HomeGuardian.ai - Why I simply had to get involved!

Very pleased to announce that I will be a part of the future of aged care not only in Australia but the world, HomeGuardian.ai was recently announced/launched and to say we have an awesome team together is a massive understatement, however, I wanted to give some insight into why I personally wholeheartedly believe this product is a necessity and not an option moving forward.

To do this I’ll explain how being involved in HomeGuardian came about.

Kane and his current company BITS look after the backend of my 2 current companies, we were organising to catch up and go over a few things, we had worked out the day and were just going back and forth on the times and Kane couldn’t move his morning meeting, he briefly mentioned he was meeting a PE / Private Equity company, my logical nosy question was what for? This is when I found out about the product, our meeting the following day ended up being purely about HomeGuardian, few phone calls and a couple of meetings later and we have now raised the funds needed to bring this world-first technical device to market.

So why did I simply have to get involved?

My grandmother on my mothers side has had dementia for several years, for the last 2-3 years she has been in the full-time care of my mother, although getting worse mentally, she was mobile and has been able to stay in her own home with my mum as a full-time carer, I have always had the opinion that the longer she can remain home the better, however in March last year, my mum woke to her dogs barking in the hallway at 2 am, obviously not how you want to be woken, she got up and found my grandmother on the floor, she had fallen, now being 2 am, we don’t know if she just fell or if she fell hours earlier and the dogs only just found her, the stats on aged people falling is incredible but this story is about my reason for being involved so will get back to it.

From this fall my grandmother was rushed to hospital, she was quite distressed, she has then had a stroke and spent 3 weeks in hospital recovering, but not recovering to come home, recovering enough to be able to go to an aged care facility where she will spend the rest of her life until she passes, a tad morbid but unfortunately this is the reality.

We will never know what exactly happened that night, but my mum went to bed sometime between 9 and 10 pm, my grandmother was found at 2 am, what if the fall occurred at 10:20 pm, or 11 or even midnight? Has the time my grandmother spent on the ground contributed to her current state? As stated we will never know the answer to this question, it could have only been minutes or it could have been hours, but what we do know is that if a HomeGuardian device was placed/mounted in the hallway, my mum would have known within seconds, yes that’s right, she would of known within seconds, she would have received an alert, got out of bed and been able help my grandmother all within 30-60 seconds, some might be thinking, well the dogs barked, without the dogs, my grandmother would have been there for at least another 3-4 hours until my mum woke, I think we can safely say she would have been much worse off and possibly not with us anymore if it was not for my mum’s dogs.

Talk to a nurse, someone in aged care or even just a few people you know from work, and almost everyone can tell you a similar story to the above, I had no idea how often this was happening, the number of people over 60 being admitted to hospital due to a fall is simply mind-boggling and even scarier is the stats around length of time until found and the impact this has on future health.

This is why I had to get involved, if this device was around 12 months ago it would have been in my grand mother’s home, we would know exactly what happened that night, no guessing, we would know that my grandmother had not been distressed for an extended period of time.

HomeGuardian will save lives, it’s only a matter of time, but it will also provide peace of mind to the many carers who are looking after someone prone to falling, seizures or any illness.