Elli Cares

Elli Cares tackles the urgent global challenge of helping individuals with dementia maintain their independence and safety. Currently, around 50 million people worldwide are living with dementia, and this number is expected to triple by 2050 as populations age. This trend is consistent across the regions we currently operate in, including New Zealand, the USA, the UK, Canada, Australia, the UAE, India, Germany, and Singapore, highlighting the critical need for innovative care solutions.

At the core of what we do, Elli Cares fills a vital gap in the market—providing integrated, user-friendly tools designed specifically for individuals in the early to mid stages of dementia. The lack of such resources strains families and healthcare systems and fails to provide the necessary real-time support for those with cognitive challenges. Elli Cares offers a comprehensive suite of features including reminders for medication, appointments, and tasks, emergency alerts, behavioural monitoring, AI-driven resources, access to dementia care consultants for one-to-one support and unobtrusive family oversight. These tools not only support the individuals directly but also significantly relieve the pressures caregivers and health services face.

Take New Zealand, for example, where over 70,000 people are currently diagnosed with dementia. This number is set to increase dramatically, with projections suggesting it will rise to 100,000 by 2030 and nearly 170,000 by 2050, according to the national Dementia/Mate Wareware Action Plan.

Studies show that maintaining a certain level of independence can not only slow the progression of dementia but also improve the quality of life. Elli Cares champions this kind of independent living by providing vital, accessible support tools that enhance safety and autonomy. By easing the load on healthcare systems and boosting the well-being of patients and their families, Elli Cares meets immediate needs and paves the way for sustainable long-term health outcomes.

Elli Cares is a research and evidence-based mobile application that supports the autonomy and safety of individuals with dementia and provides peace of mind to families.

For people with dementia, Elli Cares offers reminders, location tracking, and emergency alerts, it employs AI and machine learning to tailor care, provide resources and monitor behaviour.

For family members, Elli Cares provides real-time alerts, AI-driven resources, access to dementia care consultants and enables unobtrusive oversight of their loved ones living with dementia.

The app's availability on major platforms ensures it is an accessible and affordable assistive technology and that quality support is within reach for all who need it. 

Elli Cares is dedicated to supporting individuals with early to mid-stage dementia and their families, a group that often lacks sufficient resources due to a shortage of integrated, easy-to-use tools designed for their specific needs. Those with dementia frequently struggle with daily task management, safety, and maintaining their independence. Simultaneously, their families face considerable emotional, financial, and logistical challenges in providing the necessary care.

Elli Cares significantly enhances their quality of life by offering a comprehensive solution aimed at supporting autonomy for individuals with dementia while ensuring their families have peace of mind. The app features practical tools such as reminders, location tracking, behavioral monitoring, emergency alerts, and resource support, all accessible via a user-friendly interface tailored for those with cognitive impairments. For family members, Elli Cares delivers real-time updates and offers discreet oversight, allowing them to monitor their loved ones’ safety and well-being without being overly intrusive.

By tackling the unique challenges faced by those with dementia and their caregivers, Elli Cares addresses a significant need in the care ecosystem. It enables users to better manage their daily lives and provides crucial support to families in their caregiving roles, leading to enhanced life quality and increased independence for those impacted by dementia.

Our team at Elli Cares is well-positioned to deliver this solution, drawing from a diverse background of personal and professional experiences that directly connect us to the communities we serve. Our approach involves continuous engagement with those impacted by dementia, ensuring our solution meets their specific needs.

From the beginning, the development of Elli Cares has been community-driven. We have actively involved people living with dementia, their caregivers, healthcare professionals, researchers, and academics in the design process. Through surveys, interviews, co-design sessions, and beta testing, we've gathered essential insights that have shaped our app’s development, and continue to do so. This collaborative approach ensures that our solutions are not only practical but also aligned with the users' experiences and challenges.

Our team lead, Angela Edwards, has over 15 years of experience in delivering digital solutions with a strong focus on accessibility. Her expertise as an accessibility consultant reinforces our commitment to a user-first approach, crucial when designing for individuals with specific accessibility needs. Under Angela’s leadership, Elli Cares is developed to be inclusive and easy to use

Dr. Kevin Quaid, one of our advisors, brings invaluable perspectives with his personal experience of living with Lewy Body dementia. As the co-founder of Lewy Body Ireland and the Chair of the European Working Group of People with Dementia, Kevin’s insights directly influence our app’s functionality, ensuring it meets the real-world needs of those it aims to support.

Dr. Nigel Millar, another advisor, brings extensive clinical experience as a geriatrician and former chief medical officer of two of New Zealand's district health boards. His deep understanding of the complexities of dementia care enhances our capacity to address the nuanced needs of this community.

Beyond these key figures, our broader team consists of dedicated professionals from diverse backgrounds, all united in their commitment to improving dementia care. Together, they play a crucial role in refining Elli Cares, ensuring it meets users' needs and supports broader goals, such as reducing healthcare burdens and enhancing the quality of life for patients and caregivers.

Since its inception, we have designed, developed and launched the Elli Cares app, successfully testing its MVP features, including reminders, location tracking, family oversight and AI-driven resource.

In our pilot phase, the app has garnered significant user engagement, with over 150 downloads during the beta testing period (and no marketing spend) and an additional 130 downloads in the first two weeks following its public release last month. We now have over 200 downloads and 124 active users. These figures represent our direct customers or beneficiaries who actively use the app to support their own daily living and care management for dementia, or a loved one's.

We have also conducted extensive user testing and feedback sessions, to continuously refine the app's functionality and user interface. This iterative process has ensured that Elli Cares is both effective and user-friendly, tailored to the specific needs of individuals with dementia and their caregivers.

To date, Elli Cares serves people with dementia and their families in 13 countries. Despite only recently launching, the app has quickly attracted and continues to attract a steadily growing user base, demonstrating its effectiveness and the urgent need for such solutions.

Solve’s network, expertise, and resources can help us overcome various barriers and amplify our impact.

Solve could support Elli Cares in the following ways:

1. Legal/Regulatory: Solve’s advisory services can help us navigate international legal and regulatory frameworks, ensuring compliance while expanding access to quality care globally.
2. Cultural: With Solve’s global perspective, we can better understand and integrate into diverse cultural landscapes, tailoring our solution to meet varied needs and making health care equitable.
3. Market Access: Leverage Solve’s network to forge partnerships with global health entities, broadening our reach and ensuring that quality dementia care is accessible to underserved communities.
4. Financial: Beyond funding, we aim to utilise Solve’s investment connections and financial advice to build a sustainable business model that ensures our services remain accessible to all economic segments.

By collaborating with Solve, we aim to use technology to democratise healthcare access. Elli Cares intends to bridge the gap in health equity by providing affordable, intuitive, and comprehensive care solutions for dementia, available to anyone with a smartphone. This approach aligns with Solve’s goal of using technology to make good health and quality care more equitable, ensuring that everyone, irrespective of their economic or cultural background, has access to the care and support they need.

Elli Cares revolutionises dementia care with its holistic, technology-driven approach, offering early intervention and continuous, personalised support. This innovative solution surpasses traditional care methods, which typically emphasise late-stage support and in-person caregiving, by leveraging advanced technology to enhance the autonomy and well-being of individuals with dementia from the onset and helping to delay the progression of the disease through continued autonomous living. 

Elli Cares' innovation includes: 

1. AI and Machine Learning: Leveraging AI and machine learning technologies to analyse user behaviours, enabling early detection of significant changes that could indicate health issues or emergencies. 
2. Comprehensive Mobile Solution: Elli Cares combines various functionalities like reminders, location tracking, behavioural monitoring, emergency communication and resource support in a single app, making dementia care more integrated and accessible.
3. Empowering Users and Caregivers: By providing tools that enhance autonomy and safety for individuals with dementia, and offering oversight for caregivers, Elli Cares fosters independence while ensuring support is readily available if and when it's needed. 

Elli Cares is used by individuals with dementia and their caregivers to monitor and manage daily health routines, safety, and well-being through a comprehensive mobile platform.

Caregivers use the Elli Cares dashboard to track and analyse behavioural patterns, location data, and health status, enabling them to schedule data-driven interventions such as medication adjustments, personalised care plans, and safety checks.

People with dementia using Elli Cares receive customised reminders and alerts to improve their daily living management, enhancing their independence and safety. Caregivers receive notifications and reports highlighting areas of concern or changes in the individual's condition, allowing for timely and targeted care.

By reducing the need for constant manual monitoring and record-keeping (saving significant time and effort), caregivers can focus more on direct interaction and support.

Elli Cares empowers users with dementia and their caregivers through digital tools that streamline health management. This leads to enhanced health routine engagement and promotes proactive, preventive care, potentially slowing the progression of dementia and reducing incidents. The app alleviates stress for caregivers and reduces their economic burden, particularly through decreased work loss, enhancing the overall quality of life for both caregivers and individuals with dementia.

Improve Quality of Life for Dementia Patients:

• • Goal: Achieve a 25% improvement in self-reported quality of life scores for users within the first year of using Elli Cares.
  • Indicator: Use standardised quality of life surveys pre- and post-Elli Cares adoption, analysing the percentage change in scores.

Reduce Caregiver Burden:

• • Goal: Reduce caregiver stress levels by 30% and decrease their economic burden by 20% within two years of using the app.
  • Indicator: Conduct surveys to measure caregiver stress and economic impact before and after adopting Elli Cares, tracking percentage reductions in both areas.

Scale Accessible Dementia Care:

• • Goal: Expand Elli Cares’ user base to reach 500,000 individuals globally, including caregivers and people with dementia, over the next three years.
  • Indicator: Monitor the number of active users and geographic distribution, aiming for a steady increase to meet the half-million mark within the set timeframe.

Elli Cares is a mobile application developed with cross-platform technology, accessible on both Android and iOS devices. It utilises push notifications, device data, APIs, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to deliver its features and functionality.

Full-time = 2

Contractors = 6

Advisors = 4

1.5 years part-time, last 6 months full-time (2 years in total)

At Elli Cares, our commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion is fundamental to our mission and is reflected in our globally diverse team that brings a wealth of perspectives and insights. This diversity is crucial for understanding the far-reaching impact of dementia across different cultures and regions.

Diversity Goals and Actions:

• Global Representation: Our team spans multiple continents, providing us with unique insights into the varied ways dementia affects communities worldwide. This global perspective informs our approach and solutions, making them more effective and culturally sensitive.
• Inclusive Recruitment and Hiring: We strive to further diversify our team by recruiting from a broad range of backgrounds, especially targeting regions and communities directly impacted by dementia, to deepen our understanding and effectiveness in addressing this global challenge.

Our team and advisory board at Elli Cares are rich in diversity, with employees and advisors hailing from countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Spain, Egypt, the USA, and the UK, each bringing distinct backgrounds and cultural insights. This variety in our team enhances our collective ability to appreciate and address the global impact of dementia, ensuring our solutions are culturally nuanced and universally effective. As we grow, we will ensure the diversity of our team grows as well. 

Elli Cares is currently running as B2C while we gain valuable insights and improve on the application. We are continuing to deliver incredible value to our end users and plan to transition towards a B2B2C model, by the end of this year (we are currently in talks to provide Elli Cares to a number of organisations)

Elli Cares operates on a freemium business model, offering both free and premium subscription services. This model allows us to provide value to our users while generating revenue to sustain and grow our operations.

Key Customers and Beneficiaries:

• Individuals with early to mid-stage dementia
• Caregivers and family members of people with dementia
• Health insurance providers, EAP's and Non-profit organisations

Products and Services:

• Free Version: Basic features like medication, appointment and task reminders, activity tracking, and emergency SOS, ensuring that essential services are accessible to everyone, regardless of their financial situation.
• Premium Subscription: Advanced features including behavioural analysis, geo-location tracking and AI-driven resources.

Delivery of Products/Services:

• Through a user-friendly mobile app available on various platforms, ensuring easy access and usability.
• Utilising cloud technology for real-time data processing and storage, providing a seamless, efficient and secure service.

Value Proposition:

• For individuals with dementia and their caregivers, Elli Cares offers a tool that enhances independence, safety, and quality of life, addressing a critical need in dementia care.
• For health insurance providers, Elli Cares can reduce costs and improve patient outcomes by enabling early and proactive management of dementia. This enhanced monitoring and personalised care contribute to better health outcomes, increasing customer satisfaction and potentially reducing the frequency of costly medical interventions.
• For EAPs Elli Cares can be provided to employees dealing with dementia, whether personally or as caregivers. Integrating Elli Cares into EAPs supports employee health and wellbeing, helping maintain productivity and creating a more supportive workplace environment. 
• For non-profit organisations, Elli Cares significantly broadens the scope of dementia care and support services, reaching wider and often underserved communities. The app's scalable design facilitates more effective resource management, enabling non-profits to enhance the impact of their programs. Additionally, non-profits can collaborate with Elli Cares to offer the app as a white-labelled solution tailored to their communities, complete with an opportunity for revenue sharing. This partnership not only extends the app’s benefits to more individuals but also supports non-profits in their mission to provide much needed assistance.

1. Utilise Current Funding: Leverage the recent grant funding that has secured our operational runway for the next six months (3 grants totalling $107,000). This finance will support product enhancements and scaling initiatives.
2. Continued Grant Acquisition: Based on a proven track record of successful grant applications, continue to pursue additional grants that align with our mission and operational goals. This will not only supplement our funding but also assist in expanding our research and development efforts.
3. Drive Revenue Growth and Expand User Base: Capitalise on the early success of our newly launched app, which already serves people with dementia and their families in 13 countries. Implement marketing strategies and user engagement tactics to increase downloads and conversions to paid subscriptions.
4. Partnerships for White-labeled Solutions: Advance our ongoing discussions with key stakeholders at several non-profits to implement Elli Cares as a white-labelled solution for their substantial member bases. Develop a mutually beneficial revenue-sharing model. This strategy aims to expand our market reach and establish new revenue streams by integrating our technology into the existing services of various organisations, thus enhancing their care offerings.
5. Expand Market Penetration: Extend the app’s reach by targeting broader demographics and entering new geographic markets. Utilise feedback from current users to refine the app and increase its appeal to a wider audience.
6. Prepare for Self-Sustainability: Aim to achieve self-sustainability in revenue within 9-12 months by increasing user base and paid conversions, and by securing stable revenue from white-labelled partnerships.
7. Explore Investment Opportunities: While the primary goal is to achieve financial sustainability through operations, we remain open to the possibility of securing angel or venture capital investment. This funding would be used to accelerate expansion, develop new features, and enhance the overall user experience.
8. Regular Financial Review and Adjustment: Conduct regular reviews of financial performance against these strategies. Adjust plans as necessary to respond to market changes, user feedback, and operational challenges.