If you want to know the weather, play a song or send a text message to a friend, Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa can certainly help. But if you’re looking for more robust caregiving assistance, a new virtual assistant is hoping it can help.
Electronic Caregiver, a health technology company, recently released a virtual caregiver named Addison. The virtual caregiver helps monitor the health of aging and chronically ill patients through a computer or tablet, and offers several functions:
- Reminding users to take medications
- Conducting interactive health assessments
- Verifying dosages of medications
- Recording vital sign measurements and monitoring specific conditions
- Tracking medication adherence and vital sign trends over time, allowing users and their caregivers to catch issues earlier
- Providing telehealth services and care coaching
- Connecting patients with doctors, friends and family
- Calling emergency services
Addison can contact a family member to remind them of a medical appointment and will also inform the user’s doctor if vital signs exhibit a deteriorating condition.
The assistant can also be paired with Bluetooth devices such as a glucometer for diabetes or a weight scale and blood pressure cuff for heart disease.
Different from other virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, Addison is 3D-animated and accessible through voice and touch interactions. The avatar can talk to and react to users as well as mirror the user’s local time of day, weather, holiday celebrations and faith. Users can personalize aspects of the device – such as environments, gender, ethnicity, decor, locations, fonts, tones, color, apparel and language – and Addison can interact with objects and other characters in her virtual world.
“You know [Addison’s] not human, but it’s nice to have a person there, and it’s fun to watch her,” said Coralee Armstrong, 82, an Addison Care client living in Greenville, Pennsylvania, told the company. “It’s kind of like an extra person in the house. It’s kind of like company.”
The device can help caregivers by assisting their loved ones when they aren’t around and monitoring their health while alerting caregivers of significant changes.
The device can help caregivers by assisting their loved ones when they aren’t around and monitoring their health while alerting caregivers of significant changes.
Addison may also help the financial burden on caregivers by making it possible for people to remain at home instead of moving to an assisted living facility.
Addison Care is available to purchase from Electronic Caregiver. Subscribers pay a one-time installation and care plan activation fee in addition to a monthly charge.
While the device is available now, it continues to evolve: Video calls will soon be available for telehealth doctor’s visits, and Addison will also connect to third-party services for tasks like grocery delivery or ride shares. Additionally, Addison is being adapted for patient management applications in hospitals, such as intake and discharge procedures.
Creating a device like this has been a dream of Anthony Dohrmann, CEO of Electronic Caregiver, since the company’s founding in 2009. According to a press release, Addison is meant to improve upon previously available virtual caregiving apps by fulfilling human needs for connectivity and also offering better oversight and health care services on demand.
“Addison is the most transformational and engaging interface for human interaction with technology ever created,” Dohrmann said. “For years consumers have wondered what Siri and Alexa might look like behind the voice. Addison adds far more than a mere face and body to the voice. Addison provides a dynamic, ever-changing, emotionally stimulating, personalized experience to the user.”