How Technology can help people living with Dementia

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Now, normally we'd get straight into the show and we'd get some calls

and we'd have a chat about technology and the way you're using technology

and the different things we can help you with.

But this week is Dementia Awareness Week.

And I was chatting with a good friend of mine, Paul Collie,

who created a business of his own, which I've talked about before.

And he made the point that maybe we should have a chat.

Maybe we should have a chat about how technology can help people

to live well with Dementia.

Technology can do amazing things.

And there is some great technology out there for people with Dementia

and people, families of people with Dementia.

Now, just for statistical sake,

Dementia is the leading cause of death in Australia.

Just think about that for a minute.

There are almost 450,000 people living with Dementia

and many more undiagnosed.

And 1.7 million people are involved in their care.

Dementia Awareness Week has a focus on the theme,

nobody can do it alone.

So the government has launched something

like $4.5 billion support at home initiative

to help people enjoy life at home for longer.

And that's a great thing.

And even if you don't have someone in your life

suffering with Dementia, you don't know when it might happen.

And you don't know who in your life

might be caring for someone in that situation.

And the reason that Paul Collie

is the perfect person to talk about this

is because he has a very personal story.

His own mother suffered through Dementia

and he took that journey with her.

And it was through that journey,

which he'll explain shortly,

that he realized that there just weren't products

in Australia to help with this.

So Paul Collie and his wife, Kate,

absolutely qualified to have a conversation with you

and me about Dementia, about the journey of Dementia

and about the technology that we can use

in homes and in our lives to help people with Dementia

and help people who are caring for people with Dementia.

So I invited Paul and Kate here to the EFGM studios

to sit down and just have a conversation

to help me understand more about Dementia,

to help me understand where they've seen technology

play a role in the care of someone with Dementia.

And at the same time, tell us about some of the products

that they're selling through

their business home life technology.

And I have talked about them before,

I've done reviews of their products before,

but Paul has created this business home life,

if you just Google home life technology,

but it's home life technology.

You'll see all the products

and we will touch on all their products, I'm sure,

through this conversation,

but this is less about spruiking the products

and more about understanding how products like theirs

can be of assistance to people suffering through Dementia.

So I hope you don't mind indulging me this episode

to take a little bit of time

to understand the world of Dementia

and I would value your feedback,

anything you've learned on a journey

you've been part of or witnessed,

things that you've seen that have helped

and yeah, we'd love to hear from you

and you can do it through the same channels as always.

Oh, four, double, seven, six, five, seven, six, five,

seven, seven, send me a text

or of course you can go to the website EFGM.com.

So without further ado, let's welcome Paul and Kate

to the EFGM studio.

This is the EFGM podcast.

Paul, Kate, welcome.

Great to have you on the show.

Paul, we've known each other for a very long time.

You sitting on one side of the tech fence

working for companies like Sony and Samsung

over the years and me being the journalist,

getting to see the cool things that you're releasing

or whatever it might be.

And now you're running your own business

and that business is very much dedicated

to elder care products and gadgets for elderly people

and just give us a little sense of how they came about

because it's pretty integral to this whole story,

really, isn't it?

Yeah, it is.

Yeah, and it's quite a personal story, really.

My mother, while I was still working

in the tech industry, my mother started

on her journey with Dementia

and being a tech person,

I thought I'll find some technology

that can help her manage here.

She was living on her own and so I went on a journey

to find some things that could help her

and I just couldn't find good quality products

that would help.

There was lots of products that were almost there

but they just didn't really help.

You know, the very first product I bought her

was a reminder clock

and we'll talk about those in a moment

but I ended up throwing it in the bin two days later

because it caused more problems than it helped.

Right.

So that sort of got me on a journey of thinking

there must be better products around than this

and there are, they're just not,

a lot of them weren't in Australia.

So that was the catalyst for the business

is to find products that genuinely help people.

Not just with Dementia, but all sorts of challenges.

Yeah.

Particularly talking about Dementia

because that's the journey I went on with my mom

and it's Dementia Awareness Week.

Yep.

And yeah, and there was lots of products

that were overseas and we started on a mission

to bring them into Australia.

Kate, you're a registered nurse.

So you've seen everything over the years

but you're also a dementia care specialist.

So how long have you been working in that field

and what's the level of exposure you've had to this?

I've done a bit of everything with nursing

but yeah, I did some midwifery

and then sort of switched to the other end

of the spectrum with community nursing

and then aged care nursing.

So probably about 25 years in aged care facilities

and a dementia specific facility more recently.

But yeah, it's been a great journey

to support Paul in a way to see people managing

to see people managing to stay independently at home

and how technology can actually support them to do that.

Having seen residential aged care and yeah.

Because that's one of the things, isn't it?

We think of getting old and I guess it's like a journey,

isn't it? You end up in aged care facility.

You end up in a first.

But some of this isn't just about dementia.

Some of the stuff you do with Paul

is just about giving you a little bit

of prolonged independence too.

Technology can give, you know, my mum

who I don't believe is yet exposed to dementia

but you know that may be a journey we go on

and it's such a huge problem as I outlined in the intro.

It's technology can enable so many things

but technology I guess overall

is targeted at the mainstream, isn't it?

Which is what you've seen, Paul.

This stuff is not in Harvey Norman

because it's not mainstream.

It's not fancy and exciting like the newest iPhone

that's one of the challenges, right?

Yeah, exactly.

I mean when I was working in consumer tech

I was responsible for smart things

and smart homes and all that sort of stuff.

And then when I was journeying with my mum

on her dementia journey I realized that

in this space smart means something very different.

It means that it's super simple, that's familiar.

So it's something that people are familiar with

that they can engage with easily

without having to relearn something.

And you know in many cases less is more in this space

so the products just do what they would expect them to do.

Often it's products that don't have multiple functions.

They're products that like a radio is a radio,

a TV remote is a TV remote,

photo frames are photo, a frame not multitasking sort of.

TV remotes are a great one, isn't it?

Like you pick up on, haven't got one sitting there

but most remotes are either over complicated

or actually to change the television channel

on a modern TV is not at all

in the forefront of that remote's design.

Which fortunately you have a solution for Kate.

Think about, try and help me out

and my wife's grandparents,

she's had a couple of grandparents

suffer through dementia and I think that

I wasn't really exposed to her

because it was very much near end of life

and it was more the closest and nearest and dearest

of family would go and see them and those kind of things.

So I've not been exposed to dementia in many ways

and a lot of people might not have been.

Just help me understand,

I guess the daily challenges of dementia

even in the early stages for someone

that's living day to day with dementia.

Yeah, I mean dementia is a very broad term

and there's so many different experiences with dementia

because there's so many different brain diseases

that come under that broad umbrella term.

But yeah, commonly orientating to time

like keeping up with what the day is

and time of day is sometimes a challenge.

Night and day if people wake up in the middle of the night

just knowing what time of day it is

and being aware of their environment

can be a challenge sometimes.

But just remembering even familiar activities

even things that are of value to them

like if gardening and watering the plants

and then they just stop watering the plants.

So initiating activities that have been important

to them that might drop away.

Yeah, remembering medications,

having some little failures there

or missing appointments, things like that.

You're missing meals like if they don't feel hungry

and at lunchtime often people will just miss lunch.

So sometimes you just notice a decline in weight

and yeah, but connection and engagement.

With family and social engagement.

So yeah, sometimes dropping.

Is that drop off because of the forgetfulness

around appointments and things

like we catch up every Thursday, whatever it might be

and you don't remember that it's Thursday

or you don't remember that appointment.

Is that the kind of thing

that leads to the drop off in engagement?

It could be, it could be,

but it could be just fronting up

into social situations might be more uncomfortable

if people are finding it difficult with word finding

and recalling memories and what's happened yesterday.

Because there's an awareness of that, right?

As the sufferer, they would be aware

that they're not as easily recalling a name

or a thing or the way to play the game

that they're there to play.

So if there's an awareness of it,

there's an anxiety around exposing other people

to that failure in themselves.

They would see it as a failure in themselves.

Yeah, possibly.

I don't know, insight I think is sometimes

people don't have that insight,

but they might feel anxious

and be reluctant to participate.

But generally a person's world becomes smaller

and even at home it can be difficult

to engage in things like watching TV,

watching, listening to the radio

and actually engaging in the activities

that have been meaningful to them

and having that purpose in enjoying life

and doing those activities.

And it is a gradual process, right?

You talked about it several times as a journey.

So dimension doesn't just happen overnight.

It happens slowly.

Is it easily diagnosed these days?

Yeah, it can take quite a while sometimes,

but with brain imaging and cognitive testing

and that kind of thing.

Yeah, but often people don't get diagnosed

and there's probably a lot more people with it

in the community who have not reached out for help

or nobody's sort of broached that with them.

In the same way that they've got that anxiety

about exposing themselves to a social situation,

they've probably got the anxiety

about not wanting to be diagnosed.

Yes.

It's quite possible, right?

I'm old, I don't want to know.

I'm happy to just do what I'm doing

and it's the family around them

that are probably suffering day to day

or week to week, maybe more than them

because they're seeing the decline.

For a family member, I guess is it obvious?

Like, do you notice kind of slowly

or is it something that becomes quite obvious

to you as a family member

and therefore you've got to have the kahoonas

to push them towards that medical testing and diagnosis?

I think sometimes it's not real obvious

and it's really hard to know whether to step in or not

because having a diagnosis, there's a lot of grief

and to come to terms with that is really difficult

because it is a progressive condition

and yeah, we are encouraged to get early diagnosis

but it is a difficult road

and certainly if there's a lot of family support

to gently help support the environment

to be more enabling so that they continue

to be independent and engage in participating things

and feel valued, yeah, if people struggle on their own

often, yeah, depression is quite common

and boredom and frustration and anxiety so.

And I think the other thing you guys mentioned

when we were talking beforehand was like

the idea of safety and autonomy

so just being safe, especially if they're living

on their own or even just with a partner

and one of the most common questions I get from people

who have elderly parents or grandparents

is which smart watch should I buy them

because I want to know where they are

or if they're fallen, right?

It's phenomenal that we have the technology today

that you can theoretically just wear a watch

and know what's happening but my biggest fear with

and one of the reasons I don't just go,

yep, go and buy them an Apple Watch

is because it's still got to be charged,

it's got to be worn and that's, you know there's,

I worry about people putting too much faith

in those level of gadgets because essentially

you might think that everything's fine

when actually the watch is sitting on the kitchen bench

because it beeps too many times

and then the battery died and it's not been charged

and when you go visit them three weeks later

you're like, why haven't you been wearing this?

So I worry about that kind of the influence

of technology in that space is amazing

but it also requires the same level of care

and attention as a human to human

for the son or grandchild to, you know,

look into the technologies it does for the individual

but one of the things that I guess comes from

a diagnosis of dementia is a concern

just a general concern around their individual safety

and their ability to have or continue to have autonomy

without being, you know, put into a home

on day 10 or day 100 or whatever it might be.

Is that one of the critical things

that people have as part of the journey?

Yeah, I think there's a lot of stress for loved ones

watching the changes and worrying about safety

with like cooking at home and leaving the stove unattended

and or, you know, not having a medication error

and maybe taking their medications more than once in the day

and blood pressure dropping and falling

or certainly I think sometimes we tend to

make those decisions and, yeah,

it can, people can lose their autonomy too fast.

Yeah, I guess that's the challenge is someone,

as a family, you know, the siblings or the kids

get together and go, listen, it's getting too hard.

We've got to put him in home when actually

the three or four problems you're talking about

may actually be solved by some very simple levels

of technology, which we'll talk about

but no one really,

I don't think anyone really wants to push too far

down the journey quickly, especially for the individual.

Everyone wants, I think about my mum, you know,

she's only just living in a home,

she's worked in a business in a pub

and lived in the pub all for the last 20 years

so it feels like the first time she's had a house

and you know, it's a house, there's no one,

there's no one coming to the pub every day.

Do you know what I mean?

So it's the first time she's had independence

but also isolation in that sense.

So I feel like who's checking on her and stuff like that

but back to your journey, Paul,

was that incremental journey something

that you were very mindful of,

trying to retain that autonomy for your mum?

Yeah, certainly.

And I mean, it came in stages, you know,

as we, the first step was really general orientation

what day of the week is it, things like that.

So that's where, you know, I introduced a day clock

or you know, commonly referred to as a day clock.

But is that the first stage,

one of the most difficult ones

because it's like, I can imagine having a conversation

with my mum and she being very,

my mum is very stubborn.

So I'm quite nervous about this now,

but her being very stubborn about it,

you don't need to tell me what day it is, you know?

But actually, mum, I do.

Do you know what I mean?

Is that the first challenge?

Is both of you having an understanding

that we're here together on the same journey?

I need you to understand that it is Monday

and you need to be able to find out what day it is

without just assuming.

Like is there that realization as well

for the individual?

It is certainly different for everybody.

And in my mum's case, she was a long way into the journey

before she was aware that she had the richer.

So introducing things, you know,

had to be done sort of sensitively.

So, you know, the clock that we introduced

was really just about helping her have daily orientation

so that she didn't ring me all the time

to ask me what day of the week it is, you know?

So yeah, I think that it's a stage thing.

In my mum's case, it was firstly,

the orientation around the day of the week

and reminders so she didn't miss out on things.

The next thing was she loved her grandkids

and missing all the...

Because she couldn't use her phone anymore.

So missing all the social media posts

and all those sort of things.

She had been on Facebook saying the updates

from different people and those kind of things.

And so, let me just, before we get into that,

what I'm hearing is that if she was ringing you

to say what day of the week it is, there's a clear,

I guess there's an understanding

that she's lacking that information.

So that's kind of a good thing

that she's coming to you for that information,

but then it's a burden upon more people

because if she doesn't reach you,

she's gonna ring someone else and all those kind of things.

So that's why you identified

just the need to answer that question for someone.

So it obviously wasn't massively frustrating to her

to have to ask that question.

But no, she had no problem asking.

She just had nowhere to go for the answer.

It was more that it created anxiety if she didn't know.

Right.

Yeah, so it was about managing that sort of

stress level that she had, you know,

because I mean, often in those days,

whether it was Monday or Tuesday,

I actually didn't have much impact

on what she did in that day, you know, because...

The medications were important.

Medications were, yeah.

Thankfully, she trusted her doctor.

And so her doctor, it was helpful

in sort of breaking the news to her

and reinforcing that this would be helpful

to have her medications packed with the day of the week

and having the clock made sense, you know,

to have that nearby.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But she was one to write birthday cards

for all of the big family.

And so to actually stay on top of the calendar

was important to her, you know,

keeping those relationships very important.

Yeah.

And so then staying connected with the family,

I'm guessing, where you're going with this,

the social media, lack of social media,

that brings in the frameo technology.

We'll unpack all these technologies in a minute,

but that's the picture frame, which is connected,

which allows anyone in the family to just share photos.

And so did that.

When you brought that into her life,

because it's not really something

that needs to be taught either.

It's just, hey, picture frame, just so you know,

that would have been, I can imagine,

kind of would have lit her up in a sense

that she's like, wow, was that the reaction

to that product?

It was, yeah.

And that product actually was with her till the end.

Wow.

And actually further into her journey that she went,

the more important that product became to her

because it was one thing that she could,

would stimulate her mind and would capture her mind

and think about it.

Because they often talk about, you know,

I see, where did I see?

I saw a TV story with someone high profile,

kind of exposing their journey with their family.

It was Victor Dominello,

the former New South Wales minister.

And I met, my wife used to work in politics,

so I knew of Victor very well

and I'd met him a couple of times doing some tech stuff

because he was very big on digital transformation.

But his Facebook was always, you know,

pictures of him visiting mum and having dinner with mum.

And so for him to be on television,

talking about her journey with dementia

was quite an opening to me

because it was like this shift from, you know,

his mum on Facebook and now his mum essentially in care

and they've got books and things

that are about this and about this child and things.

So, because there's those trigger memories, I guess,

where it's like, we want them to be able to see

these beautiful photos of grandchildren

who they'll recognise and make them smile

because no matter what stage of life

or no matter what stage of the journey you're in,

I'm assuming there's still the chemical reaction

that makes you happy when you see a familiar face.

I mean, that's the critical thing, right?

Yeah, and I think the feelings,

and we were just talking about this earlier,

I think the feelings that are generated by things like that,

I don't, well, in my mum's case anyway,

they never went away.

No.

The awareness of what they specifically were

certainly went away.

But you could see the things that meant something to her

were important and those feelings would be generated in her.

You could see it.

So, yeah, that stuff was quite special.

The thing I was going to say is, which you alluded to earlier,

one of the things that we've found really important

on this journey and hence what we sort of focus on

as far as products that we bring into the country

is it's very difficult for people to learn

new behaviours at this stage.

So you really want things like you mentioned with the photoframe,

they don't have to do anything.

They just, the photos just appear and they enjoy them.

So products that just embrace them where they're at

and just enable them to be more independent

and enjoy the things that they're doing in the past,

that's sort of the focus,

because it's very difficult to learn new habits

and new skills at this stage.

Yeah, I think anyone with technology

and elderly parents needs to think about that.

Like, I think about when mum moved to her current house,

you know, I took everything I could

that I could possibly give her,

I gave her a big TV and all this stuff.

And I had a great vacuum,

but I also had a spare robot vacuum.

I thought, this is going to be perfect, right?

And she's like, how do I use that?

And I said, oh, here's the great thing.

You don't, you don't.

It'll just go on every three days.

It'll just do its thing.

Now, after a little while, I had to remind her

that she needed to empty some water out and stuff,

but it didn't need any teaching, you know?

And this is not in any dementia journey,

but it's just simply that it made me think

about that in that moment where you really don't want.

I can't imagine my mum in her cognitive state today

wanting to learn anything new,

let alone having to teach something new

when she's suffering even the beginning stages of dementia.

But it's really interesting that the things

that you have adopted in your business then

are entirely part of your journey pool.

Like, you've literally built a business

from firsthand knowledge.

We've talked about clocks.

We've talked about medical reminders.

We've talked about frames.

And we'll talk about them all in more detail,

but is it hard to find products like that

as someone interested in it?

Because I'm assuming there's some rubbish stuff out there

and then there's good stuff.

Yeah, yeah, there is.

There's a lot of rubbish, unfortunately.

We're very selective about what we bring in,

but the need of the person is quite obvious.

So, I mean, simple things like we mentioned earlier,

watching TV, one of the products

that we get the most positive feedback,

in fact, I had someone come into our office

and buy one the other day

and they ended up in tears, is just a TV remote.

It's such a simple product

and it just empowers people to engage in an activity

that they've done all their life

in a way that they are familiar with.

And we're not just, let's just explain the TV remote.

So, we're not just talking about,

and people will understand this in mobile phone terms,

we're not just talking about big button phones

because it's a big button remote, but it's just simple.

There's no complexity to it.

It's channel up, channel down, volume up, volume down,

on, off.

I mean, that's basically what it is

and you've got another one coming out

that will navigate the world of smart TVs

in a little bit better way,

but again, totally simplified.

That product is not something that you can easily buy

by walking into retail stores in Australia

because I guess retail, you know better than I do,

but margins and just stock levels and quantity of sales,

it's probably not worth their while.

So is it always up to a company like yours,

a small company to bring that product

to answer that demand, do you think?

Yeah, look, I think so.

What's really interesting,

if you look at all the different products we have,

almost all of them were developed

from someone's personal journey with Dementia

in their family.

You know, like, yeah,

they've all had their own journey and found a need

and so they've addressed it with experience,

lived experience around the challenge that they're having

so they become like a bespoke product

that just addresses that specific need.

Some of them have got a,

well, they've all got a lot of research behind them.

Some of them are more scientific based,

some are just more experiential based,

but they've almost, I think all of them in fact,

have come from people.

They're lived experience because there's been a challenge

because mainstream consumer tech

doesn't address these issues.

Well, that's what we want to talk about

the daily challenges we've already touched on,

but the day clock is just such a simple product

because think about buying a clock today.

Yeah, you can still buy a clock,

but it doesn't help you with a lot of information.

There's not a lot of clocks today

that'll tell you what day the week it is.

And there are also little tiny letters and numbers.

Your day clock is a large screen experience

that can kind of be customized

to suit what the individual wants to see

and it also gives them those reminders and things, doesn't it?

Yeah, I mean, most clocks if you would buy today

would be either a generic standard clock or a smart clock

which you can talk to and could do all sorts of things.

But those things are overwhelming

for someone on a journey of dementia.

So really what they need is just clear, large display.

So that's easier for them to digest.

Often people at this stage also have vision challenges as well.

And then the orientation and reminders

that are important to them.

We have a few different clocks

for different sort of stages and needs.

Some of them are just for like reoccurring weekly activities

like, you know, midnight, you know, birthdays,

those sort of things.

Others have a written list of things

that you tick off throughout the day

just to say that you can have...

It's like this one you put in front of me, yeah?

You literally write the things that make a healthy day.

So it could be taking the dog for a walk,

drinking water, medicine, those sort of things.

And you tick them off.

They're just pushing a button to tick them off.

Yeah, so it's a good old-fashioned checklist, really,

with a clock next to it.

And then we have another clock that is remotely controlled

so family can put calendar activities in it.

So it might be doctor's appointments,

head nurse appointments.

But with that clock particularly,

the wonderful thing about that product

is that you record your own voice with it.

So if it's a doctor's appointment,

I could record my own voice and say,

hey, Mum, we're going to the doctors today.

Why don't you get yourself ready?

I'll pick you up in 20 minutes.

She'll hear my actual voice.

She could even see a picture of me.

I can put a picture there or a picture of the doctor

or whatever is relevant.

So that's a real trusted sort of reminder

because she hears a familiar voice.

But that's really helpful for people who have family

who can support and remain engaged

and see a calendar of activities

to keep the person engaged in the activities

that were important to them.

What do you say to someone who would suggest

that all the smart things that we have

would be great solutions to all this?

You know, smart speakers,

whether they're Amazons or Googles or Apples or whatever,

because finding out what day of the week it is,

asking the time, those things are all possible.

But is it a step too far to say

we've got a new person you need to think about?

Is it because it's Google or Alexa

or someone else in the room

and you're introducing someone else into their life?

Is that the reason that's a challenge

or is it because it only really fills a need

for a very small part of the journey?

And then after that point,

it becomes less useful and you need to move to other solutions.

Anyway, Amaz, we'll go to first up.

Yeah, I think it was a really important question

because a lot of people actually go down that path first.

Yep.

But typically it's not helpful

because the main reason is

that it's not familiar to them.

So to use those sort of products,

they have to learn a new behaviour

and at this stage they're typically,

it's a challenge to learn a new behaviour.

I think these tools as the next generation come through,

they will become the standard because we're used to it.

Because it's not a learned behaviour.

So we'll expect a product to do that.

I mean, can we just stop for a minute

because it's just dawned on me, but when we,

I hope, you know, haven't feed it, it's too close,

but it's hopefully a generational way.

It's many years away, but, gee whiz,

combine the power of the speakers and AI

and large language models

and it could be very exciting what could be done with them,

but at the same time, it's not now.

No. It's not a solution for today.

And even if it's marketed as such at what you're saying is,

and I'm sure you've seen it too,

it's just difficult to create a new learned behaviour

for people at that stage of life

and in this level of diagnosis.

Yeah. I mean, initiative and, you know,

being motivated to learn,

and there's often a lot of fear of technology as well.

And I guess, yeah, for some people,

they are scared of those smart things

that they might be listening to them, you know?

So... Yes.

The last thing you want is create fear, additional fear.

Because you've already talked about the social anxiety,

is the way I'm going to describe it,

of not wanting to, you know, see too many people

because you might expose your situation to more people than not.

And then you create a new level of anxiety in the home

with these crazy speakers and things going around.

But again, the other thing about the speaker

that made me think about it was music and radio.

You know, I think about, again, I think about what I do

and I listen to the radio as much as I can.

I'm always listening to music.

It's very rare for this office to be quiet.

I've normally got a TV blaring or a speaker blaring.

Manicles are one of my own, but I think radio is a man.

I've worked in radio for such a long time.

I know truly in my heart how much of a connection radio

as a medium can be for an individual, especially of age.

You know, I remember being at 2GB

and you'd speak to people on the phones.

I'd answer the calls on the open line

and you'd speak to these people and it's like,

they're not, it was my job to stop people

from getting through to the announcer

if they didn't really have anything engaging

to add to the program.

And, you know, you could have eight,

you'd have 12 lines of phone lines.

You might have six ready to go, you know,

ready to talk to Ray Hadley, whatever.

And the six other ones are just ringing all the time.

The amount of time you would spend just talking to people

because this was their life.

This was the only communication

they were gonna have with anyone.

It's a very deep connection.

So while a smart speaker can also, you know,

play the radio and play music,

you've got products that make that simple,

again, all the way through the journey

because you buy a radio today.

Good luck finding a radio that allows you

to just very easily find gold FM, let alone 2GB.

Like it's a very hard process today.

So you, again, have found a product

to fit that niche as well.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, exactly like I said, if you buy a radio today,

it's probably got a lot of buttons on it that are small.

Tiny little buttons, yeah.

Or dials with the screen.

Yeah, and a tiny little screen that's often hard to read

because they're not necessarily backlit or whatever.

Yeah, so a radio that we have literally has a piece of paper

next to the buttons that you write.

You label the preset stations.

So you, as an individual, get to say,

well, these are the six stations.

It's gonna be 2GB, it's gonna be the ABC,

it's gonna be gold, it's gonna be smooth,

and you write it in your big writing,

whatever, use a texture, whatever you want

to make it very obvious for them.

Yeah, even further, you can write.

So with my mums, we had three buttons.

We had morning TV, sorry, morning radio,

news, and soothing music.

Yeah, right.

Because she didn't have to then process.

We signed her to the stations that were important to her,

but she didn't have to then process any additional detail.

One of the wonderful things about this radio

is people can also,

because often with dementia,

people will go back to their native tongue.

So if their native tongue's not English,

you can write the labels in their native tongue

so that it's easy for them to still keep engaged

with the radio.

Because as you mentioned,

especially for this generation that we're talking about,

radio's been a huge part of their life.

Yeah, it's always on.

It's that thing that's just,

when you walk into their home, it's on.

You're basically going to tell them to turn it down

when you get there,

but that's the way they keep,

that's how it keeps them company during the day.

And so your solution makes it usable for them.

Yeah, yeah, and they're empowered to use it themselves.

So big knobs, even a knob on this radio

when you turn it all the way down to zero,

it doesn't go to silent

because then they know that it's still on,

there's no accidents.

Just on the radio, the other part of that is,

it's also not easy, I wouldn't say not possible,

but it's not easy without digging into the back of it

to actually detune it.

You can't, the dial is for volume, it's not for tuning,

so you can't just go, and you're out of tune.

You've got the buttons for the stations,

you can't veer from what was the planned course

for the person who set it up for them,

the carer or the child or whoever it was

that set it up for them.

It's set up the way it's set up,

they can't make a mistake.

I wonder, and again, I haven't experienced it,

but I wonder how often someone with dementia,

even in the early stages,

would suffer quite a high level of frustration,

which I'm assuming will end you to anguish

and potentially tears

through just something simple going wrong.

Like I can't work out how to turn the TV on

or I pressed a button and the radio is no longer on,

the station I want it to be on.

Is that the kind of thing, Kate,

that actually triggers the wrong side of the emotion?

We talked about the great emotion

of seeing a family member on a screen.

Not having these solutions

can actually cause frustration in life.

Yeah, definitely feelings of failure

and difficulty can get a person down,

but also sometimes people come up with conclusions

where they think that somebody's tampered with things too

and they get a bit paranoid when they're losing things

or they can't use something,

someone's done something to this

and then they can get angry and, you know, that can be...

And that's when you get the angry phone call

and you're like, no, the plumber was there,

just fixed the toilet, he didn't change the radio.

Let me come around and fix the radio for you

and that's when you realise

you've just got to get yourself a different radio

for this solution.

So digital, AM, FM, what radio?

So it's DA, B and FM and MP3.

So you can put a USB stick in with their favourite.

So you can just put some back rack on USB

and happy days if that's what they want.

I'll get some Foster and Allen for my mum.

That's my childhood being punished with Foster and Allen.

So in terms of independence,

one of the things you mentioned,

and you demonstrated this to me when I came to your office,

but it's kind of a mind-blowing concept

but I think Kate, you mentioned people being at home

and leaving the oven on, for example.

But I just struggled to believe that there was a product to solve that

but, Paul, you've got a product which essentially retrofits

to an existing stove to solve the problem of anguish over that.

Yeah, yeah, and as you mentioned earlier,

products that we've experienced ourselves

and we've found solutions for with my mum's journey.

We were getting phone calls from friends saying every time

they go over there, the house smells of gas.

So she had a gas stove. She loved cooking.

I talked her out to get a...

I thought, well, one solution is to replace it with an electric stove.

Went out to find an electric stove

and we really struggled to find a stove that was familiar enough for her to use.

Right, because you're relearning. We've talked about it a lot.

You don't want to have to relearn buttons, dials.

Yeah, and actually one of the key things was that her existing stove

had written words of the gas burner in low, high, medium, all that.

All the new stoves have symbols, you know,

so for someone dementia to interpret symbols is difficult.

Anyway, we ended up getting an electric stove for her

that was as close as we could find.

Expensive process, because you had to get the plumber in,

disconnect everything, push in,

then it didn't fit the hole in the bench top,

so we had to get a guy out to cut the stone bench top.

And we put it in and look in the engine,

but we really didn't use it much

because the cooking experience from gas electric is hugely different, you know.

I couldn't get an induction stove because she couldn't lift the heavy pots,

so we had to get an old electric stove.

So yeah, so that was a real challenge,

but we've recently launched a product called Smart Turns,

which I wish we had back then.

You literally take the old stove knobs off

and you put these smart knobs on

and it would alert the family if the stove is left on unattended.

Interesting piece of information that we've discovered since launching this product

is that about half of residential fires in New South Wales

are caused by unattended cooking.

Wow.

And close to the other half is by faulty electronics products.

So half of it's from unattended cooking.

So what's Smart Turns?

I hate to dig into those, that half that's unattended cooking

and understand the demographic of that half too.

Yeah, that would be very interesting, you know.

So, I mean, look, we do get very distracted on our devices these days too,

so that would be kind of a... Of course, yeah.

But the great thing about this product is that if someone's cooking

and they've turned the stove on and they're in the kitchen,

nothing happens, they just keep cooking like normal.

But if they've left the kitchen,

you can set the amount of time, the default is 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, it'll send an alert to the family.

It can also send an alert to their own phone

and it can beep in the kitchen to bring attention to the fact

that the stove's left on unattended.

I think you showed me it can be linked to a speaker

which can be your voice saying, can you check the stove, mum?

That kind of thing.

Which again goes back to that familiarity of family.

Trusted voices.

Trusted voices, not being afraid.

Because again, we talk about smart speakers.

You have some random,

even if it's got a great Australian accent,

some random new voice in the home telling you to do things like that.

There's that conspiracy of who's that talking to me

and who's that trying to tell me how to cook, you know?

Whereas if it's Paul, it's just bloody Paul doing it,

you know, reminding me to turn the oven off again.

So what level of compatibility would you say that those dials have?

Because obviously people listening will be going, how does that work?

But I would explain it by saying,

pretty much every knob and dial on pretty much anything

can just be pulled off if you just lift it up

and you'll notice there's just a little plastic dial in there.

It just comes off and yours goes on there.

Yep.

So basically it'll fit any stove that has knobs.

So the touch panel stows, which are typically induction.

It won't fit those obviously because they don't have knobs.

But yeah, it comes with all the right adapters.

It's very, you can install it in 10 minutes.

It's super easy to install.

You don't need any tools.

And there's just, I mean,

we don't want to get into too much detail for this,

but there's two versions, one for upright stoves

because the knobs face out and one for benchtop stoves

where the knobs face the ceiling.

Other than that, it's very straightforward to install.

Yeah, well, that's a reminder.

I mean, that's a strange thing to think about,

but so it's just looking at time.

It's purely based on time.

Time, the dial has been turned.

Yeah, and motion.

So if there's someone, if you turn it on,

let's say you set the timer for 10 minutes.

If there's someone in the kitchen,

the stove's on and they're in that kitchen.

No drama.

No dramas.

Yep.

But if the stove has been left unattended

for those 10 minutes, so there's no one in the kitchen.

Then the alerts will go off and you can either,

if you're living there, you can go and check

or if you've got a neighbor, you can pop in or you can call

and just say, hey, Mum, I think you might be cooking something.

Why don't you go check it?

Just those sort of things.

It's a wonderful thing.

Two is on the app.

If you have that call, I know in my Mum's case,

if I had called her and said,

looks like you might be cooking something,

you might want to go check it.

She might have hung up and said,

okay, I'll do that and hung up.

Well, I can see on the app.

You can see whether she actually went

and followed up with it or not.

So whether I need to take further action or not.

So yeah, it's a great product.

And the wonderful thing about this product

is it empowers them to keep living like they were.

They don't have to learn anything new.

They can keep cooking, which is so important to some people.

Well, as you mentioned with your Mum,

there was a passion for cooking there,

which unfortunately was taken away

with the greatest respect

because of the change in equipment.

She lost that passion because it was new to learn

and it wasn't the same cooking experience.

So I'm assuming that you reflect on that

just through learning and going,

if we'd only had this,

it would have given her a little bit more joy

for a little bit longer.

And again, with respect,

none of this stuff, Kate, is prolonging life.

It's not changing the dementia journey.

It's just trying to change

the experience of the journey, would you say?

Well, there are sort of recognised modifiable risks

for dementia and, you know,

having healthy daily habits,

they say can help prevent or help reduce the decline,

the rate of decline.

So, you know, going for walks

and, you know, some physical activity.

So having a walk on the checklist, you know,

makes a difference.

Drinking and eating important.

Right, and water that is.

If you're losing weight,

if you're missing meals

and you become underweight,

you know, you become frail and definitely, yeah.

So essentially, if you look at it as a chart,

you can have an impact on the level of decline

or the rate of decline

by simply taking into account

a lot of simple things in daily life.

And, you know, the tick box things are one,

but then I'm still kind of blown away

by the concept of the picture frame,

you know, the idea that picture frame

can bring someone joy.

And I just think about that chemical reaction that,

you know, whether it's the goosebumps

you get from thinking about that person

or whatever, and it doesn't matter

which stage of the journey I'm assuming

it's still gonna have that effect on someone.

Yeah, and these things too, like,

just to your comment earlier about

doesn't necessarily change the ultimate path.

As Kate mentioned, it can slow the decline.

Right.

But the other thing that these products do

is they help with quality of life during this time.

Yeah.

You know, like, people don't need to, you know,

think that life's over at this stage.

You can still, there's things you can do

to help remain engaged and connected

and to enjoy life.

And, you know, as you mentioned,

photography photos and imagery

stimulate lots of neurons in the mind.

Music.

Yeah, music.

You know, they have someone come around

and again, we go to that social anxiety.

If you don't, if you're not confident enough

to turn the radio on and play the music

that, you know, that mate or that friend

would always have expected when they came round,

you might not want to have that person round.

But if you now know that when that person comes around,

button number three is Bill's favourite,

you know, press it.

And, you know, you're going to get that thing.

So you're able to continue that connection.

It's kind of a fascinating thought process

because, again, at a younger age,

you don't think about these things, right?

And I guess that's weirdly terrible analogy,

but it's kind of like superannuation.

No one thinks about it until it's too buddy late.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I've come about that way too late

and I'm trying to talk to my kids about it now.

It's just, you know, you've got to come at it.

But we don't think about the journey

of anything towards the later part of life.

And so do you have, I mean, the great thing

about your business is it's essentially one-to-one,

apart from some distribution you've started doing,

I understand.

But, you know, do you get wonderful emails

from people in the business?

Because that's got to be the most gratifying part of it.

Yeah, yeah.

We get wonderful emails.

We get wonderful reviews.

It's just so nice to be helping people.

One of the things that we haven't really spoken much about

in this discussion so far is the stress

that there is on the carers.

Yeah.

You know, I mean, it's a tough journey,

obviously, for the person with dementia.

But the family in carers, it's hard going, you know.

Is it also, and this may be anecdotal,

but I'm guessing in a lot of situations,

it falls to one, especially if there's,

I don't think my mum's got three kids.

It's probably going to fall to one or two of us

just because of distance,

let alone anything else.

And that puts a huge load on those individuals, doesn't it?

Yeah, yeah.

And there's, you know, I mean, in my family,

you know, there's some people that are more

built for that sort of support than others.

Yeah, 100%.

And that's fine.

We're all different, you know.

So, yeah, it can become a lot of pressure on people.

So, yeah, we'll often get people calling us

to ask about what product would work.

And they're under a point of stress.

You know, there's a lot of pressure on,

or stress on them to try and help their mum or dad.

You know, live an independent life

that is still bringing joy to them

without them having to be popping over every hour

to fix the TV or the radio or cook meals

and those sort of things.

So, yeah, you know, there's two parts

to the whole dementia journey.

And one is obviously the individual,

but the other part is the carers

and the family for sure.

I wonder if in part there's a backwards path

to all this, whether it's like through the photo frame,

for example, I wonder whether some of us in that family

need a little push or a poke to say,

you haven't sent any photos in lately.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I wonder if, like, I imagine my mum's photo frame

would be overwhelmed by photos from her granddaughter

of her great-granddaughter.

But then what about her grandkids from her daughter

who just lives a very busy life

and probably doesn't have time for it?

You kind of need, I think we as the next generation

need to be poked and prodded a bit as well to play a role

or just reach out and have that connection.

You know, it's like, you know,

when was the last time you rang your mum?

When was the last time you rang your dad or whoever it is?

Some of us don't make those calls every day.

Steven Pinnaker, you know, very well.

Like, talks to his mum every day.

Like, that's, it's just remarkable to me.

Like, I'm overseas with him and he's ringing his mum.

Yeah, right.

Oh, I wouldn't speak to my mum for three weeks.

But she rings me.

I answer.

I'll give you a poke.

But that's the thing.

You're like, I won.

Yeah, it's a fascinating thing about how the technology

maybe needs to work in multiple ways.

Needs to work in reverse as well.

Maybe we could workshop some apps or technology

around that space.

But the great thing is you do get those reviews

and that rewarding kind of feedback and stuff

because most of the time I'm assuming this stuff

just works like it's day one unbelievable for people.

Like a remote control, as you say, with the TV.

That's just a game changer on every level

for someone to be able to just go,

OK, I just want to turn on the TV and watch Channel 9.

Yeah.

No, it's wonderful.

And look, with all of our products,

if it's not helping someone, taking center back,

you know, we generally want these products

to help people.

It's a tough journey that people are on in dementia.

And, you know, if it's not helping them,

then focus on something else that can help, you know.

Kate, let's just wrap up talking about dementia, generally.

I mean, we talked about a million people by around now.

And I heard a stat on the radio

and we talked about it before and don't want to quote it.

But broadly speaking, dementia is essentially

the biggest killer, if not in the top two of Australians.

Which is kind of mind-blowing to me,

but it just shows us we've got an aging population.

This is a problem.

This is a challenge that we're all going to have.

We're all going to have whether it's directly

or somewhat indirectly.

It's not a thing that's going away

and we all need to kind of learn about it a bit, don't we?

Yeah.

And I think no one person can fix it.

The government can't fix it.

And not everyone has supportive family around them.

But I think the point of Dementia Action Week

is to raise the awareness of dementia,

to not be afraid of it and to reach out to someone you know

with dementia or supporting someone with dementia.

And yeah, get to know the person.

That's really, I guess, the starting point of connecting

with people.

And yeah, often it's the short-term memory

that is most affected.

And they can tell great stories about the past

and have great connection.

But yeah, I think it is society's problem to make changes

and make the environment more supportive and friendly

and easy to navigate.

It's an education.

But it's kind of weird because you think about

other issues that we highlight in society.

And I think about breast cancer, for example,

you have pink day tests.

And it's all about raising money to research

and all the different issues and mainly health issues

that we're trying to raise money for to fix.

And there's obviously research that goes into dementia

and we want to try and minimize it.

But at this point it's more about just educating people

on how they work with it, how they handle it,

and how they help each other,

especially within their family groups around it.

And I think that's what you're doing

is you're bringing little mini solutions

that can just go, oh no, I can fix that problem.

So that the television's sorted or the radio's sorted

or the reminders are sorted.

Very simple things like that is just education.

It's just conversation and learning as a society

about the challenges, which you've been very open enough

to share your journey for.

But your journey as tough as it is for you

as an individual as a family is now helping many, many others,

which is probably the great part about it for you now

is you can do this in honour of your mum, yeah?

Yeah, yeah. I was literally just thinking that today.

It's a beautiful journey to be on.

Because they're like as tough as the journey was with mum.

Gee, we had a lot of really special moments.

And as Kate mentioned, the longer-term memory remains.

She didn't always remember who I was,

but she knew that I was important to her.

And those journeys and those moments are special.

So to embrace that and to find ways to help the person

have as an engaged connection with people

because it's people that that's where our joy comes from,

then to be able to support that in their journey

is pretty special.

More products than we've even talked about.

But the primary products, I think, at the very base,

I mean, you've got floor, you've got soft floor,

you've got some amazing things.

But TV remote, the radio, the day organizer,

things like that, they're very simple products.

They're very easy to understand.

The picture frame, frankly, as much as we've highlighted

dementia, it's just a great family gift at any point in time.

I would encourage the picture frame

as a fantastic Christmas gift for anyone.

Anyone with, whether it's kids and grandkids in a family,

it's the greatest possible thing you can have

because it doesn't matter whether you're giving it

to an aunt or the grandparent or whatever.

It's such a cool way and around the Christmas table,

you know, you imagine setting it up

and giving everyone the email address

and giving everyone just sending photos through

such a really cool family bonding moment

that just stays with everyone in the family.

It's such a cool thing.

And the point I would make about the photo frame,

and we've talked about this, Paul, off here,

but there's plenty of these frames on the market.

There is, there's lots of them that do it.

But the point I would make about Paul

and home life technology is the fact

that you've taken the time to find the quality product,

the product with support,

the product that's physically quality

and that comes with the support that you offer it.

So, you know, you can probably buy things

for cheap in China and get them shipped here,

but, you know, spending the money for quality

makes a big difference.

So have a look at those things, Paul.

Where do people find all these products, home life?

Just visit homelife.technology.

All our products are there.

We have a phone number.

You can just give us a call.

We've got real people there to talk to.

And, you know, you can ask questions about the product,

what might work for you, what might be helpful.

And, yeah, just give us a call.

You spend far too much.

You make yourself very available to your customers.

At some point, that'll become difficult for you, maybe.

That's really nice talking to the customers.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, you learn about people's journeys.

You learn about what can help them.

Yeah, that's something we'll maintain

for the life of the business.

Good on you.

Well, congratulations on what you're doing.

And Kate, thank you for explaining some of the logistics

and the challenges that we probably

might not individually be aware of.

But it makes it real.

You know, hearing from a carer's perspective

and in your own personal journey, Paul,

I appreciate your openness on that.

And, yeah, we encourage people to check out the products

for themselves, their family,

and anyone who's suffering themselves.

Thanks for your time, guys.

Thanks, Trevor.

Thank you.

Helping Australians with tech questions for over 15 years,

the EFT and podcasts with Travel On.

How Technology can help people living with Dementia

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