EmpathyTech offers hope, solutions for the disabled

Crossings oceans to collaborate and innovate

Michael Kleiner
Business & Sports Editor
The Norwegian American

A replica Viking ship holding pastry and Norwegian and American flags at each end welcomed attendees to EmpathyTech at the New Courtland Conference Center at the Germantown Home in the West Mount Airy section of northwest Philadelphia on Nov. 19 and represented another transatlantic collaboration.

The Norwegian company Pletly, a technology company making a social impact with U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia, and New Courtland, “a nonprofit organization committed to providing accelerated access to coordinated health, housing, and social services for underserved populations throughout Philadelphia,” collaborated to present the conference, which centered on empathy for caregivers and developing technology that would streamline their tasks and thereby improve care for patients.

A similar event was held in Norway in June.

The Germantown Senior Community campus, which serves 200 elderly residents, provides nursing home, assisted-, apartment independent-, and memory support living for disability adults aged 18 and older,  mainly people impaired by dementia. The home provides short and long-term rehabilitation services and respite care. In July, the New Courtland Germantown Home and Pletly agreed on a partnership for a pilot project where the memory care staff would use the Pletly app to track their care and provide updates, including videos, so families could see a day  in the life of their relatives.

At the conclusion of the conference, New Courtland CEO and President Joe Duffey announced a three-year agreement with Pletly.

It’s a natural progression for Pletly. The conference, too, was an intersection of care for young and elderly populations. Marius Mathisen and his wife, Jeanine, developed the Pletly Care app to improve care for their daughter.  The “village” of caregivers share information, resulting in improved communications, transparency, and efficiency.  Elder care also has the same needs, and caregivers are often family members.

A common denominator among the participants was they had a child, sibling, or parents with a disability, which motivated them to create solutions.

Alexandra Drane, CEO of Archangels, delivered the keynote address. The panels were: Ensuring Research-Driven Solutions in IDD (Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities) and Autism Care; Navigating the Challenges and Innovations in Aging and Caregiving Technologies; and Empathy-Driven Innovation: Building Technology That Truly Understands.

Ashnish Shah, CEO of Dina, described how his company makes in-home care more accessible, transparent, and better, while Regina Kline, founder and managing partner of Enable Ventures, extolled the economic power of the disability community. Panelists came from academic and business environments.

New Courtland

“I just feel blessed and filled with gratitude to be in this room with this many people with the hearts that you all bring to this conversation,” said Duffey, who has a 31-year-old daughter with autism and Down syndrome.

“We’ve been inspired by the Pletly team for the last year and their inspiration went beyond their product. We all need to be connected and now we get to sit with each other.

“New Courtland is a caring community. We know that the magic only happens by people who show up with heart in tow every day. The solutions we are endeavoring to find are so essential because the problems of tomorrow are so different than the problems of yesterday. We  have an aging population with a shrinking base of caregivers. Solutions are about the individuals we serve, but they’re also about those who provide the care. How do you give them the tools to do a job without burning themselves out in that environment?”

Keynote speaker

That segued to Drane. Caregivers dislike the term. A slide showed three columns of terms that they use to define themselves. She shared numerous statistics of the stress on the mental health of caregivers, which can lead to suicidal thoughts. Archangels connects them to available resources and works with employers to promote services they do offer or can obtain. There is a website where badges recognizing excellent care can be printed.

“Carers do not want to quit their jobs,” said Drane. “Work is a respite for them. It’s a place they go to do things for a purpose.”

Pletly

The Pletly apps work because they come  from experience. “Being a caregiver has shaped everything about me,” said Jeanine. “We know firsthand what a family needs because we lived it. The goal was to keep it simple and easy to use so parents can spend less time worrying and more time with their child.  We know how overwhelming it can be with too much clutter on the app and if the user interface is too complex.”

If they need a pick-me-up, they can check emails. “My own experience as a mom, I know hard it is,” said Jeanine. “Every time I see how deeply Pletly helps other families, that pushes me to keep going.”

“I get emails from mothers with stories how Pletly helped them, I would need to drink a lot of coffee to get the boost those letters give me,” said Marius.

Enabling ventures

Kline was a lawyer with the Department of Justice working on the Americans with Disabilities Act and left to become an investor. Enable Ventures is the first impact venture firm targeting narrowing of the disability wealth gap.

“What are rights essentially without remedies?” she posed. “What are rights in this world when people urgently need tools in their hands to manifest the full realization of those rights? Enable Ventures is part of a movement that is not led by Enable Ventures but by the 1.5 billion people with disabilities on planet Earth today, who are in search of highly inclusive, accessible technologies to compete on equal footing with their non-disabled peers.”

What if the entrepreneurs had firsthand knowledge of a disability and what is needed?

“What we are seeing today in the disability economy is that it’s not economic investment for people with disabilities. It is economic investment in people with disabilities’ ideas,” said Kline. “It is designed, led, and driven by the interest of people with disabilities and those co-creating, co-designing, with the disability experience being centered as an asset, not as a cost. This is  not something that should be segregated or in a cottage industry or in a separate lane. What we’re seeing across the world is that there are aligned entrepreneurial support organizations that are coming to market serving the next generation of entrepreneurs with disabilities who have great ideas, are makers, dreamers, and innovators. What we’re most interested in at Enable Ventures is changing the front door to tech, not beside, the back alley, or the special convening of an accessibility specialist.”

The vendors at the conference displayed a wide breath of the use of technology in caregiving settings:

DigniCare is a Norwegian company bringing dignified care to people suffering from incontinence.  DigniCare developed a small sensor that can be affixed to an adult diaper. As soon as it detects moisture, an alert is sent to the caregiver, eliminating diaper checks, ensuring timely changes, preventing patients from the side effects sometimes associated with incontinence, and allowing caregivers to attend to other duties.

FrenalyticsEDU combines arranging independent, age-appropriate learning environments for students utilizing text-to-speech, personalized answers, digital whiteboard and game-based learning to improve practical skills. At the same time, data is collected for the teacher.

Patina provides technology-friendly virtual comprehensive health care for adults aged 65 and over through either video, phone call, messaging, or at home, if necessary, and at the patient’s convenience. Costs the same as doctor visits with Medicare or Medicare Advantage.

CatapalloVR has developed over 110 learning modules for providers or educators to utilize with participants ages 5-adults, presented in a virtual reality environment. Areas covered include communication/social skills; occupational skills; ready to live; emotional regulations; exposure, and kids modules.

Vizmoo also utilizes virtual reality, emphasizing “fun”: music, dance and user content to provide movement arts therapy for those with autism, ADHD and dementia, either individually or in groups, in-person or through telehealth.

Eleplan introduces you to Ellie, a combination of a digital assistant and care plan. Care givers are provided a dedicated care coordinator; patient data is analyzed and a personal care plan created and updated, and powered through AI, documents, contacts and valuable information is organized and streamlined in a Care Hub.

Beme.ai includes parents, caregivers, domain experts and people on the autism spectrum so bring first-hand knowledge to the technology they’ve created. The app combines, medical, biological and environmental issues to develop insights that appropriately support Autistic children, thus empowering them, parents and caregivers. Caregivers can monitor their own well-being, as well.

Koda Health Care assists patients in developing digital advanced care planning for end of life and other ailments featuring: “alogorithm-stratified patient engagement; interactive patient experience; in-platform documentation and signing; easy integration and sharing; personalized reminders, and expert 1:1 support and navigation.”

Health Promotion Council of Pennsylvania “focuses on health equity and culturally responsive services delivered by diverse staff,” including a technology assisted children’s home program.

On the non-technical side were Rothkoff Law, specializing in Elder Law, and Flourish Research, which through clinical research helps to quicken the development of innovative treatments.

This article originally appeared in the January 2025 issue of The Norwegian American.