By Hayden Spiess

Baby boomers, who form the incoming wave of seniors housing residents, have witnessed remarkable — some might say dizzying — technological leaps in their lifetimes. Born between 1946 and 1964, baby boomers have begun to turn 80 this year. The oldest among the generation were born even before the microwave had been brought into existence (in 1947).

Now, fewer than 100 years later, innovations have enabled everything from artificial intelligence (AI) capable of carrying on conversations to self-driving cars.

Senior living specifically has seen its own surge of new technological solutions designed to serve those same aging adults.

“There are a lot of technology things happening,” reports John Shafaee, co-founder and chief executive officer of Medtelligent, a technology company that services seniors housing exclusively. “Our product is called ALIS,” says Shafaee. “It is an electronic health record that is designed, purpose-built for independent living, memory care and assisted living.”

Though Medtelligent has existed for 20 years, Shafaee and other leaders within the field say that seniors housing technology platforms are now able to help solve quandaries within the sector and benefit both residents and providers like never before.

Caregiver Crunch

One of these issues involves the imminent abundance of older adults. Much of the discussion surrounding the so-called silver tsunami centers on the shortage of units in which to house potential senior living residents. There is another gap that must be considered, says Brian Geyser of Inspiren.

Brian Geyser

“The older-adult population is growing exponentially,” notes Geyser. “There are going to be far too many older adults for the current population of caregivers to care for.”

Geyser, who is the head of clinical innovation at Inspiren, is a nurse practitioner with a wealth of experience in senior care and a unique understanding of the demands placed on caregivers.

Inspiren’s offerings include solutions for emergency calls, resident safety, care planning and enhancing staff efficiency. Considering the upcoming influx of seniors housing residents, Geyser says that meeting their needs will be a tall order. “The only way that we’ll be able to do it, and do it well, is through advancing technologies,” he asserts.

Many other senior living technology companies and platforms are also working to serve this agenda.

Vayyar Care is one of these companies. Jessica Wesley, head of Vayyar Care North America, also has prior experience within the seniors housing sector. “Previously, I was an operator in senior living,” she shares. “One of the things I try to bring to the table is putting on the lens of the operator and how we take technology and use it to benefit the operator from a financial standpoint and enhancing care and eliminating risk as much as possible.”

Jessica Wesley

Vayyar partners with senior living providers including Senior Lifestyle Corp., Bridge Senior Living, Heritage Senior Living and Hebrew Senior Life, among others.

Wesley’s understanding of community operations helps inform Vayyar’s caregiver support at the communities it serves. For instance, Vayyar technology not only proactively reminds workers of required, timed resident checks through its caregiver interface, the system verifies whether a caregiver has entered a given resident room and completed the check as scheduled.

“Nurses could get called away to something else and get distracted,” outlines Wesley. “If the caregiver does not come into the room, the system will resend that alert so that the caregiver team will have to come back to that resident, and it won’t go away.”

Empowering caregivers is also top of mind for Medtelligent. “Individuals who are delivering the care now have access to a lot of information right at their fingertips,” Shafaee shares of ALIS. “They can quickly see what they have to do today.”

Shafaee reports that through ALIS, workers can immediately view the specific needs of each resident. “The net effect is an increase in length of stay, resident satisfaction and increased staff satisfaction.”

John Shafaee

In the decades since he founded Medtelligent, Shafaee has observed the senior living sector shift from a hospitality focus to an increased emphasis on clinical care. ALIS has met this evolution with provisions including care charting, incident tracking, pharmacy integration and move-in paperwork.

ALIS also ensures connectivity with healthcare providers. “When a physician comes to a community, their notes are automatically showing up in ALIS,” explains Shafaee. “You see this integration and a reduction of effort and staff for manual data entry.”

In addition to clinically centered offerings, ALIS provides a host of other operational and financial solutions such as customer relationship management (CRM), move-out predictions and investor reports.

Safety Solutions

Many senior technology platforms are, naturally, designed for optimizing resident safety. Entities like Inspiren and Vayyar utilize tools like cameras and sensors in resident rooms to help detect and prevent falls and other negative outcomes.

Intrex, a company that provides safety and wellness solutions for senior living communities, also employs cameras and sensors to prevent falls and ensure resident safety through its Rythmos system, which also provides nurse call capabilities, access control and wander management. According to Ted Tzirimis, founder and chief executive officer of Intrex, the platform’s fall-detection technology boasts an accuracy rate of over 96 percent.

“There’s been more of a focus on camera-based solutions,” Tzirimis asserts. “There’s been more of an appetite to look for solutions in the apartment, where a majority of falls occur.”

Ascent Living Communities employs Inspiren’s camera-based system, AUGi. AUGi provides monitoring and safety alerts. Tom Finley, chief executive officer of Ascent, founded the senior living owner and operator, which offers independent living, assisted living and memory care, in 2008.

“Families love the fact that we can have this eye on residents even when we’re not in the apartment,” relays Finley.

Ascent Living Communities has incorporated Inspiren technology throughout its portfolio to enhance resident care and safety. Pictured is Ascent’s Hilltop Reserve community in Denver.

Finley shares that the AUGi system has been particularly transformative in the context of memory care, wherein residents might not have the cognitive awareness to accurately recount their own falls.

According to Finley, AUGi helps reduce unnecessary hospitalizations for residents suffering from dementia, who could say that they have hit their head when they have not. “Now, we can look at the footage, and we know definitively if they hit their head,” he explains.

Seniors Housing Business

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