Here at StackCare, we think a lot about how to be sure our families and seniors get the information they need at the times when they need it. We work hard to present high quality, relevant metrics in a way that’s informative but not overwhelming. We want families to know enough to help their senior loved ones, but not so much that their privacy is diminished.
I am StackCare’s principal data scientist. I’m also a future customer.
My Mom and Dad are in their mid 70s. They’re still doing really well and are completely active and independent. While they might be more independent than most of our seniors, we thought they might enjoy seeing what our product could do and we’d benefit from their unvarnished feedback; they kindly agreed to join the group who were testing our products.
By testing with my own parents I expected that we would confirm algorithm behavior and be checking the user experience, as with our other testers. Indeed, this has been the case.
This week though, that test turned out to have very real, personal value to me - and to my parents. My parents and I unexpectedly experienced the peace of mind that the StackCare system hopes to bring to our families.
Here’s our story:
Mom had major foot surgery last September and has been recovering for months. She’s been moving more slowly than usual which makes her seem as though she is less independent than she was before surgery. The good news is that she’s finally, albeit slowly, regaining her activity level..
Now that Mom is walking on her own again and can drive, Dad decided it was finally OK to head out of town to take care of some of their other projects. Mom was proud to be recovered enough to be independent again! Dad and I still worried she’d hurt her fragile foot and experience a setback. The timing of our StackCare system test at their house turned out to be coincidentally perfect. I added Dad to their site so he could keep an eye on Mom too. It’s very sweet to see how much they care for each other. I live nearby, but responsibilities for my own family and work mean that I can’t get over to help Mom every day. I’d drop everything if I had to, but it’s nice to be able to carry on normally.
Just two days after Dad left, Mom’s cell phone completely stopped working!
She said it went into “paperweight mode.” She let Dad know, and let all of us kids know via email that she needed us to send her all of our contact information (phone numbers!) since it was lost on her broken phone. She was quietly and independently solving her own issues and, not wanting to fight the crowds at the mall, she also waited a couple of days more until after the weekend to replace her phone.
I’d have worried more, but when I peeked at the StackCare app, I could see that everything was OK. I didn’t see any reasons to worry. She wanted her independence and to solve things her way. And I didn’t have to take any time off work. And I didn’t worry. We both got what we needed.
The story doesn’t end there.
When I called her to congratulate her on her newly recovered independence and ask about her shiny new phone, she confessed that her landline was only functional for incoming calls! It turns out, the only way for her to get a message out for those few days was email!
She had been completely without a way to communicate out except for email or using the car!
Retroactive worry immediately welled up. All the “what-ifs” and “might-have-beens” raced through my mind.
But then, I remembered that the whole time she was alone, I was able to know that she was fine. The algorithms worked. And if there had been an issue, I’d have seen it in her data or gotten a notification.
The feeling of peace-of-mind was much more than a tagline to me. It was real.
I hope you’ll take the chance to try it out.
Malia Beaulieu, Chief Data Scientist - StackCare