February 6, 2025 • 41 mins
The caregiving crisis is real—but what if the solution is already on campus? In this episode, Elder Law Attorney Bob Mannor sits down with Neal K. Shah, CEO and co-founder of CareYaya, to discuss how this innovative platform is transforming elder care by connecting college students with families in need of affordable, high-quality caregiving.
Neal shares his personal journey into caregiving, how AI is shaping the future of care, and why the traditional caregiving model simply isn’t built for the average family. Learn how CareYaya provides cost-effective care, gives students meaningful healthcare experience, and is scaling nationwide to bridge critical gaps in elder support.
Key Takeaways:
- CareYaya connects families with college students pursuing healthcare careers.
- The platform addresses the nationwide caregiver shortage with affordability in mind.
- AI-driven technology enhances caregiver matching and quality.
- Families pay caregivers directly—no hidden fees or middlemen.
- Over 25,000 students are ready to provide compassionate care.
- The future of caregiving lies in community-driven innovation.
Tune in to discover how CareYaya is reshaping the caregiving landscape—one student, one family, and one breakthrough at a time!
Host: Attorney Bob Mannor
Guest: Neil Shaw
Executive Producer: Savannah Meksto
Assistant Producer: Samantha Noah
Assistant Producer: Miranda Donaldson
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ABOUT US:
Mannor Law Group helps clients in all matters of estate planning and elder law including special needs planning, veterans’ benefits, Medicaid planning, estate administration, and more. We offer guidance through all stages of life.
We also help families dealing with dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other illnesses that cause memory loss. We take a comprehensive, holistic approach, called Life Care Planning. LEARN MORE...
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Advice from your Advocates, a
show where we provide elder lawadvice to professionals who work
with the elderly and theirfamilies.
Welcome back to Advice fromyour Advocates.
I'm Bob Manor.
I'm a certified elder lawattorney in Michigan and I'm
very excited about our guesttoday.
It's a very interesting topic.
We've got Neil Shaw, who's CEOand co-founder of Careyaya, neil
(00:23):
, welcome.
Hey Bob.
Thanks for having me Tell us alittle bit about yourself, and
then I want to get right intotalking about Careyaya.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Sure.
So yeah, I'm the CEO andco-founder of Careyaya.
We run a care marketplaceconnecting over 25,000 college
students to care for olderadults in their community.
All the students are pre-healthcareer aspirational doctors,
nurses, physical therapists oftomorrow, and they're doing care
(00:51):
as a way to earn some income onthe side, as well as a way to
help people in their communityand get valuable care
experiences towards futureclinical careers.
Many people around the countrycall us Care for America,
similar to Teach for America,where we're inspiring young
people to step up and solve aunmet need in society, and in
this case, the unmet need isthere's a massive shortage of
caregivers who are, you know,who are able to help people, and
(01:13):
our population is only aging,so we need more help.
So, yeah, that's kind ofKeriaya in a nutshell.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So the people that interact with this Keriaya
platform are going to be thestudents and then also the
public that needs to findcaregivers, or how does that
work?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, so the way the Kariaya platform works is it's
similar to Uber in terms of ifyou or a loved one need care for
an aging parent or a spouse,you know, then you go onto the
platform, typically through awebsite, web app, anywhere you
have internet access and you cango on set up a profile web app
anywhere you have internetaccess and you can go on set up
a profile, mention the care youneed help with and then select
days and times and then we'llonboard you and then that care
(01:52):
opportunity will be available tostudents in your areas.
You know you guys are all overMichigan and our first Michigan
market was University ofMichigan, kind of broader Ann
Arbor area, but we are expandingto other cities across Detroit
Metro as well as the Westernpart of the state, and any
family can go to the site, bookcare, be onboarded and then have
students nearby ready to helpthem.
One of the key unique featuresis it's all booking and matching
(02:15):
and scheduling online and as aresult of that the cost is much
lower.
A traditional local elder careagency might charge 30, 35, 40
bucks an hour and you know they.
Typically the business modelwould be paying the caregiver
half In our case, you know, wecharge nothing for the service.
We're completely angel fundedand grant funded.
And then you book and useeverything through online tools
(02:37):
to find students near you andthen you just pay the student
directly.
So in most markets the care isavailable at 17 to 20 bucks an
hour.
So it's highly affordable.
And I would say final thingwould be caregiver quality.
You know, in the traditionalcare industry you might pay 35
bucks an hour but because thecompany is turning around and
paying less than half to theperson doing the care, they
typically will attract.
You know less educated peoplewho are doing this as a
full-time career and you can'tblame them.
(02:58):
But it's just like it's lowwage work that many times people
burn out of and don't want todo.
And in this case you'd get aUniversity of Michigan
pre-medical student, you know,to kind of come help you at half
the rate as traditional care.
So it's like really awesomefrom it's expanding access to
affordable care for manyfamilies who can't afford the
traditional agency based care,for people who are relying on
themselves to find caregivers.
(03:19):
This is like a do it for meoption and for people who don't
kind of have the time or theability to go recruit students
at great universities nearby.
This does it for them.
So yeah, it's a very convenientsolution.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, that's really interesting and I want to get
more into the process therebecause that sounded quite
interesting.
So a family that's looking fora caregiver and this could be an
ongoing relationship, right, itcould end up being where you
set it up and it'll go on forthe next six months, for two
days a week or something likethat, and it could also mean
(03:51):
that that student's moving on orsomething and they'd have to
find a different student.
But that is, it is an ongoing,it's not like just a one-time
caregiver type of a situation.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yes, 100%, in fact.
Actually we prefer that.
The students prefer that.
You know, I think everybodybenefits when it's ongoing.
So the power users of ourplatform are people who might
need help four days a week, fivedays a week, seven days a week.
And you know, typically becausethese are students, you know
the same student might not beavailable all five days, and so
a care team develops.
So that's kind of the bestthing that we would offer is
(04:21):
that, let's say, you're somebodyliving living in like Ann Arbor
, detroit metro area and you'retaking care of your mother.
Or, frankly, let's say, you'resomebody living in Ohio and your
mother lives in, you know, theDetroit metro area.
You're worried about herremotely.
Or let's say you're somebodyliving in Ann Arbor and your
mother lives in Atlanta, youknow, I think, by the way, we,
you know we're all over thecountry, you know.
(04:45):
So you would go online, book thecare you know, book recurring
care, as you need, and then thedays and times would be in our
system and then it would findand match students that are
available.
So if you had a student at anearby university who is
available on Tuesdays andThursdays and afternoons, they
would come help you.
Then you get to leave reviewsof them.
How they did they get to leavereviews of you?
And we really prioritize longtermterm matching and
relationship building.
So we are able to offer carefive days a week and seven days
(05:07):
a week, but we also have peopleusing it a couple of days a week
, as needed, and some people arewanting different people to
come by.
They're very specific aboutjust the days and times and some
people are like, oh, I reallylike these three students that I
met and I want to have them aspart of our care team.
So it's pretty flexible andpeople can use it, you know,
however they want to.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So tell me more about the payment process.
So they're not paying throughthe consumer, the family is not
paying through the website,they're paying the person
directly.
Is that what I heard?
Yes, 100%.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, and we set it up that way, you know, in our
early days.
We've now been around foralmost three years.
In our early days we wereprocessing the payment through
our site but we found that thepayment processing companies
were taking four or 5% of thatcut and we were just like, well,
we don't need to make moneyourselves.
So we're like why are all thesefamilies just wasting the money
(05:55):
?
So we switch it to person toperson because it's free.
So if people most people, Iwould say use Venmo, venmo P2P
is free, so there's no fees.
And then people are also ableto do cash or check or other
methods, like Zelle, as theywant.
But we found person to personmethods are, you know, you can
get around a transaction fee.
And then most families it'sbeneficial for them.
And then students it's like,okay, it's just like they
(06:15):
receive the income instead ofkind of a middleman taking it
out.
So it's convenient for everyone.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I believe there's a lot of skeptical people in the
world, so I'd like to get intothe details.
So you know the old sayingfollow the money.
So when we follow the money, Iheard, I think I heard and I
want to kind of clarify thisthat Carriaya is funded by some
angel investors.
Right, yes?
And is there profit being madeby Carriaya?
(06:42):
Where do they get figured intothe financial arrangement?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, great question.
So currently no profit beingmade.
I think we hope at some pointwe can make it sustainable.
But initial funding and I cantell you you know, as you kind
of get into the interview, youknow my own personal story but
initially it was just likefunding it myself.
I was bootstrapping it becauseI had a previously successful
career in finance and I actuallyhad become a caregiver in my
mid thirties and I saw howbroken the home care market was.
So initially it was just kindof like a passion project.
(07:08):
So I was like, okay, well, canI fund, you know, build some
technology and deliver somethingcool that can help a lot of
people and then just go off anddo something else and make it
kind of just like survive on itsown.
As that movement grew, we wereattracted or actually we
attracted a bunch of retiredhealthcare executives so retired
doctors, chiefs of largedepartments at hospitals,
healthcare executives who cameup and said, hey, I'll just put
(07:34):
some of my retirement money withyou guys because I want you to
hire a team of people and reallyscale it.
So we started scaling.
But thankfully, when you kindof find very social mission
aligned investors like that,they were basically like quasi
funding a nonprofit, where theywere just like I want you to do
something good and if it everbecomes sustainable, great, I'll
earn a return on it.
But I don't really care aboutthe return start part.
I care about, like, doing theright thing.
And then the decision makingfrom us and them was in order to
(07:57):
attract very talented youngpeople who don't have a lot of
savings.
They would rather work for atechnology startup.
You know like you can't findthe best software developer at
University of Michigan is notgoing to join a nonprofit.
So we're like, okay, let's makeit a technology startup, stay
true to the social mission andnot monetize off families or
take money from caregiverspockets.
So we did that and then afterthat got going, after the second
year of us being around, westarted getting a lot of grants.
(08:19):
So there is a tremendous amountof money at the National
Institute on Aging that is thenalso through partnerships with
universities being kind of like,given out to innovation
companies that are making animpact on advancing care for the
older adult population.
So, pleased to say, we've won agrant from Johns Hopkins, one
from National Institute on Agingand also a grant from Atrium
Health, which is one of thelargest hospital systems in the
(08:41):
country.
So through this combination offunding we're able to kind of
keep not only sustaining buteven rapidly growing the service
.
And then, of course, I think atsome point we'll have to make a
decision on is there aindefinite amount of national
and Sudan aging funding which Ibelieve there is, because it
keeps growing every year or willwe have to pivot to find social
impact investors?
(09:02):
I do believe if we can pull itoff, the vision and the mission
is free to consumer forever andthen find another way to make it
sustainable.
And I believe a lot of thetailwinds are in our favor.
Medicare is starting to doinnovation programs, starting to
pay for in-home care, and we'retalking to a couple of large
hospitals about partnering withthem on the dementia guide
program and there, if we getthat partnership, the rate that
(09:23):
Medicare is set would be nicelyprofitable for us, which would
be awesome because you can makeit sustain on that and then run
a free consumer business throughthis.
There are a lot of workforcedevelopment programs reaching
out to us, wanting to train andupskill the students even
further to prepare them forfuture healthcare careers, so
that could be kind of amonetization opportunity.
So I think it's a little bitharder in the early days to do
it this way, but I think longerterm you can build a more
(09:46):
elegant product similar to like,let's say, google.
You know, like everybody getsGoogle search for free but then
they're kind of monetizingthrough advertising.
That's one way of doing it.
But if you had to pay each timefor a Google search, you know
the cost would add up becausethey're spending five, six cents
every time somebody's searching, but it's like just a great
public benefit.
So I think in this case youknow our expenses we are able to
keep low enough.
But it would be nice if, likeindefinitely through grant
(10:08):
funding and through otherpartnerships with Medicare,
you're able to keep the basicconsumer care matching.
And I believe that it's a smallthing but in the psychology of
the caregiving experience itmakes a huge impact in the
(10:31):
positive attitude that bothpeople feel towards it and,
frankly, the negative attitudethat people feel in the
traditional care industry whenthey fork over 35 bucks and then
the person you know thecaregiver doing 99% of the work
gets lots in half.
Both sides are sour in thattransaction.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's an important
conversation that you just had,because I think people want to
have a good understanding of howthis all works and is their
caregiver getting paid enough,you know, to attract the right
care, good caregivers, thingslike that.
And the conversation that youreally made it clear for
everybody is this is bigger thanjust that transaction.
(11:07):
This is a mission.
This is a bigger picture andyou're really looking through
the length of it, the long viewof this, and I think that's
going to be very important forthe listeners to know this isn't
just something that is, youknow, a small option, or that.
You're looking to really growthis and you've set everything
(11:30):
up in the way this will be along term solution no-transcript
(12:06):
means the user experience inthe care market sucks all around
, you know, because of thestructure of the industry.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
You know because it's this kind of national franchise
or local franchisee industrybecause they're profit
maximizing for small geographicmarkets, because there's this
antiquated 1980s and 1990sbusiness model that results in
very high prices and very littleless than half being passed
down to the underlying careworker.
You have this break in theentire system, that tremendous
amount of money that's wasted onsales and marketing,
(12:34):
advertising buying Facebook ads,google ads, newspaper ads.
I mean it's just a ridiculouslyinefficient economic structure
that then results in like a poorcustomer experience and a poor
experience for the caregiver too, you know.
So then everybody's complainingabout caregiver shortage and
I'm like, well, there aren'tlogical caregiver shortage.
There's caregiver shortagebecause the current industry
sucks.
You know, like if you developeda different system there would
(12:54):
be not unlimited, but therewould be a lot more people
caregiving like single handedly,like a team of five of us.
You know, at this relativelyearlier stage, startup has
gotten twenty five thousand newcaregivers across America into
the system.
So talk about what caregivershortage is.
You know, I'm not seeing any.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and it is interesting,and even not just home
caregiving, but care, you know,caregiving facilities, assisted
living, nursing homes inparticular, are arguing or
saying that there's a shortage,that they can't fill the
positions that they want.
And you know, on one hand, Ivery much appreciate the
(13:30):
revolutionary approach that youhave, and this is a great way to
start to look at solutions.
Criticize so much the old wayeither because that's that is
the way I mean most people ifthey're going to get into this
business and run.
You know we have a number ofhome giving companies that were
just started by families and ofcourse there's a lot of
(13:51):
franchises too.
But the idea is, you reallyhave a big picture idea, and so
the other ones are still goingto be around.
Maybe they'll find ways toinnovate and things like that.
I agree with you that thesystem isn't great for that, but
it is the system, so I can'tcriticize them for being part of
the system that exists.
(14:12):
I also like the idea of movingtowards a better system and
finding this innovation, andthat's what you're providing.
You're really rethinking thewhole model that's around home
caregiving.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, 100% agree and you're 100% right.
I mean every individual that Imet.
I met a lot of home care agencyowner operators and they are
all kindhearted, mission-drivenpeople, 95 plus percent of them.
Something happened to them likewhat happened to me, and they
left behind another career totake care of someone and then
after that they were drawn bythe mission, or many would call
it a calling.
(14:45):
I certainly would you know if,like okay, things happen in my
life for a reason that are verypainful, very traumatic, but you
know, you kind of, you knowreframe it as like okay, maybe
this is my calling and I foundit midway through my life.
So I think most of the peopleI've met are like, very
well-intentioned people and theones that go into the franchise
system it's the system wins.
You know that they don't win,you know they can't do it their
way and the ones that are doingit independently I mean God
(15:06):
bless them, you know, because Ithink they have a lot of leeway
to do it a different way andexperiment and test different
business models, and I thinkmany of them will end up, you
know, designing things that aremore unique and more kind of
user friendly.
But I think the franchise partof the system constrains the
individual's creative abilityand ability to kind of solve the
needs on the ground, and thenthey just kind of have to
(15:27):
execute against what thefranchise says and I think that
that that to me, that limits theinnovation that should be
happening on the ground.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I wanted to get into how youcame to this, because this is
more than just a job for you.
Obviously You've given up otherwork and this is really a
mission for you.
So what brought you to this andwhat is your background?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, yeah, sure, great question.
So my background prior to thisI'm in my early 40s right now
and from my early 20s until mymid 30s I was living in New York
City.
I was working in the financeindustry.
I started my career ininvestment banking at a large
bank, credit Suisse, and then Ivery quickly went into the hedge
fund industry where I wasmanaging investments across a
(16:08):
series of sectors, includinghealthcare, technology and
others.
I rose up the ladder veryquickly due to good investments
and high returns and became apartner in my late 20s at a
multi-billion dollar fund whereI was running an entire
portfolio.
And then by my early 30s, oneof those investors backed me to
start my own fund.
So when I was 31, I started myown investment fund with 10
(16:29):
million and by the time I was 35, I grew that to 250 million,
had university endowments andlarge shareable foundations
investing with me and I wasinvesting in more like kind of
like mid-stage and maturecompanies across, you know, kind
of multiple industries.
But healthcare was a decentfocus.
You know, had nothing happenedto me, I would have just stayed
on that track.
You know I was good at it, Ilike doing it.
But I would say in hindsight,you know there was not much of a
(16:49):
mission or calling, it was justkind of I was analytically good
at thinking about businessesand seeing trends in the economy
.
However, you know, fortunatelyor unfortunately, I became a
caregiver.
You know, I first secondhandsaw the experience when my
grandfather aged and then becameseverely ill and had a series
of difficulties, from cognitivedecline to kidney failure, to
(17:12):
cancer and then to end of life,and you know I'm the person in
my family that everybody relieson for research and advice.
So while my mom bore the bruntof the direct care work, I
navigated the entire kind ofcare ecosystem, including both
healthcare, clinical care aswell as like home-based, and I
kind of realized like one of thebig insights I had from that
experience was, you know, 95% ofkind of the care work is
(17:33):
outside of the healthcare systemthat the family ends up having
to deal with, and that's theharder part where there aren't a
lot of resources.
So you know, in my mom's case atthat time she was in her mid
fifties and she had a career andshe had to leave her career to
manage the care because, like,the care we were getting was not
good enough and you know shefelt like, hey, this is my duty,
and you know we all thought itwas going to be like temporary,
(18:01):
et cetera.
And then she was never able togo back to the workforce and I
kind of realized, like that tome was like an aha, that okay,
if this industry cannot supportfamilies when they're going
through this difficult time,you're gonna have a lot of
people burning out of theworkforce, losing a significant
sense of their identity, dealingwith a lot of stuff without
getting help, and it's gonnaleave lasting damage.
So at that time I was stillrunning my fund and I became
(18:23):
kind of like obsessed with likethe care economy and why isn't
there more innovation happening?
And you know, then,unfortunately, at the peak of my
fund, my wife became severelyill and went through years of
serious illness, cancer,multiple hospitalizations and
failed therapies and I becameher primary caregiver and it was
like a very, very difficultexperience because I also
firsthand dealt with.
You know, you can't get goodcare help you end up doing it
yourself.
I ended up taking a bunch ofsabbaticals for my work, which
(18:46):
at that point just became kindof like after a while it became
untenable.
We kind of like were flying allover the country to get
treatment, includingsignificantly, at Michigan
Medicine.
(19:22):
No-transcript.
On the family caregiver, Ithink I learned things and
experienced things myself that Iwould have never guessed before
.
But one in four familycaregivers deals gets their own
health issue because of thestress of caregiving.
One in three family caregiversgets their own mental health
issue.
So both physical and mentalhealth, you know it becomes
extremely taxing and I thinkthat they're the ignored part of
(19:45):
you know kind of the experience, because the person with the
issue is what the entire medicalsystem is focusing on.
But what about the persontaking care of that person?
So, yeah, I thought that it waslike really eye opening and
after that point, you know, I'dkind of like walked away for my
fund and I was kind of likethinking, okay, and thank God,
knock on wood, I didn't finishthe story but my wife ultimately
had a successful outcome andhas now been in remission for a
few years.
You know, even moremiraculously, we had our first
(20:08):
child after the whole experience.
So we have a happy, healthythree-year-old daughter, which
you know they said wasstatistically impossible.
So really thankful for that.
And then after that I was justlike I could either just go back
to my finance career, but I'dkind of like lost meaning in
that.
And then I'd gained a newmeaning of like, hey, there's
something here that needs to befixed.
Um, I have like skills andbackground and like, um, a
(20:29):
passionate interest in this.
So you know, why not just tryto fix this?
So that was kind of the journey.
And in the early days ofstarting out I thought I was
going to do something for acouple of years, make an impact
and then kind of go back to whatI knew how to do.
But seeing the growing impactand seeing the positive feedback
from the families robbing, Ithink, has gotten me like way
more excited that, wow, there'slike something here that could
(20:49):
make a huge like impact aroundthe country.
So yeah now I'm like all in.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That's great.
Now where were your first?
So you kind of center arounduniversities and then go where
were your first entries into it?
I know that you're in Ann Arborand Detroit.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Where did you start out?
So I'm based in Raleigh Durham.
North Carolina, and our firstentries were in our backyard at
Duke University and UNC Chapel.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Hill, and so we started there, no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
So we ended up at Harvard, tufts, northeastern
Boston University there's likeseven different universities in
the Boston area.
We ended up going all overFlorida and Texas at several
very large schools University ofMichigan, of course, and of
course, the rival Ohio State.
You know these like biguniversities have like large
healthcare focused populationsand it's awesome.
You know the students weretelling each other and really
the professors were telling eachother.
(22:12):
You know a lot of theseuniversities have what's called
pre-health career advising.
Anyone who wants to become adoctor, become a nurse, become a
physician assistant, theundergraduate university
departments will advise them onlike what else you can do to
improve your career path andopportunities.
And I think the career advisorslove the Career AI platform
because they were like this is agreat way for students to get
(22:33):
paid experience at flexiblehours.
They don't have to wait tillsummer, they don't have to wait
till after graduation to getthis experience.
So we started really partneringwith a lot of these departments
and had several presentationswith the University of Michigan
Career Advising and then theystarted kind of endorsing and
recommending the service.
So yeah, now and then we'realso expanding to the West Coast
.
We're at Stanford, berkeley,ucla, a bunch of universities
across California.
So, yeah, now we have over25,000 students on it and, yeah,
(22:56):
it's growing very fast.
An interesting statistic acrossAmerica is that there's 20
million college students, ofwhich something like 18% of them
or so want to go intohealthcare professions.
So let's just use a roundnumber around 4 million, and
Kariaya is getting 20 to 25%market share of those at most
universities when they expand.
So if we can get this right ata grand scale level, you could
(23:19):
have up to a million students onthis.
So that's kind of like cool tothink, because most of these
people are not in the careeconomy otherwise.
At a time, when there's hugeworkforce shortages, to have
some way of getting a millionnew people into the care
workforce, even if it's going tobe temporary, you know, for a
few years, and I would say someof the best people in the
(23:52):
workforce.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
you know these are people who are going to be
future doctors and nurses.
That would be just, I think, ahome run for society, and so
what a great opportunity to havethese future, you know, doctors
, nurses, physicians, assistants, that have that home caregiving
experience which is the mostpersonal, the most intimate type
of care and that they probablywouldn same requirements of that
(24:22):
traditional industry and havingthat experience, that human
experience, before they get tothe, you know, the next stage in
their career.
I think that's just amazing andreally is encouraging of the
idea that there's so many people, so many students, that are
excited about this.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, great point, bob.
I mean thanks for highlightingthat.
We just had this wonderfulyoung man, josh, who got into
med school and he's on his wayto becoming an orthopedic
surgeon and he literally wrotehis essays about the care that
he provided for a family wherethe gentleman was living with
Parkinson's.
And it was interesting becausethe guy did everything.
He did rounds at the hospital,he was a nurse aide and all that
stuff.
But his observation was in a lotof the clinical work you're in
(25:02):
and out, you know five minutes,10 minutes, change the IV, do
this, do this, do this, but youdon't really get to know the
people.
And when you take care of thesame man living with Parkinson's
for six months and you'revisiting him twice a week and
you're seeing all the stuff hiswife's dealing with, you're
seeing his condition progressover time.
You're seeing kind of like theemotional toll as well as the
physical toll and you're seeinglike the moments of happiness
(25:23):
and developing a long termrelationship.
It's like that shines and Ithink that develops like an
amazing bedside manner.
And for many of the studentsit's like you know they are so
stressed with like I got to hitall the biology classes, get the
grades, take my standardizedtests, go do rounds at the
hospital.
This is like the fun, positivething where, like you know, one
(25:49):
of the students at Tufts wrotean essay in her school paper
about this that I was about toburn out of my clinical career
journey because it's sostressful and it's so impersonal
.
That then taking care of aolder lady in her community in
Boston through Keriaya remindedher of like this is actually why
I want to go become a doctor.
You know, it's like I have fiveyears ahead of me of all this
stress, but ultimately I want tomake an impact like this.
So I think that a lot of times,like as medicine becomes like
(26:09):
overly complex, I think you losethat human touch and I think
that kind of results in likepeople not want to do it anymore
.
So I think, yeah, somethinglike this is like great to
encourage people to stick withit.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So for the caregivers that use your platform?
Do they have to be a student?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
They have to be associated with one of the
schools that you work with.
Yeah, great question For now.
Yes, you know, for now I thinkwe want to go for, like you know
, it's a high quality workforcethat the traditional care
industry doesn't want, you know.
So I don't want to like kind ofcreate you know it's not a zero
sum game I don't want tocompete and I think most care
agencies are looking for peoplewho can do full-time care work.
So we're like, hey look, thesestudents can't, so we can bring
them into the workforce.
We also find it's very highquality and vetted for the
(26:49):
families that we run backgroundchecks on all the students, we
interview all the students butit's nice to have the assurance
that the university has alsochecked them and the university
they are currently enrolled.
Because we find that thatcreates a second incentive of
both a carrot and a stick interms of your professor knows
you're on it, your pre-healthadvisor knows you're on it and
your friends are on it.
So multiple disincentives forany kind of bad behavior
(27:12):
combined with multiple positiveincentives for good behavior,
that if you're at University ofMichigan and you do a good job
on this, you do X amount ofhours, you might get glass
credit because we like strikerelationships with these
departments, and we get you likethree credit hours for doing X
amount of caregiving.
Then, if you do a good job onthis, we will give you an
official download of your hoursand a letter of recommendation.
(27:35):
I personally have written somany letters of recommendation
to people for physicianassistant school, med school,
nurse practitioner school, etcetera.
So for the student it almostbecomes like so many reasons to
do a good job, which then Ithink, feeds back into the care
quality for the family.
So for now, yes, we'reoperating in a very constrained
way like that.
I think over time I could seeopenness to expanding to
(27:55):
community colleges andpotentially even expanding to
other people in the community.
But I think for now I want togo with quality first, and it
just seems like a great way tohave a very, very high quality.
I would be confident enough tosay right now now I've been
running it for a while I wouldnot only use this to get care
for one of my loved ones, likeif my family member is, like my
mom's, going through some healthdifficulties right now.
I would be happy to do it.
(28:16):
But we've gotten the qualitydown so well and the name on
campus is down so well that evenif we got somebody that we
didn't do any of the checks on,I still would be comfortable
just because of how manyinherent checks there are in
kind of the name and the system,which I think is like kind of
cool and I wouldn't say thatabout the traditional care
industry.
Yeah so, yeah, so I think it'sa good way to keep a high
(28:37):
quality product.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Well, I definitely think that we'll be using this
platform.
So we do, as part of our lawfirm, what we call care
navigation.
So what we found wastraditional lawyers that get
involved in this help find, youknow, some financing, help set
up things legally so that theymight be able to qualify for
government benefits, likeveterans benefits and, you know,
maximize Medicare and Medicaidthings like that.
(29:01):
But what we found was that'sreally only a very small portion
of what the family is dealingwith, kind of as you described
it earlier.
And so we've started this carenavigation, where we do care
advocacy but also helping peoplefind the care, helping them set
it up properly.
And we're definitely going tobe interacting with the Careio
(29:23):
platform, because it just soundsfantastic and you are in our
area, so we will be connectingour clients through that and
through our Careio navigationprogram.
I know one of the things thatwe had discussed before we got
on the podcast live is thatyou've been incorporating some
artificial intelligence, and I'dbe interested in hearing more
about that and how the platformuses some AI.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Oh, yeah, yeah, thanks.
So there's some, like I'd say.
There's two components of theAI that we've been incorporating
.
One is kind of the boringbehind the scenes stuff that
people don't see, but thatreally improves the care quality
.
And then there's the in front ofthe scene that people see.
So I'll start with kind of likethe boring first.
So the boring is on the backendof.
We have so much data of.
(30:07):
We've now had tens of thousandsof care sessions.
Each session has details onwhat happened in the session.
The student uploads that andreviews from zero to five stars
the family.
The family reviews zero to fivestars.
The student Please just saywe're actually averaging like
4.87 out of five stars, so it'slike very high.
But we get a lot of data onlike which people were better
(30:27):
fits, what was happening at thesession who can do what.
So as that develops, we'rebasically training the AI to
become more predictive.
That when a new family comes inand somebody books and says my
mom is like this, this, this andthis, and comes in and somebody
books and says my mom is likethis, this, this and this, and
she likes to do this and doesn'tlike to do this, we now have a
better prediction model of, okay, which of the students is
likely to make a better fit,based on who's made better fits
(30:50):
for people like that in the past.
So I think that's been like acool use of AI.
Similarly, with onboardingstudents, like we use our
qualitative judgment between youknow, beyond the background
checks and verifying enrollment,we kind of see how people are
answering questions and look fornon-monetary motivations to do
the caregiving, but nonethelesswe now have so much data on not
just who's onboarded but howthey've subsequently done and
(31:10):
been rated in the care session.
So now we can kind of likedynamically use that to
supplement our own onboarding topredict who's likely to onboard
and become a good caregiver.
Then you kind of get around.
Okay, somebody's just sayingpositive things on the interview
, but then you know how are theygoing to be reliability wise
and quality wise.
So a lot of the AI is beingused to kind of power the care,
so that's pretty cool and alsothat just kind of keeps costs
(31:33):
like very streamlined and keepsquality improved.
So I think that's awesome.
On the front end, there's a lotof AI that we're launching to
help people.
We've iterated and launched abunch of these prototype
projects, including life storycapture.
You know a lot of people wantto do legacy projects.
So while you got students therewith the older adult people
want to get their stories out.
You know, talk about theirchildhood, talk about their
(31:55):
middle age, talk about differentfun things they used to do in
their life.
And we've built AI to helpprompt questions record and then
really the dream on that wouldbe to create kind of like a
digital autobiography combinedwith like a physical
autobiography of people and thatstuff is so much easier to do
with AI.
We've launched a bunch of healthinnovation projects that we're
like right now waiting forapproval from National Institute
(32:15):
on Aging to use AI to do a lotmore diagnostics and early
screening at home so we can kindof like use voice to both
screen for dementia as well ashelp stage dementia progression,
which has been fascinating.
We grant funded a project thatwe launched to help with
loneliness and isolation, whichwe'd happy to share with you and
your listeners if you guyswould like to try it out.
(32:36):
But this is for people.
When we are caregiving, we knowthere's gaps because families
can't afford care all the time,so sometimes certain days a week
there isn't a caregiver there.
So we built a AI through ourside can call landlines and
landlines or cell phones andhave full conversation with
people.
So we noticed, for example,there's an older lady in Ohio
(32:56):
whose husband passed away a yearago and her son and daughter
are booking care for her acouple of days a week, but then
the rest of the time she's byherself and she's lonely and
they know she's isolated anddepressed, so she often has
dinner by herself and she usedto love having a conversation.
You know she's like verytalkative person, so you know
they started having you knowFrank, the person that we set up
call her and just like check inon her and have full
(33:18):
conversation with herno-transcript, but that can make
(33:48):
like a huge impact.
We launched this one sorry lastthing I'll say, this was the
most fun thing.
We launched a art AI tool thatpeople with Parkinson's and more
advanced dementia who you knowcan't fully draw but who like
creating art, it's like veryrelaxing.
So we had this 89 year old ladywith Parkinson's and full
tremors trying to draw hergolden retriever that you know,
(34:10):
was her dog a long time ago in abass and, of course, like it
wouldn't come out well, butbetween her drawing and then the
student kind of like tellingthe what she was trying to do,
they went backfilled, you know,using generative art AI, and
created like an amazing pictureand then it was just like she
felt so great that she kind ofdrew it herself, you know, even
though kind of like the AI didmost of it.
So it's like a little.
(34:30):
You know, we call that arttherapy.
So I think, yeah, there's a lotof like cool applications for
AI like that that people aren'tthinking about that can just
make like a huge positive impacton people and like and older
adults love interacting withthis new technology.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
We know from research that, especially with dementia,
part of the brain where memoryis and sometimes ability for
your brain to tell your handwhat to do, might not be there.
But some of that more artistic,you know, this is where music
comes in, this is where artcomes in and things like that
and to give an outlet forsomeone who has that.
They still have that abilitythey just can't actually do it
anymore because their braincan't tell their hand to do it
(35:10):
the way they used to do it butto use AI to be able to make it,
to use that creative part oftheir brain that they still have
.
They might not rememberspecifically what they've done
in the past even, but they know,but that that is still intact.
You'll see this with music,with art, you know all of these
more creative adventures.
That is something that is oftenstill intact with people with
(35:31):
dementia.
They're just not able toexpress that.
So that's amazing to be able toallow them to express that.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, I agree.
No, thank you, thank you, andit's.
It's so fun for us to do like.
You know we have.
We have mostly like a team oflike software people and like
that type of project.
Like we just like love doing.
Like sometimes we're up to likeone or two in the morning
working out the kinks and, youknow, just working hard to like
launch this stuff into the world.
But then because you know thatas soon as somebody uses it, the
impact is just going to beyou're going to bring joy and
(35:57):
happiness to somebody who's inotherwise very difficult
situation and I think that'slike really awesome.
Like I'm surprised more peoplearen't doing this kind of
positive stuff with AI.
But I feel like, yeah, thesocial impact to bring these
tools to help this populationthat people aren't designing
technology for, I think isawesome.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
I also am actually very excited about the part that
you say you know you can reallytry to match people better with
AI and it's very difficult todo.
I mean, this is one of thethings when we're consulting
with families.
We do a lot of work withfamilies that have a loved one
with some form of dementia orAlzheimer's, and often with
dementia there are some thingsthat they feel that it's going
(36:33):
to be problematic bringing in acaregiver, and so if you have
the technology to see how thisparticular caregiver, or a range
of caregivers, how they'veinteracted on certain issues or
how they've been able to frankly, just even dealing with
somebody with memory issues,that repeats themselves a lot
(36:55):
that's not always easy foreverybody, and so when you can
match people that are morepatient or that that can talk
about what we had one of theclients that I often will talk
about that he was showing someagitative behaviors and the
things that we eventuallyfigured out and was able to
really make that go away washe'd liked to watch and talk
(37:16):
about old Western movies oldcowboy.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
That's something that you know.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
AI can figure that kind of stuff out a lot faster,
yes.
The right people to the rightpeople.
I think that's an amazing useof the technology and could be
very helpful in really helpingpeople on a very personal level
if we can match the rightcaregivers to the right people
who need care.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
No, thanks, bob, and that's actually a great example
that you pointed out.
I think it's exactly like Ithink that AI you know, I think
sometimes the industry has thesebuzzwords where it's like
intelligence I kind of just viewit as like it's data science,
you know, like you get a ton ofraw data and you feed it into
the thing and it figures out apattern that, okay, the times
when he was calmed down werewhen he was talking about
(38:02):
Westerns, and then you kind offind, okay, through that, how
can we find either whichstudents figure that out or who
might have a natural interest inbeing more conversational and
talking about things that theydon't know about?
But yeah, you're right, like Ithink it's a, it's one big data
science project and I thinkthat's a cool thing about this
is like a you know tech firstcare company, that kind of like
built tech and is doingeverything with tech to improve
(38:23):
the care experience, is going inthere and like collecting a lot
of data and able to make senseof patterns in the data.
I'm in my forties, you know, soI don't want to sound like old
person saying this, but like,basically, today's kids are like
they were born with smartphones, you know like they're so fast
(38:47):
and nimble about using thisstuff that I think we can design
a lot of things where they cango in there and capture a lot of
like data of what's going on inthe care session and then use
that to optimize how we do care,and I think that traditionally
home-based care is not like asuper tech industry, so I think
that that's like a yeah, it's abig opportunity for like
innovation and improvement andbetter personalization of care
and I think at scale I think youknow power of AI combined with
(39:09):
like guiding people better, youcan have full personalization of
care.
You know that just so much wouldbe suited towards your own care
needs and personalized that Ithink it would just take
individual people, from astaffing perspective, forever to
figure out stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Well, neil, I appreciate everything you do.
I'm really excited about thefuture that you described and
the expansion of this.
I would recommend everybodycheck out their website,
careyayaorg, or instagramcom atwearecareyaya, and any other
thoughts that you want to leaveour audience, neil.
This has just been an amazingconversation.
I'm really excited about it andI know that we're going to be
(39:44):
interacting with this becausethis is just very innovative and
just, I think, a greatdirection for for caregiving to
go and you want to leave ourlisteners.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Thanks, bob.
And last last thing I'll say isfollow me on LinkedIn.
I share a lot of health tips,caregiving tips, a lot of stuff
about coming up with policyfederally as well as statewide
and legislation.
So, yeah, feel free to followme or connect with me on
LinkedIn.
It's Neil N-E-A-L, middleinitial K and then last name
S-H-A-H.
Or also just follow our company, careyaya C-A-R-E-Y-A-Y-A, but
(40:18):
yeah, between that and Instagramand all other social media, we
share a lot of valuableinformation.
Yeah, I would love to buildlike a community of caregivers.
Whether or not you even needcare help, you know, it's just
awesome to like inform andeducate people, because I think
that caregiving with our agingpopulation is a rising need and
there needs to be more resourcesto support caregivers.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, Thanks for the opportunity, bob Really
appreciate it.
(40:55):
Or you can find us on YouTube,but any place that you can get
podcasts, don't forget tosubscribe and know when we get
other guests that are sointeresting.
So thanks, neil, and we'll seeeverybody next time.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Thanks, Bob.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Thanks for listening.
To learn more, visitmanorlawgroupcom.
You're listening to Advice from your Advocates, a
show where we provide elder lawadvice to professionals who work
with the elderly and theirfamilies.
Welcome back to Advice fromyour Advocates.
I'm Bob Manor.
I'm a certified elder lawattorney in Michigan and I'm
very excited about our guesttoday.
It's a very interesting topic.
We've got Neil Shaw, who's CEOand co-founder of Careyaya, neil
(00:23):
, welcome.
Hey Bob.
Thanks for having me Tell us alittle bit about yourself, and
then I want to get right intotalking about Careyaya.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
Sure.
So yeah, I'm the CEO andco-founder of Careyaya.
We run a care marketplaceconnecting over 25,000 college
students to care for olderadults in their community.
All the students are pre-healthcareer aspirational doctors,
nurses, physical therapists oftomorrow, and they're doing care
(00:51):
as a way to earn some income onthe side, as well as a way to
help people in their communityand get valuable care
experiences towards futureclinical careers.
Many people around the countrycall us Care for America,
similar to Teach for America,where we're inspiring young
people to step up and solve aunmet need in society, and in
this case, the unmet need isthere's a massive shortage of
caregivers who are, you know,who are able to help people, and
(01:13):
our population is only aging,so we need more help.
So, yeah, that's kind ofKeriaya in a nutshell.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So the people that interact with this Keriaya
platform are going to be thestudents and then also the
public that needs to findcaregivers, or how does that
work?
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Yeah, so the way the Kariaya platform works is it's
similar to Uber in terms of ifyou or a loved one need care for
an aging parent or a spouse,you know, then you go onto the
platform, typically through awebsite, web app, anywhere you
have internet access and you cango on set up a profile web app
anywhere you have internetaccess and you can go on set up
a profile, mention the care youneed help with and then select
days and times and then we'llonboard you and then that care
(01:52):
opportunity will be available tostudents in your areas.
You know you guys are all overMichigan and our first Michigan
market was University ofMichigan, kind of broader Ann
Arbor area, but we are expandingto other cities across Detroit
Metro as well as the Westernpart of the state, and any
family can go to the site, bookcare, be onboarded and then have
students nearby ready to helpthem.
One of the key unique featuresis it's all booking and matching
(02:15):
and scheduling online and as aresult of that the cost is much
lower.
A traditional local elder careagency might charge 30, 35, 40
bucks an hour and you know they.
Typically the business modelwould be paying the caregiver
half In our case, you know, wecharge nothing for the service.
We're completely angel fundedand grant funded.
And then you book and useeverything through online tools
(02:37):
to find students near you andthen you just pay the student
directly.
So in most markets the care isavailable at 17 to 20 bucks an
hour.
So it's highly affordable.
And I would say final thingwould be caregiver quality.
You know, in the traditionalcare industry you might pay 35
bucks an hour but because thecompany is turning around and
paying less than half to theperson doing the care, they
typically will attract.
You know less educated peoplewho are doing this as a
full-time career and you can'tblame them.
(02:58):
But it's just like it's lowwage work that many times people
burn out of and don't want todo.
And in this case you'd get aUniversity of Michigan
pre-medical student, you know,to kind of come help you at half
the rate as traditional care.
So it's like really awesomefrom it's expanding access to
affordable care for manyfamilies who can't afford the
traditional agency based care,for people who are relying on
themselves to find caregivers.
(03:19):
This is like a do it for meoption and for people who don't
kind of have the time or theability to go recruit students
at great universities nearby.
This does it for them.
So yeah, it's a very convenientsolution.
Speaker 1 (03:29):
Yeah, that's really interesting and I want to get
more into the process therebecause that sounded quite
interesting.
So a family that's looking fora caregiver and this could be an
ongoing relationship, right, itcould end up being where you
set it up and it'll go on forthe next six months, for two
days a week or something likethat, and it could also mean
(03:51):
that that student's moving on orsomething and they'd have to
find a different student.
But that is, it is an ongoing,it's not like just a one-time
caregiver type of a situation.
Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yes, 100%, in fact.
Actually we prefer that.
The students prefer that.
You know, I think everybodybenefits when it's ongoing.
So the power users of ourplatform are people who might
need help four days a week, fivedays a week, seven days a week.
And you know, typically becausethese are students, you know
the same student might not beavailable all five days, and so
a care team develops.
So that's kind of the bestthing that we would offer is
(04:21):
that, let's say, you're somebodyliving living in like Ann Arbor
, detroit metro area and you'retaking care of your mother.
Or, frankly, let's say, you'resomebody living in Ohio and your
mother lives in, you know, theDetroit metro area.
You're worried about herremotely.
Or let's say you're somebodyliving in Ann Arbor and your
mother lives in Atlanta, youknow, I think, by the way, we,
you know we're all over thecountry, you know.
(04:45):
So you would go online, book thecare you know, book recurring
care, as you need, and then thedays and times would be in our
system and then it would findand match students that are
available.
So if you had a student at anearby university who is
available on Tuesdays andThursdays and afternoons, they
would come help you.
Then you get to leave reviewsof them.
How they did they get to leavereviews of you?
And we really prioritize longtermterm matching and
relationship building.
So we are able to offer carefive days a week and seven days
(05:07):
a week, but we also have peopleusing it a couple of days a week
, as needed, and some people arewanting different people to
come by.
They're very specific aboutjust the days and times and some
people are like, oh, I reallylike these three students that I
met and I want to have them aspart of our care team.
So it's pretty flexible andpeople can use it, you know,
however they want to.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
So tell me more about the payment process.
So they're not paying throughthe consumer, the family is not
paying through the website,they're paying the person
directly.
Is that what I heard?
Yes, 100%.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
Yeah, and we set it up that way, you know, in our
early days.
We've now been around foralmost three years.
In our early days we wereprocessing the payment through
our site but we found that thepayment processing companies
were taking four or 5% of thatcut and we were just like, well,
we don't need to make moneyourselves.
So we're like why are all thesefamilies just wasting the money
(05:55):
?
So we switch it to person toperson because it's free.
So if people most people, Iwould say use Venmo, venmo P2P
is free, so there's no fees.
And then people are also ableto do cash or check or other
methods, like Zelle, as theywant.
But we found person to personmethods are, you know, you can
get around a transaction fee.
And then most families it'sbeneficial for them.
And then students it's like,okay, it's just like they
(06:15):
receive the income instead ofkind of a middleman taking it
out.
So it's convenient for everyone.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
I believe there's a lot of skeptical people in the
world, so I'd like to get intothe details.
So you know the old sayingfollow the money.
So when we follow the money, Iheard, I think I heard and I
want to kind of clarify thisthat Carriaya is funded by some
angel investors.
Right, yes?
And is there profit being madeby Carriaya?
(06:42):
Where do they get figured intothe financial arrangement?
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, great question.
So currently no profit beingmade.
I think we hope at some pointwe can make it sustainable.
But initial funding and I cantell you you know, as you kind
of get into the interview, youknow my own personal story but
initially it was just likefunding it myself.
I was bootstrapping it becauseI had a previously successful
career in finance and I actuallyhad become a caregiver in my
mid thirties and I saw howbroken the home care market was.
So initially it was just kindof like a passion project.
(07:08):
So I was like, okay, well, canI fund, you know, build some
technology and deliver somethingcool that can help a lot of
people and then just go off anddo something else and make it
kind of just like survive on itsown.
As that movement grew, we wereattracted or actually we
attracted a bunch of retiredhealthcare executives so retired
doctors, chiefs of largedepartments at hospitals,
healthcare executives who cameup and said, hey, I'll just put
(07:34):
some of my retirement money withyou guys because I want you to
hire a team of people and reallyscale it.
So we started scaling.
But thankfully, when you kindof find very social mission
aligned investors like that,they were basically like quasi
funding a nonprofit, where theywere just like I want you to do
something good and if it everbecomes sustainable, great, I'll
earn a return on it.
But I don't really care aboutthe return start part.
I care about, like, doing theright thing.
And then the decision makingfrom us and them was in order to
(07:57):
attract very talented youngpeople who don't have a lot of
savings.
They would rather work for atechnology startup.
You know like you can't findthe best software developer at
University of Michigan is notgoing to join a nonprofit.
So we're like, okay, let's makeit a technology startup, stay
true to the social mission andnot monetize off families or
take money from caregiverspockets.
So we did that and then afterthat got going, after the second
year of us being around, westarted getting a lot of grants.
(08:19):
So there is a tremendous amountof money at the National
Institute on Aging that is thenalso through partnerships with
universities being kind of like,given out to innovation
companies that are making animpact on advancing care for the
older adult population.
So, pleased to say, we've won agrant from Johns Hopkins, one
from National Institute on Agingand also a grant from Atrium
Health, which is one of thelargest hospital systems in the
(08:41):
country.
So through this combination offunding we're able to kind of
keep not only sustaining buteven rapidly growing the service
.
And then, of course, I think atsome point we'll have to make a
decision on is there aindefinite amount of national
and Sudan aging funding which Ibelieve there is, because it
keeps growing every year or willwe have to pivot to find social
impact investors?
(09:02):
I do believe if we can pull itoff, the vision and the mission
is free to consumer forever andthen find another way to make it
sustainable.
And I believe a lot of thetailwinds are in our favor.
Medicare is starting to doinnovation programs, starting to
pay for in-home care, and we'retalking to a couple of large
hospitals about partnering withthem on the dementia guide
program and there, if we getthat partnership, the rate that
(09:23):
Medicare is set would be nicelyprofitable for us, which would
be awesome because you can makeit sustain on that and then run
a free consumer business throughthis.
There are a lot of workforcedevelopment programs reaching
out to us, wanting to train andupskill the students even
further to prepare them forfuture healthcare careers, so
that could be kind of amonetization opportunity.
So I think it's a little bitharder in the early days to do
it this way, but I think longerterm you can build a more
(09:46):
elegant product similar to like,let's say, google.
You know, like everybody getsGoogle search for free but then
they're kind of monetizingthrough advertising.
That's one way of doing it.
But if you had to pay each timefor a Google search, you know
the cost would add up becausethey're spending five, six cents
every time somebody's searching, but it's like just a great
public benefit.
So I think in this case youknow our expenses we are able to
keep low enough.
But it would be nice if, likeindefinitely through grant
(10:08):
funding and through otherpartnerships with Medicare,
you're able to keep the basicconsumer care matching.
And I believe that it's a smallthing but in the psychology of
the caregiving experience itmakes a huge impact in the
(10:31):
positive attitude that bothpeople feel towards it and,
frankly, the negative attitudethat people feel in the
traditional care industry whenthey fork over 35 bucks and then
the person you know thecaregiver doing 99% of the work
gets lots in half.
Both sides are sour in thattransaction.
Speaker 1 (10:44):
Yeah, absolutely, and I think that's an important
conversation that you just had,because I think people want to
have a good understanding of howthis all works and is their
caregiver getting paid enough,you know, to attract the right
care, good caregivers, thingslike that.
And the conversation that youreally made it clear for
everybody is this is bigger thanjust that transaction.
(11:07):
This is a mission.
This is a bigger picture andyou're really looking through
the length of it, the long viewof this, and I think that's
going to be very important forthe listeners to know this isn't
just something that is, youknow, a small option, or that.
You're looking to really growthis and you've set everything
(11:30):
up in the way this will be along term solution no-transcript
(12:06):
means the user experience inthe care market sucks all around
, you know, because of thestructure of the industry.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
You know because it's this kind of national franchise
or local franchisee industrybecause they're profit
maximizing for small geographicmarkets, because there's this
antiquated 1980s and 1990sbusiness model that results in
very high prices and very littleless than half being passed
down to the underlying careworker.
You have this break in theentire system, that tremendous
amount of money that's wasted onsales and marketing,
(12:34):
advertising buying Facebook ads,google ads, newspaper ads.
I mean it's just a ridiculouslyinefficient economic structure
that then results in like a poorcustomer experience and a poor
experience for the caregiver too, you know.
So then everybody's complainingabout caregiver shortage and
I'm like, well, there aren'tlogical caregiver shortage.
There's caregiver shortagebecause the current industry
sucks.
You know, like if you developeda different system there would
(12:54):
be not unlimited, but therewould be a lot more people
caregiving like single handedly,like a team of five of us.
You know, at this relativelyearlier stage, startup has
gotten twenty five thousand newcaregivers across America into
the system.
So talk about what caregivershortage is.
You know, I'm not seeing any.
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, and it is interesting,and even not just home
caregiving, but care, you know,caregiving facilities, assisted
living, nursing homes inparticular, are arguing or
saying that there's a shortage,that they can't fill the
positions that they want.
And you know, on one hand, Ivery much appreciate the
(13:30):
revolutionary approach that youhave, and this is a great way to
start to look at solutions.
Criticize so much the old wayeither because that's that is
the way I mean most people ifthey're going to get into this
business and run.
You know we have a number ofhome giving companies that were
just started by families and ofcourse there's a lot of
(13:51):
franchises too.
But the idea is, you reallyhave a big picture idea, and so
the other ones are still goingto be around.
Maybe they'll find ways toinnovate and things like that.
I agree with you that thesystem isn't great for that, but
it is the system, so I can'tcriticize them for being part of
the system that exists.
(14:12):
I also like the idea of movingtowards a better system and
finding this innovation, andthat's what you're providing.
You're really rethinking thewhole model that's around home
caregiving.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, 100% agree and you're 100% right.
I mean every individual that Imet.
I met a lot of home care agencyowner operators and they are
all kindhearted, mission-drivenpeople, 95 plus percent of them.
Something happened to them likewhat happened to me, and they
left behind another career totake care of someone and then
after that they were drawn bythe mission, or many would call
it a calling.
(14:45):
I certainly would you know if,like okay, things happen in my
life for a reason that are verypainful, very traumatic, but you
know, you kind of, you knowreframe it as like okay, maybe
this is my calling and I foundit midway through my life.
So I think most of the peopleI've met are like, very
well-intentioned people and theones that go into the franchise
system it's the system wins.
You know that they don't win,you know they can't do it their
way and the ones that are doingit independently I mean God
(15:06):
bless them, you know, because Ithink they have a lot of leeway
to do it a different way andexperiment and test different
business models, and I thinkmany of them will end up, you
know, designing things that aremore unique and more kind of
user friendly.
But I think the franchise partof the system constrains the
individual's creative abilityand ability to kind of solve the
needs on the ground, and thenthey just kind of have to
(15:27):
execute against what thefranchise says and I think that
that that to me, that limits theinnovation that should be
happening on the ground.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, that makes sense.
I wanted to get into how youcame to this, because this is
more than just a job for you.
Obviously You've given up otherwork and this is really a
mission for you.
So what brought you to this andwhat is your background?
Speaker 2 (15:47):
Yeah, yeah, sure, great question.
So my background prior to thisI'm in my early 40s right now
and from my early 20s until mymid 30s I was living in New York
City.
I was working in the financeindustry.
I started my career ininvestment banking at a large
bank, credit Suisse, and then Ivery quickly went into the hedge
fund industry where I wasmanaging investments across a
(16:08):
series of sectors, includinghealthcare, technology and
others.
I rose up the ladder veryquickly due to good investments
and high returns and became apartner in my late 20s at a
multi-billion dollar fund whereI was running an entire
portfolio.
And then by my early 30s, oneof those investors backed me to
start my own fund.
So when I was 31, I started myown investment fund with 10
(16:29):
million and by the time I was 35, I grew that to 250 million,
had university endowments andlarge shareable foundations
investing with me and I wasinvesting in more like kind of
like mid-stage and maturecompanies across, you know, kind
of multiple industries.
But healthcare was a decentfocus.
You know, had nothing happenedto me, I would have just stayed
on that track.
You know I was good at it, Ilike doing it.
But I would say in hindsight,you know there was not much of a
(16:49):
mission or calling, it was justkind of I was analytically good
at thinking about businessesand seeing trends in the economy
.
However, you know, fortunatelyor unfortunately, I became a
caregiver.
You know, I first secondhandsaw the experience when my
grandfather aged and then becameseverely ill and had a series
of difficulties, from cognitivedecline to kidney failure, to
(17:12):
cancer and then to end of life,and you know I'm the person in
my family that everybody relieson for research and advice.
So while my mom bore the bruntof the direct care work, I
navigated the entire kind ofcare ecosystem, including both
healthcare, clinical care aswell as like home-based, and I
kind of realized like one of thebig insights I had from that
experience was, you know, 95% ofkind of the care work is
(17:33):
outside of the healthcare systemthat the family ends up having
to deal with, and that's theharder part where there aren't a
lot of resources.
So you know, in my mom's case atthat time she was in her mid
fifties and she had a career andshe had to leave her career to
manage the care because, like,the care we were getting was not
good enough and you know shefelt like, hey, this is my duty,
and you know we all thought itwas going to be like temporary,
(18:01):
et cetera.
And then she was never able togo back to the workforce and I
kind of realized, like that tome was like an aha, that okay,
if this industry cannot supportfamilies when they're going
through this difficult time,you're gonna have a lot of
people burning out of theworkforce, losing a significant
sense of their identity, dealingwith a lot of stuff without
getting help, and it's gonnaleave lasting damage.
So at that time I was stillrunning my fund and I became
(18:23):
kind of like obsessed with likethe care economy and why isn't
there more innovation happening?
And you know, then,unfortunately, at the peak of my
fund, my wife became severelyill and went through years of
serious illness, cancer,multiple hospitalizations and
failed therapies and I becameher primary caregiver and it was
like a very, very difficultexperience because I also
firsthand dealt with.
You know, you can't get goodcare help you end up doing it
yourself.
I ended up taking a bunch ofsabbaticals for my work, which
(18:46):
at that point just became kindof like after a while it became
untenable.
We kind of like were flying allover the country to get
treatment, includingsignificantly, at Michigan
Medicine.
(19:22):
No-transcript.
On the family caregiver, Ithink I learned things and
experienced things myself that Iwould have never guessed before
.
But one in four familycaregivers deals gets their own
health issue because of thestress of caregiving.
One in three family caregiversgets their own mental health
issue.
So both physical and mentalhealth, you know it becomes
extremely taxing and I thinkthat they're the ignored part of
(19:45):
you know kind of the experience, because the person with the
issue is what the entire medicalsystem is focusing on.
But what about the persontaking care of that person?
So, yeah, I thought that it waslike really eye opening and
after that point, you know, I'dkind of like walked away for my
fund and I was kind of likethinking, okay, and thank God,
knock on wood, I didn't finishthe story but my wife ultimately
had a successful outcome andhas now been in remission for a
few years.
You know, even moremiraculously, we had our first
(20:08):
child after the whole experience.
So we have a happy, healthythree-year-old daughter, which
you know they said wasstatistically impossible.
So really thankful for that.
And then after that I was justlike I could either just go back
to my finance career, but I'dkind of like lost meaning in
that.
And then I'd gained a newmeaning of like, hey, there's
something here that needs to befixed.
Um, I have like skills andbackground and like, um, a
(20:29):
passionate interest in this.
So you know, why not just tryto fix this?
So that was kind of the journey.
And in the early days ofstarting out I thought I was
going to do something for acouple of years, make an impact
and then kind of go back to whatI knew how to do.
But seeing the growing impactand seeing the positive feedback
from the families robbing, Ithink, has gotten me like way
more excited that, wow, there'slike something here that could
(20:49):
make a huge like impact aroundthe country.
So yeah now I'm like all in.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
That's great.
Now where were your first?
So you kind of center arounduniversities and then go where
were your first entries into it?
I know that you're in Ann Arborand Detroit.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
Where did you start out?
So I'm based in Raleigh Durham.
North Carolina, and our firstentries were in our backyard at
Duke University and UNC Chapel.
Speaker 1 (21:13):
Hill, and so we started there, no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
So we ended up at Harvard, tufts, northeastern
Boston University there's likeseven different universities in
the Boston area.
We ended up going all overFlorida and Texas at several
very large schools University ofMichigan, of course, and of
course, the rival Ohio State.
You know these like biguniversities have like large
healthcare focused populationsand it's awesome.
You know the students weretelling each other and really
the professors were telling eachother.
(22:12):
You know a lot of theseuniversities have what's called
pre-health career advising.
Anyone who wants to become adoctor, become a nurse, become a
physician assistant, theundergraduate university
departments will advise them onlike what else you can do to
improve your career path andopportunities.
And I think the career advisorslove the Career AI platform
because they were like this is agreat way for students to get
(22:33):
paid experience at flexiblehours.
They don't have to wait tillsummer, they don't have to wait
till after graduation to getthis experience.
So we started really partneringwith a lot of these departments
and had several presentationswith the University of Michigan
Career Advising and then theystarted kind of endorsing and
recommending the service.
So yeah, now and then we'realso expanding to the West Coast
.
We're at Stanford, berkeley,ucla, a bunch of universities
across California.
So, yeah, now we have over25,000 students on it and, yeah,
(22:56):
it's growing very fast.
An interesting statistic acrossAmerica is that there's 20
million college students, ofwhich something like 18% of them
or so want to go intohealthcare professions.
So let's just use a roundnumber around 4 million, and
Kariaya is getting 20 to 25%market share of those at most
universities when they expand.
So if we can get this right ata grand scale level, you could
(23:19):
have up to a million students onthis.
So that's kind of like cool tothink, because most of these
people are not in the careeconomy otherwise.
At a time, when there's hugeworkforce shortages, to have
some way of getting a millionnew people into the care
workforce, even if it's going tobe temporary, you know, for a
few years, and I would say someof the best people in the
(23:52):
workforce.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
you know these are people who are going to be
future doctors and nurses.
That would be just, I think, ahome run for society, and so
what a great opportunity to havethese future, you know, doctors
, nurses, physicians, assistants, that have that home caregiving
experience which is the mostpersonal, the most intimate type
of care and that they probablywouldn same requirements of that
(24:22):
traditional industry and havingthat experience, that human
experience, before they get tothe, you know, the next stage in
their career.
I think that's just amazing andreally is encouraging of the
idea that there's so many people, so many students, that are
excited about this.
Speaker 2 (24:39):
Yeah, great point, bob.
I mean thanks for highlightingthat.
We just had this wonderfulyoung man, josh, who got into
med school and he's on his wayto becoming an orthopedic
surgeon and he literally wrotehis essays about the care that
he provided for a family wherethe gentleman was living with
Parkinson's.
And it was interesting becausethe guy did everything.
He did rounds at the hospital,he was a nurse aide and all that
stuff.
But his observation was in a lotof the clinical work you're in
(25:02):
and out, you know five minutes,10 minutes, change the IV, do
this, do this, do this, but youdon't really get to know the
people.
And when you take care of thesame man living with Parkinson's
for six months and you'revisiting him twice a week and
you're seeing all the stuff hiswife's dealing with, you're
seeing his condition progressover time.
You're seeing kind of like theemotional toll as well as the
physical toll and you're seeinglike the moments of happiness
(25:23):
and developing a long termrelationship.
It's like that shines and Ithink that develops like an
amazing bedside manner.
And for many of the studentsit's like you know they are so
stressed with like I got to hitall the biology classes, get the
grades, take my standardizedtests, go do rounds at the
hospital.
This is like the fun, positivething where, like you know, one
(25:49):
of the students at Tufts wrotean essay in her school paper
about this that I was about toburn out of my clinical career
journey because it's sostressful and it's so impersonal
.
That then taking care of aolder lady in her community in
Boston through Keriaya remindedher of like this is actually why
I want to go become a doctor.
You know, it's like I have fiveyears ahead of me of all this
stress, but ultimately I want tomake an impact like this.
So I think that a lot of times,like as medicine becomes like
(26:09):
overly complex, I think you losethat human touch and I think
that kind of results in likepeople not want to do it anymore
.
So I think, yeah, somethinglike this is like great to
encourage people to stick withit.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
So for the caregivers that use your platform?
Do they have to be a student?
Speaker 2 (26:28):
They have to be associated with one of the
schools that you work with.
Yeah, great question For now.
Yes, you know, for now I thinkwe want to go for, like you know
, it's a high quality workforcethat the traditional care
industry doesn't want, you know.
So I don't want to like kind ofcreate you know it's not a zero
sum game I don't want tocompete and I think most care
agencies are looking for peoplewho can do full-time care work.
So we're like, hey look, thesestudents can't, so we can bring
them into the workforce.
We also find it's very highquality and vetted for the
(26:49):
families that we run backgroundchecks on all the students, we
interview all the students butit's nice to have the assurance
that the university has alsochecked them and the university
they are currently enrolled.
Because we find that thatcreates a second incentive of
both a carrot and a stick interms of your professor knows
you're on it, your pre-healthadvisor knows you're on it and
your friends are on it.
So multiple disincentives forany kind of bad behavior
(27:12):
combined with multiple positiveincentives for good behavior,
that if you're at University ofMichigan and you do a good job
on this, you do X amount ofhours, you might get glass
credit because we like strikerelationships with these
departments, and we get you likethree credit hours for doing X
amount of caregiving.
Then, if you do a good job onthis, we will give you an
official download of your hoursand a letter of recommendation.
(27:35):
I personally have written somany letters of recommendation
to people for physicianassistant school, med school,
nurse practitioner school, etcetera.
So for the student it almostbecomes like so many reasons to
do a good job, which then Ithink, feeds back into the care
quality for the family.
So for now, yes, we'reoperating in a very constrained
way like that.
I think over time I could seeopenness to expanding to
(27:55):
community colleges andpotentially even expanding to
other people in the community.
But I think for now I want togo with quality first, and it
just seems like a great way tohave a very, very high quality.
I would be confident enough tosay right now now I've been
running it for a while I wouldnot only use this to get care
for one of my loved ones, likeif my family member is, like my
mom's, going through some healthdifficulties right now.
I would be happy to do it.
(28:16):
But we've gotten the qualitydown so well and the name on
campus is down so well that evenif we got somebody that we
didn't do any of the checks on,I still would be comfortable
just because of how manyinherent checks there are in
kind of the name and the system,which I think is like kind of
cool and I wouldn't say thatabout the traditional care
industry.
Yeah so, yeah, so I think it'sa good way to keep a high
(28:37):
quality product.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
Well, I definitely think that we'll be using this
platform.
So we do, as part of our lawfirm, what we call care
navigation.
So what we found wastraditional lawyers that get
involved in this help find, youknow, some financing, help set
up things legally so that theymight be able to qualify for
government benefits, likeveterans benefits and, you know,
maximize Medicare and Medicaidthings like that.
(29:01):
But what we found was that'sreally only a very small portion
of what the family is dealingwith, kind of as you described
it earlier.
And so we've started this carenavigation, where we do care
advocacy but also helping peoplefind the care, helping them set
it up properly.
And we're definitely going tobe interacting with the Careio
(29:23):
platform, because it just soundsfantastic and you are in our
area, so we will be connectingour clients through that and
through our Careio navigationprogram.
I know one of the things thatwe had discussed before we got
on the podcast live is thatyou've been incorporating some
artificial intelligence, and I'dbe interested in hearing more
about that and how the platformuses some AI.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Oh, yeah, yeah, thanks.
So there's some, like I'd say.
There's two components of theAI that we've been incorporating
.
One is kind of the boringbehind the scenes stuff that
people don't see, but thatreally improves the care quality
.
And then there's the in front ofthe scene that people see.
So I'll start with kind of likethe boring first.
So the boring is on the backendof.
We have so much data of.
(30:07):
We've now had tens of thousandsof care sessions.
Each session has details onwhat happened in the session.
The student uploads that andreviews from zero to five stars
the family.
The family reviews zero to fivestars.
The student Please just saywe're actually averaging like
4.87 out of five stars, so it'slike very high.
But we get a lot of data onlike which people were better
(30:27):
fits, what was happening at thesession who can do what.
So as that develops, we'rebasically training the AI to
become more predictive.
That when a new family comes inand somebody books and says my
mom is like this, this, this andthis, and comes in and somebody
books and says my mom is likethis, this, this and this, and
she likes to do this and doesn'tlike to do this, we now have a
better prediction model of, okay, which of the students is
likely to make a better fit,based on who's made better fits
(30:50):
for people like that in the past.
So I think that's been like acool use of AI.
Similarly, with onboardingstudents, like we use our
qualitative judgment between youknow, beyond the background
checks and verifying enrollment,we kind of see how people are
answering questions and look fornon-monetary motivations to do
the caregiving, but nonethelesswe now have so much data on not
just who's onboarded but howthey've subsequently done and
(31:10):
been rated in the care session.
So now we can kind of likedynamically use that to
supplement our own onboarding topredict who's likely to onboard
and become a good caregiver.
Then you kind of get around.
Okay, somebody's just sayingpositive things on the interview
, but then you know how are theygoing to be reliability wise
and quality wise.
So a lot of the AI is beingused to kind of power the care,
so that's pretty cool and alsothat just kind of keeps costs
(31:33):
like very streamlined and keepsquality improved.
So I think that's awesome.
On the front end, there's a lotof AI that we're launching to
help people.
We've iterated and launched abunch of these prototype
projects, including life storycapture.
You know a lot of people wantto do legacy projects.
So while you got students therewith the older adult people
want to get their stories out.
You know, talk about theirchildhood, talk about their
(31:55):
middle age, talk about differentfun things they used to do in
their life.
And we've built AI to helpprompt questions record and then
really the dream on that wouldbe to create kind of like a
digital autobiography combinedwith like a physical
autobiography of people and thatstuff is so much easier to do
with AI.
We've launched a bunch of healthinnovation projects that we're
like right now waiting forapproval from National Institute
(32:15):
on Aging to use AI to do a lotmore diagnostics and early
screening at home so we can kindof like use voice to both
screen for dementia as well ashelp stage dementia progression,
which has been fascinating.
We grant funded a project thatwe launched to help with
loneliness and isolation, whichwe'd happy to share with you and
your listeners if you guyswould like to try it out.
(32:36):
But this is for people.
When we are caregiving, we knowthere's gaps because families
can't afford care all the time,so sometimes certain days a week
there isn't a caregiver there.
So we built a AI through ourside can call landlines and
landlines or cell phones andhave full conversation with
people.
So we noticed, for example,there's an older lady in Ohio
(32:56):
whose husband passed away a yearago and her son and daughter
are booking care for her acouple of days a week, but then
the rest of the time she's byherself and she's lonely and
they know she's isolated anddepressed, so she often has
dinner by herself and she usedto love having a conversation.
You know she's like verytalkative person, so you know
they started having you knowFrank, the person that we set up
call her and just like check inon her and have full
(33:18):
conversation with herno-transcript, but that can make
(33:48):
like a huge impact.
We launched this one sorry lastthing I'll say, this was the
most fun thing.
We launched a art AI tool thatpeople with Parkinson's and more
advanced dementia who you knowcan't fully draw but who like
creating art, it's like veryrelaxing.
So we had this 89 year old ladywith Parkinson's and full
tremors trying to draw hergolden retriever that you know,
(34:10):
was her dog a long time ago in abass and, of course, like it
wouldn't come out well, butbetween her drawing and then the
student kind of like tellingthe what she was trying to do,
they went backfilled, you know,using generative art AI, and
created like an amazing pictureand then it was just like she
felt so great that she kind ofdrew it herself, you know, even
though kind of like the AI didmost of it.
So it's like a little.
(34:30):
You know, we call that arttherapy.
So I think, yeah, there's a lotof like cool applications for
AI like that that people aren'tthinking about that can just
make like a huge positive impacton people and like and older
adults love interacting withthis new technology.
Speaker 1 (34:46):
We know from research that, especially with dementia,
part of the brain where memoryis and sometimes ability for
your brain to tell your handwhat to do, might not be there.
But some of that more artistic,you know, this is where music
comes in, this is where artcomes in and things like that
and to give an outlet forsomeone who has that.
They still have that abilitythey just can't actually do it
anymore because their braincan't tell their hand to do it
(35:10):
the way they used to do it butto use AI to be able to make it,
to use that creative part oftheir brain that they still have
.
They might not rememberspecifically what they've done
in the past even, but they know,but that that is still intact.
You'll see this with music,with art, you know all of these
more creative adventures.
That is something that is oftenstill intact with people with
(35:31):
dementia.
They're just not able toexpress that.
So that's amazing to be able toallow them to express that.
Speaker 2 (35:37):
Yeah, I agree.
No, thank you, thank you, andit's.
It's so fun for us to do like.
You know we have.
We have mostly like a team oflike software people and like
that type of project.
Like we just like love doing.
Like sometimes we're up to likeone or two in the morning
working out the kinks and, youknow, just working hard to like
launch this stuff into the world.
But then because you know thatas soon as somebody uses it, the
impact is just going to beyou're going to bring joy and
(35:57):
happiness to somebody who's inotherwise very difficult
situation and I think that'slike really awesome.
Like I'm surprised more peoplearen't doing this kind of
positive stuff with AI.
But I feel like, yeah, thesocial impact to bring these
tools to help this populationthat people aren't designing
technology for, I think isawesome.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
I also am actually very excited about the part that
you say you know you can reallytry to match people better with
AI and it's very difficult todo.
I mean, this is one of thethings when we're consulting
with families.
We do a lot of work withfamilies that have a loved one
with some form of dementia orAlzheimer's, and often with
dementia there are some thingsthat they feel that it's going
(36:33):
to be problematic bringing in acaregiver, and so if you have
the technology to see how thisparticular caregiver, or a range
of caregivers, how they'veinteracted on certain issues or
how they've been able to frankly, just even dealing with
somebody with memory issues,that repeats themselves a lot
(36:55):
that's not always easy foreverybody, and so when you can
match people that are morepatient or that that can talk
about what we had one of theclients that I often will talk
about that he was showing someagitative behaviors and the
things that we eventuallyfigured out and was able to
really make that go away washe'd liked to watch and talk
(37:16):
about old Western movies oldcowboy.
Speaker 2 (37:19):
That's something that you know.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
AI can figure that kind of stuff out a lot faster,
yes.
The right people to the rightpeople.
I think that's an amazing useof the technology and could be
very helpful in really helpingpeople on a very personal level
if we can match the rightcaregivers to the right people
who need care.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
No, thanks, bob, and that's actually a great example
that you pointed out.
I think it's exactly like Ithink that AI you know, I think
sometimes the industry has thesebuzzwords where it's like
intelligence I kind of just viewit as like it's data science,
you know, like you get a ton ofraw data and you feed it into
the thing and it figures out apattern that, okay, the times
when he was calmed down werewhen he was talking about
(38:02):
Westerns, and then you kind offind, okay, through that, how
can we find either whichstudents figure that out or who
might have a natural interest inbeing more conversational and
talking about things that theydon't know about?
But yeah, you're right, like Ithink it's a, it's one big data
science project and I thinkthat's a cool thing about this
is like a you know tech firstcare company, that kind of like
built tech and is doingeverything with tech to improve
(38:23):
the care experience, is going inthere and like collecting a lot
of data and able to make senseof patterns in the data.
I'm in my forties, you know, soI don't want to sound like old
person saying this, but like,basically, today's kids are like
they were born with smartphones, you know like they're so fast
(38:47):
and nimble about using thisstuff that I think we can design
a lot of things where they cango in there and capture a lot of
like data of what's going on inthe care session and then use
that to optimize how we do care,and I think that traditionally
home-based care is not like asuper tech industry, so I think
that that's like a yeah, it's abig opportunity for like
innovation and improvement andbetter personalization of care
and I think at scale I think youknow power of AI combined with
(39:09):
like guiding people better, youcan have full personalization of
care.
You know that just so much wouldbe suited towards your own care
needs and personalized that Ithink it would just take
individual people, from astaffing perspective, forever to
figure out stuff.
Speaker 1 (39:21):
Well, neil, I appreciate everything you do.
I'm really excited about thefuture that you described and
the expansion of this.
I would recommend everybodycheck out their website,
careyayaorg, or instagramcom atwearecareyaya, and any other
thoughts that you want to leaveour audience, neil.
This has just been an amazingconversation.
I'm really excited about it andI know that we're going to be
(39:44):
interacting with this becausethis is just very innovative and
just, I think, a greatdirection for for caregiving to
go and you want to leave ourlisteners.
Speaker 2 (39:55):
Thanks, bob.
And last last thing I'll say isfollow me on LinkedIn.
I share a lot of health tips,caregiving tips, a lot of stuff
about coming up with policyfederally as well as statewide
and legislation.
So, yeah, feel free to followme or connect with me on
LinkedIn.
It's Neil N-E-A-L, middleinitial K and then last name
S-H-A-H.
Or also just follow our company, careyaya C-A-R-E-Y-A-Y-A, but
(40:18):
yeah, between that and Instagramand all other social media, we
share a lot of valuableinformation.
Yeah, I would love to buildlike a community of caregivers.
Whether or not you even needcare help, you know, it's just
awesome to like inform andeducate people, because I think
that caregiving with our agingpopulation is a rising need and
there needs to be more resourcesto support caregivers.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
Yeah, Thanks for the opportunity, bob Really
appreciate it.
(40:55):
Or you can find us on YouTube,but any place that you can get
podcasts, don't forget tosubscribe and know when we get
other guests that are sointeresting.
So thanks, neil, and we'll seeeverybody next time.
Speaker 2 (41:09):
Thanks, Bob.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Thanks for listening.
To learn more, visitmanorlawgroupcom.
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