Dementia tool wins CareFactor

A dementia tool that provides personalised support to carers has picked up first prize at an industry event this week.

A web-based tool that provides personalised and practical support to people caring for someone with dementia has won top honours at an aged care industry event this week.

My Dementia Companion was named the winner of the Bentleys CareFactor pitch day at the ITAC 2021 virtual event on Tuesday for its proposal to expand the tool to care professionals working in the community sector.

CareFactor provides innovation teams with access to mentors, investors and networks in aged care, technology, marketing, capital raising, skills and resources to accelerate the development and growth of products and solutions.

My Dementia Companion aims to reduce time spent searching for information on dementia, said Nan Yu, CEO and founder of the platform.

“The current dementia support information designed to help comes in a mountain of loose-leaf booklets that is too overwhelming, impractical and not personalised,” Mr Yu told the event.

Nan Yu

This often leaves many carers unsure of what to do, he said.

Mr Yu’s pitch included expanding My Dementia Companion tool to a subscription-based model for aged care providers.

“We are currently working towards support care managers, dementia advisors, nurses and allied health, such as social workers, psychologists and occupational threapists, in the community first,” Mr Yu told Australian Ageing Agenda.

“It is a super intuitive platform that contains over 1,000 pieces of neatly curated quality and practical support information that can be found, personalised and shared with the client and family with only a few clicks,” Mr Yu said at CareFactor.

My Dementia Companion Pro will go to market at $39 per month for aged care providers.

“This will allow us to keep My Dementia Companion for family carers for free because we believe everybody impacted by dementia deserves to be supported,” he said.

On winning CareFactor, Mr Yu said he was surprised.

“We weren’t expecting to win, so thank you so much,” Mr Yu said.

He thanked his team, volunteers, carers and peers for supporting the development of the tool.

“We can’t wait to the next steps and do the Pro and help as many people as we can,” he said.

Monitoring device picks up gong

Kane Sajdak presenting at CareFactor

Artificial intelligence-based monitoring device HomeGuardian.ai won the People’s Choice award at the pitch event.

As previously reported, HomeGuardian.ai is an artificially driven behavioural analysis device that aims to help aged care staff improve response times to falls.

HomeGuardian.ai CEO and co-founder Kane Sajdak said the platform suited other uses, including for babies, pools and schools.

“We have BabyGuardian to prevent [sudden infant death syndrome], PoolGuardian to prevent children [from] pool drownings and SchoolGuardian to alert when there’s weapons, guns, violence and intruders in school grounds,” Mr Sajdak told CareFactor.

HomeGuardian.ai’s pitch involved expanding the product internationally.

Rather than investment right now, Mr Sajdak said they wanted expressions of interest from investors ahead of a global push in 2022.

Mr Sajdak said he was honoured to win the People’s Choice award.

“People’s Choice Award is awesome. Being awarded by your peers, that’s awesome,” he said.

It’s the fourth award for HomeGuardian.ai and Mr Sajdak, who recently won at the Australian Brand Awards 2020 and LeadershipHQ’s Outstanding Leadership Awards (read more here).

The ITAC 2021 virtual event takes place on 23 – 24 March.

This story was updated for accuracy.

Main image: Teams and judges at the CareFactor pitch day.

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Tags: assistive technology, awards, bentleys carefactor, dementia, homeguardian.ai, itac 2021, kane sajdak, my dementia companion, nan yu, technology,

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