if there's an emergency, I can clip this to my jacket, which I usually do. I don't usually clip it to a a lantern. Um, or I actually zip it into my zippy crun, like. I zip it into my zippy crin- um scrunchie. I put my phone in my pocket, right? So, and if there's an emergency, then and my phone falls out of my hand and I can't quite get to it, then I can

• 41:31Speaker 01

  push the button and it will go. So twenty four seven monitor service will come on and try to deliver somebody to me and then my family will get contacted that like I have problems and I'm pushing my emergency button. So.

• 41:43Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah. Yeah, and all of this uh in including the those the I can't remember what you called it, but the the interior monitoring. Uh where you see this going? I mean, uh. Is this, are we gonna get to the point? Uh, which I would like, where people can stay in their homes much longer than uh than they can currently because there will be enough uh monitoring uh around them. Um, that the uh people don't have to worry as much.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, um, you know, in recent surveys, I believe, like more for people over fifty, more than ninety percent of them wanna age at home. And, you know, I think that, given that there is also a professional um care, like home care shortage, I think it was like short, like short of like more than seven hundred thousand professional caretakers for the home. I mean, this is like even post covid, right? The numbers are not favorable to us. Um, I think that more people wanna age at home, but we have like a labor shortage issue. I think these devices become another layer of protection for everybody, right? You can imagine even for a professional caretaker, I mean, we talk to people who are in that space.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  They wanna work with us to um enable their professional caretakers to take care of more families. Um, you know, being able to take care of five because they have these sort of technology to help um versus being able to just physically do like help too, right? There's a scale and you related this this type of technology that I think with a connected home service will really work. And what we should be looking for in the future from an AI enabled and sort of, you know, aging at home perspective is that we should be looking for products, you know, much like ours, which is, you know, you have a connected home component. Your wearable device connects to that because really we want to encourage you to live your life, live free, fly. Right? So having a wearable allows you to do that, but we, everything is interconnected.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  And the way that I had looked at it is, you know, as a parent, I remember getting ready for a child coming to my home. I had nine months of prep for, um, somebody coming in, so I baby proofed my home and I did everything. But the challenge for us with, you know, loving our aging parents and family members is that, you know, often people don't want to talk about being frail. And so it's so scary to talk about, you know, living independently and it's fraught with so many other issues. And so they just don't talk about it and then something happens. And we didn't have time to senior proof our home. And so if there's anything that I think like AI and sort of, you know, connected home, packages is, you know, should be doing is, um,

• 44:32Speaker 01

  helping us think about a connected home experience that's, you know, senior proof in your home. So that you can live longer and thrive longer in your own environment. And that should be something that isn't about frailty, but about safety for everybody. And so, I mean, I would, you know, I, I don't, you know, I'm fifty three, oh my God, I'm turning fifty three. And I don't think, I would, I mean, I would love to have one of these because like I've had like, slips and falls in my bathroom too, you know, bruise my ego and, and, you know, my leg a little bit, but you know, this isn't just sort of, you know, tied to just being senior, I think. I think this is sort of a good safety product for,

• 45:14Speaker 01

  you know, anybody out there. You saw me share a, you know, app based button product. That's because more than fifty four percent of, you know, adults in the US are afraid of walking near their home in the nighttime, you know, that's within a mile of their home. And so I have a daughter who's going off to college in the other side of the country in, you know, September.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  And there's not a lot of blue boxes out there. That's kind of old school technology. And so if you know, you have the kid that's never gonna walk in a path where there's a, you know, that, you know, light and they're gonna cross, you know, the quad and it's dark, you know, you're gonna want to have a safety device. And so to me, like, I think when people talk about personal safety, it isn't about aging and frailty. It's about people having the capability to fly and be free, but perhaps a sandwich generation person, I'm thinking about like, I want you to fly and live free, mom and child, but let me have a little safety net.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  You know, and let me AI so that it's not intrusive. It's in a background. It's doing what AI should be doing, which is an obtrusive analysis work. And we can see things that are, you know, problematic, then we can surface it up. So it's not a problem. Right? And that's where I think, you know, what's so exciting about this industry right now is that we can use AI in a way that I think um, will be good long term for everybody.

• 46:44Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about uh, digital twins and predictive analytics? Uh, where does that sit in? Is that uh, on the research side of development of of uh, Freedom Alert? Or is it in the product? Do you, I mean, what, wh- wh- where does digital twins and predictive analytics come in?

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Sure. So digital twins, predictive analytics, um, all patented, um, ready to go. Um, we're, you know, the development of those are, um, they're gonna be sitting in a cloud. So we've already started doing some of the algorithm and then like analytics and work around that. And really, it's about rolling these devices out that's collecting the data, right? So having the algorithm is useless unless you roll out more of the products to basically gather that data. And so we're really in that phase of, you know, it's the first time I'm rolling out all of these really great connected devices and they're out there now. They're, you know, getting out there and collecting the data. So we have the algorithms that we're developing already. They're gonna be sitting in the cloud. We have to,

• 47:59Speaker 01

  you know, the structures all created, the HIPAA compliant environment, all of those things are set. We're just. Rolling, rolling data. So, and that's, that's exciting to be. Because, you know, again, what I've mentioned, I was here in June of two thousand and twenty one, we actually had a product that was a one-button device and didn't connect to the internet. And so we had to build an entire cloud infrastructure, mobile apps, AI algorithms for falls, as well as the data analytics and the digital twins. We had to build all of those. In the period of time that we've been around for four and a half years, and that's, if we were a series B company, we would, I mean, we have roughly forty-plus patents in four and a half years. So we're pretty aggressive.

• 48:45Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah, and, and, but the digital twins, what, what are you building a digital twin of? Is it of average person or is it of individuals?

• 48:55Speaker 01

  Of, of you individually. So we have

• 48:58Craig S. Smith?

  Okay.

• 48:59Speaker 01

  like personal physics engines. So like, you know, we know, like, you know, as we start sort of working with you more, we'll learn a little bit more about your patterns. And so that digital twin is built on your pattern. And so you're a sixty-five-year-old woman who takes five hundred steps, you know, five thousand steps a, a day. That's who this digital twin is. It's wake, you know, the digital twin, you know, is waking up at eight, going to sleep at ten, taking five, you know, five thousand steps, is taking her meds, you know, like every day, like inherently, and has not had a fall, and, you know, takes all these other meds too. And so like, you know, we know sort of these things, and so that's built on you. And then

• 49:40Speaker 01

  you start going to yoga. We know that Tuesdays and Thursdays look like falls, but not a fall. And then so we start building that. But then we have, you know, the, the goal here is to build a lot of digital twins, but then we actually look at them in aggregate and how we slice and put you in a cohort together from a pattern perspective, right, is important. So, for example, you know, in my family in the past, like, we are like people with low blood pressure. So we were at like a normal in blood pressure, that would actually be like high blood pressure, right? In that case, like, there are people only who are like that. And so what we're looking for is not necessarily that number, but we're looking for That increase in differential, right, in that pattern of differentials and all of those things. And so what we would probably be looking at is when people make that jump.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Whether or not it's low blood pressure, high blood pressure, whatever, when they see that pattern differential. Then we're looking at, okay, who has like, who's on Coumadin? And who's sixty five and like, have we seen? So the AI is meant to basically run your digital twin against slices of cohorts. So age, gender, you know, um, perhaps like, you know, meds and perhaps like um, conditions and all of those things to see like when we see different patterns, like what are we seeing? People who are active at five thousand steps, but now are four thousand, like, are there people like that in the same age group? So we're trying to basically take your digital twin and compare them to aggregate a non-minimized like um cohorts, but that cohort could

• 51:10Speaker 01

  like be a ton of different cohorts because we're trying to like make sure to use the AI to compare in different ways to figure out like if we're seeing anything that we're missing somehow. Very difficult. You know, if you're mentally processing, you're trying to put yourself in a place of all these things and doctors are doing this every day. They're looking at you, making predictions and saying like, you're sixty five and you're a woman. And so the likelihood of you having this is like probable. And that's what they're doing statistical analysis on. And so, but there's a lot of things to sort of make probabilities on. And so the AI is doing more of the, how many cohorts do you belong to? And how do you compare to this cohorts comparatively? Right?

• 51:48Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  And that's

• 51:49Craig S. Smith?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 01

  That's powerful because that's what AI has a lot of data processing capabilities to do and to see the minutia in in the longitudinal sort of differentials and be able to compare those things.

• 52:02Craig S. Smith?

  Okay. Okay, well, I'm, I'm almost up to an hour. Uh, is there anything I haven't covered that that you want?

• 52:12Craig S. Smith?

  Listeners to know?

• 52:15Speaker 01

  Um, no, I mean, I'm, I'm hoping that, you know, that they are, you know, probably the single most thing that I, you know, would love people to know about and listeners to think about is, you know, for those listeners who are consumers out there, you know, please have conversations with your family about what it means to age in place and put precautions in place, you know, put technologies like ours or others to that you can feel like you can really have the freedom and independence. Um, for those people who are in areas of partnership or interested in working with people who are in this, you know, sort of collaborative space, please let us know. Um, we're people who believe in partnerships, you know, and, you know, we're all good at whatever we're really good at. And so partnerships actually

• 52:58Speaker 01

  allow us to, um, you know, help more people and that's really our interest. So.

• 53:05Craig S. Smith?

  Okay. Well, I'm gonna stop it there.