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I do see we have our next guest here. Hello.

How are you? My name is Jerry Wilmink. Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you as well. Tell me a little bit about CarePredict?

Oh, yeah, I'm happy to. First can you hear me okay?

Absolutely.

Okay, fantastic. CarePredict is a digital health company and we've developed a wearable device called a tempo, which is a wearable device specifically designed for seniors. What it does that's quite unique is that it's actually measuring their activities and behavior patterns, specifically, based on their signature eating patterns, bathing patterns, based on the changes in the kinematics of their wrist. So for instance, when they go into the dining room, in their home, or in a senior living community, we install these products across all of senior living. Independent living assisted living memory care, and then now also in the home setting but when we install these, we install beacons that give us the context in the location. So, this is fundamentally different than most wearables, or even conventional wearables on the market, which are looking for really gross motion, maybe a step count, subtle change in that acceleration. We're looking at the individual is in a particular room, which we know based on our contact beacon and then once we know they're in, say, the dining room and they bring food from table to mouth, it picks up their unique eating gesture,

What!

Yeah, so then we know exact durations, whether they're skipping meals, and so that is really the key to the technology is built on that foundational fact that changes in activity patterns actually proceed to health decline. Actually, those changes are much earlier than you would see a change in a vital sign or a physiological measurement. Right? You know, I went through a period of depression, and during that depression, I had abrupt changes in my physical activity levels, I had sleep inversion, where I wasn't sleeping that much at night and I was sleeping more during the day. I was skipping meals and then eating more meals than I should have that night. I wasn't socializing as frequently as I used to during my, you know, baseline and I was avoiding bright lights. So avoiding outdoor, ultraviolet light, and then indoors, keeping it dark and our wearable picks up all of those changes autonomously. So, that's really the key to our system is really collecting those unique specific datasets that have contacts and location, and then feeding our deep learning engine to really make predictions on when a senior is at risk for fall, depression, malnutrition, or even a urinary tract infection.

Wow, that is wild.

Yeah. Very exciting. We've been around since 2013 and we love CES. I wish I was there in person right now. It's my favorite show.

Mine too.

Yeah. I think we'll get there. We'll get back to the... in person hopefully next year.

Yeah, that's our hope as well. So okay, I think you've been on the TPN Show before because the name sounds familiar. The CarePredict sounds familiar, but I don't think we have talked so I'm gonna go into detail here. So, beacons sounds like there are multiple parts of this system. The beacons are things that go into particular rooms that allow you to like ping and know where you are Bluetooth LE or something like that?

Yeah, so, we built the system that consists of the wearable device. The wearable has a host of different optical sensing technology so optimum sensing for heart rates as pulse oximetry to measure blood oxygenation levels, temperature, humidity, ultraviolet ambient light temperature, and then the accelerometer to measure really subtle changes and kinematics on my wrist and connect those two unique gestures by myself. This is one part piece of the system, the wearable, and then the other piece is the Context Beacons. The Context Beacons actually are just pinging and the wearables can ping those contact beacons so we know what room they're in. We primarily use Bluetooth, and active RFID, passive RFID, and Wi-Fi. So in a senior living setting, for instance, the seniors call this wearable device the magic bracelet, because it actually serves a variety of purposes for them. In the Senior Living setting, if they want, for instance, to change a television channel, they can just press the button and it's a concierge button and they can say, "Good evening, can someone please come to change the channel for me." So then the staff can come and change the channel. If it's an emergency and they actually fall, the wearable picks that up and sends a message to the staff that in fact, Suzy has fallen. She is in the bathroom, so we know the exact location, and they can go and get her help as quickly as possible. The wearable also since it has RFID, we make most of the communities that we install in electronic doors so this serves as their digital key. They don't use a physical key. They swipe this on their suite and it's like they're at Disney World. You get your new magic band there at Disney World.

Right. Okay, so multi-purpose device. So it's not like you feel like you're being tracked, right? It's not a device that just feels like it's not adding to your day.

That's an excellent point, right, because there needs to be enough value there for the user.

Right.

Right. and so the value, when they have this device, is if there is an emergency it can automatically trigger a call for help. For instance, if they fall, and they can't call for help. If they want to communicate, they can talk to a voice right from the wearable device to another person in their care circle. You know, that's could be a home setting. Yeah, and so we built off that. What we've launched this year with this new feature is CareVoice and the idea is you can have a loved one's voice on their wrist. It's a pretty simple idea, but pretty powerful, especially during this period now where there's so much isolation. Social isolation has led to so much depression. We've seen this both inside and outside, you know, seniors living in their own homes and seniors living in group living. What CareVoice allows you to do is to give them give those senior reminders, and help nudge them to make healthy positive changes in their behaviors, and use the loved one's voice. So this could be the grandson or the granddaughter saying, "I love your grandma, I can't wait to see you tonight at the party," or you can have the mother say, "remember mom, take your medicine at lunchtime." So it helps you with reminders now with the loved one's voice which can really drive them to make those changes and it makes them feel like they're actually there with them.

That's fantastic and the social isolation thing. I mean, even at CES on our tower, we're feeling it because we've got social distancing. On our in-person show. We're seeing and feeling this isolation thing in all aspects of our lives right now.

Yeah. Yeah, we saw this in senior living in particular. A lot of our customers know, we're growing and we've been growing pretty fast over the last couple of years.

I can imagine so.

What we found so during this pandemic, is that when it first began, and I guess it's now almost two years ago, is that right?

Yeah. We literally started talking about it like two weeks after CES 2020. Yeah, because there was a guy who found out he had it at CES 2020, a member of the media.

Yeah, just mind-blowing. I mean, just almost two years. So when we first heard that our really smart people that CarePredict not me, but the really smart people. They had an idea that they recognized pretty early on that, this, SARS Covid-2, this virus could be particularly damaging and spread quickly in confined areas in congregate living and senior living in particular. So our team basically developed almost like a two or three-week turnaround, entire digital content tracing software platform.

Wow!

This platform, since everyone has a wearable device in senior living, allowed at the click of a button, if you found out that Billy Bob was tested positive for SARS Covid-2 he has COVID, then you could go into our software, called pinpoint, and basically select that individual and say, who was in contact with him over the past one week or two weeks and boom, within seconds now, you would know all the individuals that came in contact with him, and that you would test them and then isolate or quarantine those individuals, within seconds, all digitized, everything saved. Right? You know exactly what to do, which was huge. What we found during that period, is right at the beginning of the pandemic, in the airing on the side of safety, they just shut everything down. They didn't really allow seniors to leave their rooms, they were not socializing, and having gatherings to eat any more food was brought to their room, family members, outsiders, no one was getting in. Which makes sense, because we didn't really know much about this virus but the problem is that led to incredible amounts of social isolation.

Sure.

The depression levels were skyrocketing. People weren't exercising, they weren't taking care of themselves, they were scared, they were on high levels of stress. It wasn't good. So we saw the impact of this. These tools really were developed in response to what we were observing and trying to make it easier for these seniors to live happy and healthy inside of the senior living and also in their own homes and since they were basically isolated, now we could connect them, even if you basically apart we still can have your voice on their wrist.

Yeah, that's a really great addition. Now, if people want to find out more about your product, which they certainly are going to want to how can they do that?

Please go to carepredict.com and in fact, you could also email me if you want to provide that in the notes. I would be happy to connect with them after the show.

Fantastic. Well, I really do appreciate you coming on. I know. A second weird CES in a row for so many of us. I don't like being so comfortable doing CES from this studio. I want the chaos of being back on the tower next year.

Yeah, I hear you, we'll have to do it for sure. We definitely missed the show and we'll be there for sure next year. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you and join you on this podcast for CES 2022.

Absolutely. I appreciate you taking the time and we will see you at CES 2023

Thank you so much. Have a great one. Thank you.

You too. Bye.

TPN CES 2022 coverage is executive produced by Michele Mendez. Technical Directors are Kurt Corless and Adam Barker. Associate producers are Nancy Ertz and Maurice McCoy. Interviews are edited by Jo Mini. Hosts are Marlo Anderson, Todd Cochrane, Scott Ertz, Christopher Jordan, Daniele Mendez, and Allante Sparks. Las Vegas studio provided by HC Productions. Remote studio provided by PLUGHITZ Productions. This has been Tech Podcasts Network Production, copyright 2022.