Real-World AI in Senior Living: Insights from Dr. Carol McKinley

In this episode, Melissa Brown sits down with Dr. Carol McKinley, President and CEO of Simpson Senior Services, for a powerful conversation about how senior living providers can use AI to revolutionize care delivery.

Dr. McKinley shares her deeply personal journey into senior care, the inspiration behind her passion for innovation, and how Simpson is using AMBA’s passive AI monitoring to spot critical health changes before they become emergencies.

You’ll hear how this technology is:

• Reducing falls and hospital visits
• Supporting frontline staff through real-time alerts
• Improving family communication and resident confidence
• Making data meaningful—even for non-clinical leaders

Plus, learn how Simpson’s unique Tech Bar is empowering residents to take ownership of their health and wellbeing through hands-on access to smart health tools.

If you’ve been burned by AI that promised everything and delivered little, this episode will restore your faith in what’s possible when technology is built for senior care instead of added onto it.

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:00

Welcome.

SPEAKER_00: 0:11

You're listening to Gravity Healthcare Hacks with your host, Melissa Brown, Chief Operating Officer from Gravity Healthcare Consulting and self-professed healthcare nerd. Monthly, we will provide industry expertise and tips to help keep your feet firmly on the ground in the world of healthcare.

SPEAKER_02: 0:29

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our podcast today. I am thrilled to have Dr. Carol McKinley on our podcast today. She's the president and CEO of Simpson, a senior living community in Pennsylvania. Welcome, Dr. McKinley. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. So, you know, Carol, I recently heard you talk for the first time and I could not get the things that you said out of my mind. I actually had to go back and listen to that talk again. I'm blown away by what you're doing and how you're using AI to really turn the care continuum upside down. But I want to talk about all that in just a minute, but I think it's helpful for the listeners. Level set for us. Let us know, how did you get here at Simpson? What's your journey been like? So,

SPEAKER_01: 1:11

gosh, you know, I feel old in this space. I've been in my field for over 35 years. And every time I say that, it's, you know... It's a long time, and I have always, from a young age, desired to work for older adults, with older adults, and that was stemmed from my father. My dad was a minister, and he spent time serving the elderly. I went out with him on several occasions to visit with him in nursing homes. I play guitar, so I would help my dad with music, and I watched him and what he did, and I modeled myself after him in terms of the care that he provided to these people. their dignity, humanity, the value that they had. And I really enjoyed hearing what they would share with my dad. And then I would just start my own questioning. So I think you know in your heart when you are pulled some direction. And I really felt that that became a calling for me to be with older adults. I only had one grandmother. And she lived in she lived about five hours or so from us. And we didn't see her that often. But I went to college in the same town where she lived. I didn't live with her, but I would go over and help. her do things. I went to church with her every Sunday. She always made dinner for me, but I got to know her surrounding friends. And again, same kinds of conversations that I learned from my dad in terms of who these people were and what they, what their lives were like and what, you know, they all had different needs, you know, just I would get, I would go, Get groceries, not like, you know, like get groceries. I might help paint. I help my grandmother paint her porch. Just things that, you know, as a college student, you wouldn't necessarily feel like you would be doing. But I love that. I loved feeling needed. But I also love the fact that they shared so many great stories with me of what their life was like as a younger person. And I think that that just helps evolve you. in terms of what was life like before you were around and what did you miss and what we take for granted they didn't have. So it was a very, very important time for me in terms of who I was. And that's why I decided to go into seeking an education that had to do with working with older

SPEAKER_02: 3:54

adults. Absolutely. I love how you talk about it being almost like a ministry to you. I feel the same way about it, being able to touch so many humans' lives that unfortunately can tend to be left behind by other people. And it's interesting, once you catch the elder bug and you just love engaging with elders, like it sticks, you know, you want to continue to have that in your life. So, you know, I think those of us that really have a personal passion for senior care are the ones really trying to innovate and do things in a different way. What are you doing that's really unique at Simpson?

SPEAKER_01: 4:34

So I think we all work to try to provide quality care. And how do we go about doing that? In my world, for me, it's trying to help make something better before it actually becomes a problem. You know, my parents... My mother's still living. She's 99 years old and she has cognitive impairment. My dad passed away in his early 90s with COVID. But as I watched my parents age and they were living at home for a really long time. I found it, first of all, the town that they lived in, it was very challenging to find resources to help support the care that they required. My dad had advanced Parkinson's, and he was affected by movement, not typical Parkinson's. You might see someone with tremors. My dad really could not move. I was five hours away, and sometimes he would call me and say, Carol, I can't get off the couch. So I'm thinking, I'm five hours away, and my mom's sitting at the other end of the And she would be the kind of in her thought process, well, just get up, you know. So in thinking about what I wanted for what we do here at Simpson is how do I have an impact so that we don't get to this point where someone is in a stressful situation? that eventually may need them to go to a hospital emergency room. And my dad hated going to an emergency room. I probably like the rest of us. He knew that they were going to say, we got to run a bunch of tests. And that was really not what he wanted. So I've always been looking at ways to how do we help our staff be more thoughtful as to how they, um, view our residents and assess our residents, and how do we help our families engage in that process, and how do we help our residents have some control over that? Because that's the other problem, because when you're in your 80s and 90s, we automatically tend to want to take care of them and forget that they need a boost in this process, that they get anxious and they worry, and they want to tell their story about what's going on. So So part of that is helping to, here at Simpson, teach our teams how you talk about that, how you pick up on that, you know, from a subjective manner. You know, you teach people how to see pain. You teach people how to pick up on discomfort by how someone may be moving in their chair. But the other part of that is what kind of technology is out there that helps support that, that can really build help the staff go from a subjective thought process to a stronger critical thinking process. You know, in our world, and as I can remember when I was much younger, our education really pushed you to critically think, to analyze, to look at root cause analysis, to figure out what was going on. And I think as our industry has changed and people are much more task oriented, and so they are looking at the black and white and what task is coming next. When does the bath happen? When does the medication happen? When does the meal come? And so when we see someone in distress, or when we know something is off, but we aren't sure why, we don't always relate back to that analytical framework because we haven't been trained that way. We've kind of lost the art. That's my perception. We have lost the art of critical thinking. Also, teachers would agree with you. So having a tool through AI that allows us to see patterns in how people are responding to their daily frame of life, where we can see what those patterns are when those patterns change, have those critical questions of, well, what's happened? So for example, and I often have this conversation about my mother because she's got cognitive impairment and she has a very high pain tolerance or If she has a headache, she won't tell you and she'll suffer through it. It could be migraine level and you would never know that. But when she's not well... She doesn't have the ability to tell you she's not well, but I may get a call from her caregiver that says, your mother is really upset. She's crying a lot today. She's crying a lot. Or your mother didn't sleep well. And my first question is, always tipping to the biological, is she brewing something? Does she have a urinary tract infection? Or is there something else going on? And Subjectively, again, we can all have guesses around that. But if you're using AI, and this is what Simpson is doing today, we have chosen an AI partner called AMBA, and we're able to look at people's patterns of daily life. And when there's a shift in those, then we can question what was that shift that then helps our staffs respond to that resident faster. with hopefully preventing a fall, preventing a potential urinary tract infection or other infection, a visit to the urgent care, a visit to the emergency care, maybe a change in medication that was not the best change, so modifying someone's medication regimen. And that's all done through AI, and that's... I'm so happy in terms of the trajectory of my career. I mean, I've always had kind of like these visions in my head as I've gotten older as how do we do this. And then I met AMBA and it was like, you're doing what I've wanted to do and you've created this and this is cool. And we need to bring you in and pilot and figure out how this works. And that's kind of how our partnership with AMBA started. was born. I just kind of ran into them at an innovation conference, which I went purposely to an innovation conference to see what was going on and what we could do. It's kind of like speed dating. You're at these different booths, so you have 15 minutes of time. I can tell you, I sat down and within five minutes, the founder of AMBA shared a story with me that was so impactful um i knew story with us what did she tell you well it

SPEAKER_02: 11:49

was

SPEAKER_01: 11:50

a gentleman so um uh stew he's the uh founder of amba and he he was similar to my story he had a father that he was trying to help support um in terms of his care needs his father needed more and more care at home and stewart was working to find different ways to meet his needs. And so he was exploring various types of technology. And as he was doing this exploration, realized, well, wait a minute, I could work to bring these different types of care need technology to one way of doing this, one software. And I can make this all happen for my dad. If I can do this for my dad, I can work to build this for others. And when we were talking, he understood the difficulties with caring for older adults and caring for your parents. He and I aligned so well with that. And then when he was talking about the variety of resources, as you probably know, there are so many pieces of technology out there. I mean, we get inundated with emails of people that have things that they want us to try. And the challenge is to find what's going to work. And in this case, I mean, the technology they were bringing was easy. It was inexpensive. It was available. It had a really great dashboard to which the data went to on real time. Okay. Which is also important because in a community, in a retirement community or a nursing home assisted living, your information is coming from lots of different people all throughout the day. So it's not necessarily real-time information. And AMBA... comes to us with real-time data 24-7. You have these passive sensors that are very small. One is literally this size, almost a little bigger than a quarter. It's a movement sensor that goes above the doors or in your room. They have another sensor that's the size of an emery board, fingernail emery board. It lays on top of the door. So when the door opens and closes, it's collecting data. And then the other sensor we're using right now is a sleep pad that goes under the mattress and monitors a person's sleep. Every one of those, first of all, you wouldn't notice them. A resident normally wouldn't notice them. They all have strong lives. So the batteries in the movement sensors are 10-year battery lives. Wow. That's huge. So I don't have to worry about changing batteries out. And they're collecting data all day long. So they... when AMBA started piloting with us, they put these sensors in and we could see that for like two weeks, just a timeframe of data that gave us a sense of what this resident's normal abilities were, sleep patterns and movement to the bathroom, all that. And then after that, you now have this pattern of data. So if it shifts, The it will alert my teams to say it might alert them to a red alert that says this person has an imminent problem. Like, we know that they sleep all the time and all of a sudden they're shifting around and getting up. So you might think they're going to fall. So it would alert a staff person to go immediately go to the room to check on them. An amber alert gives a kind of like a slower response. And then green seems they're all fine. So my teams are directed and focused on the people that have the red alerts and the green alert people are doing well. They don't have to disturb them, you know, but the information that's gathered by these team members is It's stunning. Let's just talk about sleep patterns in itself. When I don't sleep well, my husband will tell you I'm grouchy. Or I have less patience. My team will probably tell you that I have less patience. When an older adult is perceived as being grouchy, cantankerous, wobbly... I doubt that sleep is the first thing that people think about. They think about other aspects of what might have happened during the day. But if you just look at the person's sleep pattern, their pattern may be normal that they sleep from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. and they may have one interruption during the night to go to the bathroom and everything's fine. But if we're tracking sleep and we have someone who is coming across more cantankerous or confused, I mean, if you don't sleep well, how well do words come to you? So our team can look at that and go, my goodness, she didn't sleep well last night. What was going on last night? So then our team can start critically huddling. They huddle and they can start critically thinking and looking at words the electronic medical record. Did something change in her medications? They may look at other patterns that happened through the evening. Did she eat well? What has changed? What has changed? What was going on in the community itself? Was there loud noises in the area? Was it hot? You're really trying to figure out what has changed. And it could be as simple as, well, the doctor put her on a new medication. And And so let's look at some of the aspects of the medication. And it may be like one of the common ones that I think about is metropolox. My husband was on that for a fibrillation. Metropolox causes you to dream a lot. And they're very strong, real dreams. So if you're a new person with metropolox, that resident may have been tossing and turning and thus dying. We might call the doctor back and say, this particular medication isn't working. Or the doctor might say, let's try it over the next few days. Let me see how her sleep patterns are. And so we can monitor that.

SPEAKER_02: 18:36

Yeah, because it is a big deal. And, you know, I've been frustrated. I've been searching for a great AI platform like this because I think some of the ones that are out there, they just don't seem to take the information to the next level. Like all the data is there, but unless you're a data analyst, you'd never be able to figure out what's important. And I love what you said about the dashboard and like the red light, like, hey, pay attention to this person, pay attention to this data point. It's going to tell you something important. Does AMBA include like motion sensors in their package? too. Yeah. That's one of those things as a therapist I've been thinking about for years, which is surely people's gate pattern and gate speed and things like that change leading up to a fall, you know, or other illnesses. And I know that the technology is very expensive right now for that kind of motion sensing, but I think in the next five to 10 years, it's going to become a lot more affordable. It'll be exciting to see what additional data we can gain and allow AI to do a lot of the critical thinking for us and kind of point the fingers that here's who you should pay attention to. So, you know, knowing some of the other things out there, how do you feel like AMBA is different from some of the other ones.

SPEAKER_01: 19:47

To me, AMBA is different because it's practical. It's providing information that we need. And to your point, it's not complicated. I'm not a nurse, but I can look and see how a pattern has changed. If I'm sitting in a huddle as a lay person, I can say, well, Her line's blipped up here. What happened on that day? Because we can see historically and forward. So you have the historical data, but you have the real-time data. But it's not rocket science information.

SPEAKER_02: 20:26

And

SPEAKER_01: 20:27

I think you have to have AI that people have an ease at using. Because at any time, people think technology is scary, so they pull back from it. But if they find it's useful... And it's even, even for our family members, they can understand that. So, you know, if just sitting down with a family member at a care plan meeting to describe to them that we want to make another medication change, and this is why, and be able to show that, for example, the one motion sensor is, can be on the, you can put the motion sensors anywhere, but we put one motion sensor on the top of the bathroom door. So you can see how many times the door opens and closes. And we can see your mother's bathroom usage has gone way up. And we're concerned about that. So we're kind of looking at what's going on medically with her. We brought this to the attention of the doctor. That's strong information that you're sharing with the family and with a resident. Because if the resident is alert and oriented and capable, you're sharing with the resident that you're showing that you care. You are critically thinking what the concerns are and you're taking action for it rather than sitting in a care plan meeting. And I'm a daughter, so I know what that feels like to be sitting in a meeting and someone saying, well, we think, you know, yeah, I mean, yeah, they have gone to the bathroom. You know, it's a human hall and it doesn't give you a lot of confidence. Whereas data is power. in that regard for our team members, for our family members, for our residents. When I think about our elders, who sometimes become secondary to the conversation, that people talk at them and around them, but not with them. And I can remember my dad very clearly saying, I'm right here. I'm right here in the room. I learned that very strong at one appointment. But they're also very anxious as to what's happening with them. And that anxiety obviously creates other issues. So having them to feel like they have control and that this is what's going on and we're going to work and do this, this and this for you so that you feel better. And then we're going to watch this. We can show them the dashboard. We're going to watch this pattern and we're going to show you tomorrow and the next day how this has been going by the changes we've made in your medication regimen, or by the timing of your activity schedule, or whatever the issue is. So it's inclusive. So it's real-time data. It's easy to use. And it was not hard to deploy. And it's a subscription service. So it's not like this ton of money had to go out at one time, which is the other thing that... We as providers have to worry about is cost is everything. And sometimes this technology comes in so high that we can't touch it. And AMBA is very reasonable. And so it has all the qualities. It checkmarks all those boxes to help support what we're trying to bring to the table. Most importantly, though, it's about the information we get to help serve the residents.

SPEAKER_02: 23:54

Yeah, and I think in our industry, there's a lot of AI fatigue because so many of the players that have been in the industry for a long time have added AI to their systems. And it doesn't really work the same when you have a system not designed for AI and you add an AI feature onto it versus something like AMBA that's developed from the ground up with a focus on AI. And so I just really encourage the listeners to be open-minded to this and look for platforms like AMBA or anybody else who was designed without AI from the ground up because you might have found yourself being unimpressed with some of the other platforms that just added AI on, but it's a totally different experience. I agree with you. It's a totally different experience working with a platform like this that's designed for AI from the ground up. I also think too, you were talking about the patient experience and I think paranoia and the paranoid behaviors that go with it is a perfect example. I think as caregivers, as frontline staff, if we really put ourselves in the shoes of that patient and think about how miserable They must be feeling paranoid. If anyone's ever been through an experience like that, I have all sorts of medication reactions. I've been through that before. It's terrifying. It's horrible. You know, you're living literally your worst nightmare. And I think when we can take a step back and remember what the patient experiences and put ourselves as best we can in their shoes, I think we approach it a lot differently. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 25:17

Definitely would agree with that. And kind of again, looking at my personal situation with my dad, he was always very anxious about his health. And I remember saying to Stuart and Deborah, the principals with AMBA, I wish this had been around when my dad was living because it would have made my life a ton easier. It's not only great in the environments of our communities, but it can be used in home care. So we have a home care division as well. We're looking at how do we introduce this out? Because if you think about family who's taking care of mom or dad or any loved one, and you set the sensors up, the families can see the dashboards, but my team can see the dashboards too. And we can intervene versus an emergency arising because nobody knows what to do. And that's particularly important during this workforce situation. Workforce is going to be complicated for quite a long time. And trying to bring efficiency to my teams so that they're not just doing your typical running up and down the hallway of an assisted living or personal care or nursing home. They're actually strategically working with the individuals that really need them. And they're not disturbing those that don't. Those that are enjoying playing cards or having lunch or out walking. Don't need to have a nurse run up to them and say, I need to check your blood pressure or I need to, you know, they only need to do that to those that the alerts are going to, which I find really wonderful because when you're not making someone overly anxious by a nurse or an aide or other health care provider coming up to them and making them feel like, is there a problem? Which. you know, my mother, even in her cognitive impairment, if there's too many people around her, she'll say, what's wrong with me? Is there something wrong with me? And I think we forget that. When we come in and ask for blood pressure, pulse ox, you know, temperature, we alarm. We alarm. So We've noticed through AMBA when we do pick up infections because we can see that the patterns have changed, something is happening, and it does say we should probably check on urine or we need to follow through with her respirations. All the symptoms that could be very subtle but would tell us something is happening and allows us to then be proactive. to ensure that we can catch something before it becomes too much of a problem. And so again, you're focusing on the people that really need you to do that versus the residents that are doing fine and don't need to be alarmed at their age to think that something is wrong with them when they're perfectly healthy.

SPEAKER_02: 28:18

Yeah, I love your example about being able to focus your attention on the elders that need your attention most. You know, I think a lot of people, particularly in the older population, are very concerned about AI infringing on their privacy. But the right use of AI allows us to give elders more privacy, more independence, more autonomy, more control rather than taking it away. And that's one of the things that gets me really excited about it.

SPEAKER_01: 28:43

Yeah, absolutely. There's no cameras with AMBA. There's no cameras in the room. So I think that's always throughout my work in older care and with people introducing technology, because we've piloted other opportunities. But people are fearful of cameras. People are fearful of where information is going. So the only place this information goes is to this dashboard. We've heard a lot about people being fearful of Alexas or the Amazon products. Where else does that go? And it's interesting, to your point earlier about the paranoia that comes with that. There's no cameras. The information goes directly to the dashboard and it's very controlled. And we can take that information and provide it to their physicians so their physicians can make adjustments. Their physicians can look at patterns themselves when they, you know, from a typical doctor's appointment. It's very, it's proactive, it's predictive, and it's preventive. So, you know, Working hard to keep people out of hospitals, out of emergency rooms, out of urgent care if they don't belong there. And our hospitals are going through enough of their own concerns with their beds being full of people that now they don't know where they're going to go, how they're going to, you know, where their next step is. We want to help those hospitals by ensuring that we're not sending someone there who doesn't really need to be there if we can help with what's happening on our end.

SPEAKER_02: 30:16

Yeah. And you know, I was really intrigued when I heard that at Simpson, you introduced a tech bar, which I think is primarily for your independent living residents. Tell me more about that, what you did, how did you fund it? Why did you do it? What do you offer? So, um,

SPEAKER_01: 30:32

so that was, you know, I've, I had dreamed of having a technology bar somewhere in one of my communities that I've served over the last few years. And, um, The vision for that actually came from when I was traveling out to the Midwest to a major supply group called Direct Supply. I went out there to look for some, we were touring through their warehouse and what they offered. And they just had an alliance with an engineering school. And so they had this cool space where they had all these various technologies on shelves behind kind of a bar, that they could show us. You know, we would just sit down there and they would just pull the technology off to show that they had different aspects of things that we might be able to use in our communities. And I was like, that would be so cool if we had something like that in our communities because we have residents who like technology. We have residents who are fearful of technology. And we have people that would benefit from it if they could just handhold it a little bit.

UNKNOWN: 31:40

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01: 31:40

And so when I finally got to Simpson, I was doing a transition of what was an entrance area to one of my communities. We were totally transitioning it into a more engaging space. And I had an opportunity to put in a small bistro, and we decided that would be also a cool place to put this technology bar. And the aspect of the technology bar would be kind of– We have several different focuses. One, we would hire a person who had technology background that could be like a tech concierge to help support education around technology, provide classes, small group classes or individual classes to both the independent living community, as well as we could offer it to the greater surrounding group for a cost. So the technology bar is a space that, Has a tech table in the middle of it with with chairs on two of the walls. One wall has is a total writing board with a major two major TV screen. So the step residents can sit there and classes can happen with residents looking at that. But the third wall is made up of shelves that hold different levels of technology. Some of those relate to resident engagement and smart technology. So like smart locks, Amazon Echo Shows that help people be able to turn lights on and that, again, they can go down and play. But the other part of that, which was more important to me, was how do we help keep Keep people healthy at the particular building where we initiated the tech bar. I had a group of pretty savvy residents that love technology and I met with them and we were talking about the smart technology because I thought that's what they were interested in and I was. really schooled on the fact that, yeah, the smart technology is cool, but we already have that. I mean, a lot of our IELs have Alexas. They have, you know, all that. The worry was, how do we, we want to stay healthy. I want to know that if my spouse is not well and I go out, how am I going to make sure that my spouse is okay? So we started focusing on what technologies we could put in this bar that people could try again and utilize. So for example, we do have some of the AMBA sensors there so they can do that. Because AMBA has a whole group of sensors. I've just talked about the motion sensors and the sleep pad. But there's multiple types of sensors that they have vetted out that work and work with their software. But kind of going back to my dad, there are smart tooth weigh scales out there. So if you have someone who suffers from congestive heart failure, typically the doctor's gonna say, we wanna keep your weight between this weight and this weight. And if you go over five pounds, you need to call me right away. Well, people aren't used to tracking their weight or you have to track your weight, you have to look at it, you have to go write it down. My dad suffered from inability to do any of that. He didn't have congestive heart failure, but he had failure to thrive. So he had to check his weight on a regular basis. Standing on a scale was one thing, but having to bend down when you have, you know, you have movement issues already to see the scale. Then to take that and then to try to write what you said, what you saw, and is it accurate? And then take that journal to your doctor. When you can get a Bluetooth scale that can be set up and send that right to your computer, you can print that off from your computer. Or if we're really savvy, we can send that on to the doctor's office so when you come to the visit, it's all there. So helping residents get a sense of there's a lot of Bluetooth types of methods out there to help support your health. And that's what this bar is about. So it's about resident engagement. It's about smart products. But it's also helping the residents look at these other aspects of what we could do to keep them healthy, independent longer, and healthy. that is useful for them then to take to their doctor's offices to continue to benefit their health.

SPEAKER_02: 36:16

Yeah, you know, you have so much experience with AI and with tech in the senior living space. What piece of advice would you give to another senior living executive for how to integrate AI and tech? Like what's the lesson you've learned along the way?

SPEAKER_01: 36:30

Well, one is if someone comes to you with a pilot, try it. Just try it. I mean, they are trying to get experience from us on what works. And the only way to get that experience is by us opening our doors and allowing that to be trialed and being prepared. I mean, there's ways to go about a pilot, but that would be one. Secondly, to not be afraid of taking risks. And I just talked about it in a team meeting this morning. If you are so concerned about I mean, we obviously, we always have to be concerned about risk, but stepping into AI, you can't be fearful. You just have to jump in and do it and learn and know that if this doesn't work, that there's something, the next one out there. And that's why piloting is so helpful because we did pilot. I've piloted things over the years in this company and others. Some worked and some completely were losers. AMBA is one that, That was not, it was successful all the way around. And you have to be open to being okay with the failures. And, you know, so you take the risk. It doesn't work. Okay. Let's let, what did we learn from it? And what, what do we take from that? And what's going to be our next step? Don't fall back and not do it at all. Right. Knowledge is not going away. Yeah. No, if you wait, you are going to be behind the curve. If you jump into it and learn, you'll get ahead of the curve and open yourself up to learn from your colleagues, because I've had really great conversations with people in my field who are trying different technologies in their own communities and fascinating what they're learning. Just like, I mean, I chat, chat GBT is that what, you know, that, that whole process is fascinating to me and what people are learning from that. And I think being open to learning. So yeah. And embracing it, just embracing it.

SPEAKER_02: 38:34

I also think too, when it comes to AI, I've yet to find a use case where it didn't somehow make sense the work experience better or more efficient. It might not have been as efficient or it might not improved as much as I wanted it to, but it's never made it worse. I've never, I've never come across a circumstance yet. And everyone on my team uses AI. I encourage that on my team because I agree with you. It's a powerful tool. And I think the smartest people are the ones who are actively adopting it today and learning how to use it and be successful with it. But I can say from my experience, I've yet to see an example where it was even equal with not using AI. So I really encourage people to, embrace it and learn how to use it and get educated like you're doing with your tech bar. Because just by trial and error, you're really going to learn so much. But I've got a great team member in particular that is just a super user with ChatGPT and some of the other AI platforms. And he asks it questions in ways I would never even think asking questions. And then he'll tell me how he did it. And I'll be like, Well, that makes so much sense. But if you had never told me, I would have never even thought how to do that. So I really think collaboration and learning from each other is really important too. It is.

SPEAKER_01: 39:43

That efficiency with your team members too. But I also would be mindful of not chunking a lot at them at one time so that introducing multiple AI is complicated sometimes. Just having to focus on one and helping that one get successful so that it's embraced so that when you introduce the next one, it's like, oh yeah, this is cool. This is a great place to work because they're doing innovative

SPEAKER_02: 40:14

stuff. So that's a great word of caution. I totally agree. I heard you mention earlier, you all are doing home and community-based services, reaching beyond the walls of senior living. Tell me more about what you're doing. And again, what are you doing that's kind of unique in that space? So, I mean, I

SPEAKER_01: 40:29

think that's similar to everyone else. We are not a licensed Medicare certified program. It's really what I would consider the glue. to help people stay at home. So your companionship, you're helping with bathing, dressing, laundry, housekeeping, transportation, helping people with preparing meals or preparing meals, just the whole gamut of once you get beyond maybe a Medicare certified experience, you need that other piece that helps you stay at home longer. And so we do that. But I feel like our differentiator, which we are trialing now, is the AMBA component. Because we want to have people have the opportunity to understand that we can keep them in their homes longer if we just understand what's going on with their typical daily patterns and how those are disrupted. And when they are disrupted... what can we do so that they don't have to move out of their home prematurely? How do we help caregivers, whether it's family or otherwise, have a comfort level? And also in terms of helping support our workers, because our caregivers, and again, as we, you know, workforce is challenging and in the home and community-based space, it's hard. So if you have a way, a dashboard that you have a central person able to see We need to call so-and-so's home or we need to get out there this afternoon because we see some changes happening. We can do that and have an impact on keeping someone safe as well as helping them stay at home. In my future vision, we know that people with cognitive impairment, it's predicted that that that population is going to grow. And we do know that we may be facing a world where we have people with cognitive impairment who need to live by themselves. That institutionalization or such is not going to be available to them.

SPEAKER_03: 42:28

They

SPEAKER_01: 42:29

don't have family because we're such a mobile society. So they're living alone. So it's like, how do we take a product like AMBA into a home of a person with cognitive impairment and help them stay by themselves with obviously supports coming in and out from the outside, but they are still able to live in their homes 24-7 by us just monitoring what's happening through these various passive sensors. And I think I've seen some on the federal side, there are some grants out there where they are looking for people to study this because we know at some point we're going to be facing this.

SPEAKER_02: 43:10

Yeah, we just don't have the caregivers either. Even if we wanted to do it all human community-based or all in senior living, there just aren't enough caregivers. So we have to look for how technology can make up the difference because we don't want the care to suffer, and we don't want the patient experience to suffer either. So I'm in the middle of doing a research study with another platform that's using AI. It sounds pretty similar to AMBA. And It's been amazing the impact that it had on the home and community dwellers, looking at both that and at assisted living. But there's been a huge impact on the home and community dwellers, especially when it comes to identifying critical issues early and either being able to address them in place or reduce the amount of hospitalization, things like that. So that study is coming out soon, but just excited to hear about how it's working for you as well. Well, I know, Carol, that you have inspired me today. Leave our list with a last bit of inspiration.

SPEAKER_01: 44:09

Gosh, well, again, you know, know that the door is wide open in this space. And if you have the opportunity, I know that it has helped me significantly in working with my older adults and their families. And it has had an impact when you can put data out there that says that you have decreased falls by 67 percent, that you've decreased the use of antipsychotics by 81 percent. Wow. It's real time data. that tells me we're making a difference. So whether it's Anvil or other, it's embracing AI that helps support data that gives you great information. Do it. I would just, I'm so passionate about it. I just feel it's a game changer for anyone who's working to care for older

SPEAKER_02: 45:00

adults. Absolutely. I could not agree more. Thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today and sharing all the innovative ideas that you're doing over there at Simpson. Thank you for having me. It was an honor. Wonderful. As always, if you want to continue the conversation, you can find me and Dr. McKinley on LinkedIn. Thank you for joining us. And if you enjoyed today's content, don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. Remember, it's not just what you know, but how you apply it that makes all the difference. See you next time.

UNKNOWN: 45:30

Bye.