I-Corps: Digital platform to manage the care of the elderly by utilizing long-term services and support resources

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is the development of a digital tool that connects the elderly and their family caregivers to resources, education, and services in the eldercare assistance industry. The proposed technology is designed for family caregivers to access the device through a smartphone application where they may connect with service providers for assistance with various aspects of eldercare, including home-aids, medical providers, elder law resources, and many other commonly sought services.

The technology may improve caregivers’ experiences by providing tailored information that helps connect them with the community of support services appropriate for them. The aim of this technology is to increase caregiver confidence and utilization of community and remote resources available to them. Numerous resources for family caregivers have been developed previously.

However, the adoption rate of these resources remains low due to lack of easy access, non-personalized information, information complexity, and a poor user experience.

This I-Corps project is based on the development of a novel Care Personalization Algorithm (CPA) that creates a user-specific intervention best suited for each caregiver. The demands of caregiving change over time and each caregiver's financial, legal, geographic, and familial situation is unique. This requires that digital services to assist caregivers be highly personalized.

The proposed technology addresses this issue by developing a digital platform based on logic decision trees (based on key caregiver characteristics input by the user) and geolocation (automatically obtained from the mobile phone). The technology will generate personalized information, recommendations, and interactive checklists for each caregiver to assist with the legal, financial, health, social assistance and other challenges of caregiving.

The proposed design may provide caregivers with a customized caregiver plan that may narrow the information they seek and provide a listing of resources and service-providers directed to their needs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.