Revolutionizing Elder Care with Technology: Neal Shah on AI, Student Caregivers & Future of Aging

CareYaya - Life on Repeat Podcast (YouTube Link)

Apr 16, 2025

In this enlightening episode, Laura speaks with Neal Shah, America’s Chief Elder Officer and co-founder of CareYaya, about how technology is transforming the future of elder care. From AI-powered caregiver tools to brain-computer interfaces, Neal shares how innovation—and his own caregiving story—sparked a movement to make high-quality care more accessible, affordable, and human-centered. Whether you’re looking for relief, curious about what’s next in caregiving, or just need a little hope, this episode delivers. 👤 Meet Neal Shah: Neal Shah is the co-founder of CareYaya, a platform that connects college students pursuing healthcare careers with families who need in-home caregiving support. Inspired by his own experience caring for loved ones, Neal is on a mission to build a future where compassionate care and smart technology come together to serve older adults—and ease the burden on families. 📌 Topics Discussed: Neal’s personal caregiving journey and how it inspired CareYaya Why caregiving is long overdue for tech innovation How college students are creating a new model of affordable care The role of AI and voice tools in supporting caregiver training Exciting projects: brain-computer interfaces, virtual reality, and more How tech can reduce guilt and burnout for family caregivers Why human connection still matters—even in a high-tech future ⏱️ Timestamps (Approximate): 00:00 – Welcome and introduction of Neal Shah 01:00 – From finance to family caregiving: Neal’s personal story 03:45 – The emotional and logistical toll of caregiving 06:00 – The innovation gap in elder care 09:20 – What CareYaya is and how it works 12:30 – How the tech platform improves caregiver access and quality 16:15 – College students as a compassionate workforce 20:45 – Building a scalable, sustainable care model 24:00 – The role of AI in caregiver support and training 29:15 – What the future of caregiving looks like with AI and neurotech 35:30 – New frontiers: brain-computer interfaces, VR, and more 42:00 – Closing thoughts on hope, innovation, and dignity in care 💡 Key Takeaways: Innovation is essential for sustainable caregiving College students offer untapped potential as compassionate caregivers AI and VR can enhance care without replacing human connection New tools can ease the emotional weight and guilt caregivers often carry The future of caregiving can be brighter—and more personal—than ever before 📚 Resources Mentioned: CareYaya.org – Learn more about CareYaya’s mission, platform, and innovations Stay tuned for new tools like AI-powered voice companions and neuro-assistive caregiving tech 🤝 Connect with Neal Shah: Website: CareYaya.org LinkedIn: Neal Shah 🌿 Connect with Laura Vaillancourt & the Life on Repeat Podcast: Website: https://lifeonrepeatpodcast.com Instagram: @lifeonrepeatpodcast Facebook: Life on Repeat Podcast YouTube: / @lifeonrepeatpodcast

hello everyone um I always love this is the favorite part of my day is being

able to meet and um interview folks from all over the world really uh that are

making such an impact in the world of caring for um the folks that we care

about so I'm so excited to have this conversation with you Neil and I know

Yeah our listeners are too um Neil and I were just chatting a little bit uh before I hit record and oh my gosh this

is going to be a fun conversation about everything from technology and AI to finding care um in your local um uh

environment and um yeah so I want to give you uh just a brief uh introduction

here and then we'll just jump in together and um start this

conversation so Neil Shaw is America's chief elder officer i like that c he's a

CEO and co-founder of Kaya am I saying that right yeah kaya kerry Yaya it's a

tech- enabled elder care marketplace that's growing rapidly across the country connecting over 20,000 college

students aspiring to healthcare careers to be inhome caregivers of older adults

with dementia he founded Care Yaya after his own personal caregiving journey and

is a passionate advocate for tech innovation to relieve the strain on family

caregivers thank you Neil so I have to just share with everyone um and share

with you i was just telling a friend of mine how I really want to find somebody

i want to do an interview on tech and um excuse me tech and AI and what's out

there and what's the future of this and um and you and I had booked to talk

about the um caregiving and um you know connecting college students i'm so

interested in and when I realize that you're you do both like you have Thanks

great yeah so let's start if you don't mind um you can tell I'm very excited

about this already um Awesome tell us you you um you mentioned that you had a

personal caregiving journey and I'm I'm just curious let's just set the stage for us on what happened sure yeah yeah

happy to give you kind of like a little bit of background and also you know thanks for having me on the podcast it's actually very timely because this is the

first thing I'm doing you know in terms of like any interview or anything um but it's been a big week for us um where we

just got selected by LinkedIn as one of the top 50 startups in America um and we're the only care related anything you

know it's all these like technology B2B sales companies and we're the only caret company um so it's yeah pretty cool

congratulations oh my god thank you it's like really external validation of our work you know that

we've been doing for years so um good you know thanks for having me on so good luck um so yeah um yeah happy to give

you an overview like I I'll give you a brief background on my personal journey um but you know I have kind of like a non-traditional background for the

industry um but kind of like quick recap um I grew up in North Carolina um

actually my family are immigrants from India so I was a child when I moved here um and when I was younger I was like a

very introverted person like a math wiz um you know kind of just like good at you know numbers and I went to school at

University of Pennsylvania and um I pursued a career in finance um so out of college I moved to New York City and I

was doing investment banking um very quickly went into private equity and hedge funds and by my late 20s I'd

become a partner at a multi-billion dollar fund where I was running a portfolio of investments you know across healthcare technology other um and I was

good at like analyzing opportunities and figuring out which companies were going to like do well and which ones weren't um and then by my early 30s um I

generate a lot of returns for those investors so one of those investors backed me to start my own fund so I

started that fund when I was 31 with 10 million of one investors capital and then by 35 I'd grown it to 250 million i

had a university endowment and pension funds you know so I was kind of like that was my track um until I became a

caregiver you know I found myself um going through a secondhand care journey

then a first hand care journey uh first for my grandfather um you know through

dementia kidney failure um cancer and then end of life care uh where you know

really my mother um did the majority of the care but you know I'm viewed as a person um at that time I was early 30s

um and you know at that time um you know I'm I'm viewed as a person in the family that I would return to i'm a very

researchy type of person so it would be like okay I'm navigating finding options blah blah um but you know I I saw the

burden it took uh because really we couldn't find good quality reliable help

um that was consistent so like you know my mom felt like okay I'm going to leave my career to do it and then what's

supposed to be a few months turns into years and then after that she never went back to her career um plus the psychological and emotional toll you

know it took um so that was my first foray into caregiving and care navigation and kind of learning about

the care industry and I just at that point I became kind of obsessed with it while I was still running my fund and I

was like okay there's got to be some way to invest here there's got to be some people doing cool things you know blah

blah blah sad to say there weren't you know so I spent a lot of time researching and I was like the entire industry was like these kind of

traditional elder care agencies running like a 1980s 1990 type model which I'll get into later but you know not really

serving families well not really serving caregivers well you know even the paid caregivers you know we're not having good time so I was like this industry is

really inefficient and broken um and it was a surprise to me because I think as sometimes you know an immigrant to the

US you're like the American healthcare system is like amazing you know it's like the groundbreaking uh therapeutics

are being developed here like cutting edge treatments you know surgical procedures etc but like there's so much

of care that is home or social care and hate to say like the social care system here is like I think non-existent you

know in terms of it's run by these private corporations that don't care at all about the impact um and families are

kind of on their own you know like care is externalized onto all these onto all these individuals and families taking

care of their loved ones um and when you go through these experiences like 95 plus percent of what's happening is not

through the hospital you know it's h it's what's happening at home in many of these diagnoses so that was my so long

story short that was my first for then at 35 at the peak of my fund after I'd like grown it and worked you know really

hard and just like a very hard worker and very focused on that my wife became severely ill um and then I became a

primary caregiver um uh with years of cancer treatment u multiple um

hospitalizations at one point was in a medical coma uh failed therapies surgeries etc and it took an enormous

toll um you know in terms of just the you know I was in a career here which you know is very demanding 60 70 80

hours a week i was running an organization where there were a handful of people but really everybody was there because of me um and I kept taking

soaticals for my work to manage my wife's care um and ultimately I kind of made a difficult decision of just like

winding down my fund and becoming a full-time caregiver um because I thought that that would have an impact on the outcome um and you know pleased to say

you know knock on wood it did finally she had um successful outcome and has now been in remission for a few years um

but I think that I was like due to heavy involvement yeah you know really seriously you know like thank God um and

at that point I became like really obsessed with caregiving and I saw that that that was a firsthand impact of like

okay this is taking a big impact on me um I'm spending at that point I've spent so much time through the hospital system

through observing other people through caregiver support groups seeing what other people are going through and I was just like wow this is like impacting way

more people than I thought all these people are burning out of their careers all these people have to defer their own dreams um like the system that exists

here is like not serving anyone so yeah I became kind of obsessed with it and I also thought at that point it was like

maybe even a little of a personal wakeup call for me where I was like okay I've have this skill set and brain but I've

been kind of just squandering it on like things that don't matter you know which I'm not knocking anyone but you know

like finance it's like whatever it's an industry but here is something that is a problem worth solving that does matter

that I've experienced myself and I can direct my energy to i'm like a very obsessive person so okay I can become

obsessed over this problem and try to solve something and the underlying impact would be you could improve the

lives of like tens of millions of people who are going through this so yeah that was kind of my own journey so um that

after my wife's treatment um you know I was in my late 30s and then I started CareYaya you know it was like I had a bunch

of ideas on like what I've observed through my own care journeys of like where there are interesting

opportunities where people have found kind of innovative solutions that could be scaled up um also where there were

just gaps where no one was trying to build a solution um so yeah that was kind of like really the inspiration of like okay how can you build something

that would serve a lot of people um in ways in in doing things in uh ways that aren't being done the most so yeah wow

that's incredible excuse me i um I I have this

urge to want to climb into your brain okay so as somebody who has you know

worked in this industry and I live you know this is my life um yeah I'm like

wow what so so start to paint the picture for us on um

what direction did you decide to go like how how did you narrow down of all the

of all the things I mean what I hear you saying is this giant pain point that

yeah so many people are experiencing of lost and alone in navigating in making

decisions in grieving and not knowing what to do and not getting the like all

like we know this and so yeah what did you do with that like where where did your mind go with what's next sure yeah

thanks i I I spent a lot of time thinking about where the different gaps were and then started thinking rank ordering of like where is there kind of

like the biggest challenge or burden you could solve for a bunch of people and to

me at least from my own lived experience a couple times and then observing what a lot of families were going through the

biggest challenge where there I thought there wasn't a lot of innovation was like a lot of times the family caregiver

just needs a break or respit or needs someone around because you know in my

case like obviously you're there so you just need somebody to help so that you can go do something else whether it's

your job or have time to yourself but in many other cases where you're not there then it's even more um of like oh I need

somebody to keep an eye on my loved one because I can't keep driving there and flying there so I just thought that the kind of like having a physical caregiver

that is reliable quality affordable you know etc and and that doesn't make you

feel guilty i think that is critical because like when the quality is blah you feel guilty that I'm not living

there or I'm going to my job or I'm whatever and I thought I thought that was probably the aggregate biggest pain

point you know I think there are a lot of other things that could be improved about the care journey but I think the the fact that there isn't like a good

caregiver system in the country and it's like both this like you know it's like a formal market run by these um elder care

franchise companies and then a massive gray market which like the gray market even dwarfs the formal market so it's

like a 500 plus billion dollar market which is just like in the in 2024 like why aren't there tech enabled

solutions you know kind of like okay when you know I was living in New York City in my 20s and it's like why did I have to go outside and hold my hand up

to get a cab like gee wow Uber you know it's like now it's so obvious but like

can you imagine like within our own lifetime you had to stand outside and just wait and hope that you know at

10:00 at night when I'm going home from the office will there be a cab that passes who has an availability you know

it's kind of like that or you know delivering food right you had to call up all these places you know a great example i mean this is

I mean I just want to call out the the that what you're saying which which is

so true is people even when people get to the point where they recognize okay

in order for my loved one to receive the best care I need to take care of myself

you know that that's a huge mission of what this whole podcast is about is taking care of yourself as a caregiver

and so even when you come to that realization and recognize I need a break yep like

you said the guilt that people feel on um not being able to find um

quality and and quality exists it's out there but like you said it's a crapshoot

it's it's like you don't know who you're going to get or where to go to get that person or is it a person what does it

look like like um I'm so interested so okay continue your um your journey here

sure okay so with that as a focus of like okay let's start thinking how can you do innovation to help people get

caregivers um kind of the most obvious thing and the best kept secret which um you know I think like we've talked about

is that there is a hidden workforce of great caregivers that many families know

um exist but hasn't been like kind of brought to the proper market which is healthcare students you know initially a

lot of families use nursing students they found premed students uh people who

are going to physical therapy occupational therapy you know there are people out in the world who um have very

caring qualities and who want to go into clinical careers for whom a temporary

path in life whether it lasts one year two years four years will be to become a caregiver who will do it yes for income

but who really will do it out of interest experience learning and potential graduate school applications

and blah blah blah exactly curiosity like all of these other things which will then turn back into making them

wonderful caregivers and um they will be on a different track in terms of like

these will be our future doctors and nurses of tomorrow so to have your you know future um you know surgeon be a

caregiver is like an amazing that's like talk about a family not feeling guilty most family caregivers would be like

"Wow I'm putting somebody that has even more skills than myself and more interest in this field than myself to do

it." Um you know so I can go to my job so I'm not feeling guilty i'm feeling proud um so I had I had observed that

through my own care journey as well as observed a lot of families caregiver support groups people I talked to that

were like people knew this awesome secret but there were challenges and the

challenges were there was no way to find them you had to kind of post up flyers you had to go to local university near

you um you had to figure out okay will people call me how do I find them how do I vet them how do I schedule them so a

lot of people are managing but I mean the family caregivers that were managing this were like it was like straight up job in managing that you're almost

running your own little HR or recruiting firm you know to try to do that and of course students like you know leave they

have schedule changes they graduate whatever right so I found okay that exists then I found okay technology

innovation in this industry is close to zero you know in terms of like all these traditional like care companies we're just running local staffing agencies

minimal tech and then when we're doing kind of like pilot survey so we're in our area we're in Research Triangle Park

North Carolina so it's like right between Duke and UNC Chapel Hill so two great universities you know within you know 15 minutes of each other and you

know surveyed a bunch of students and they were like "Oh um I'm a nursing student at UNCC oh I'm a pre-med student

in Duke." Um most of them if they apply to elder care um job they would get rejected you know like 3.9 GPA senior at

Duke PMAD rejected from all the jobs because the company's like "No I only want full-time workers or I want at least 30 hours a week workers." And the

students are like "Well I'm in school you know so I'm happy to do it but I can't do it all the time." So the care

companies were like "No I'm not set up for that." So it was very clear that a gig economy kind of like solution like

whether it's like Uber Door Dash however you want to draw the analogy a tech- enabled gig economy solution could

unlock this massive workforce of in my opinion some of the best caregivers in

America um that no one wants um and you could kind of like unlock and bring them

into all these homes and all these families that had discovered that secret would no longer have to rely on

themselves and go through all the grunt work of finding recruiting vetting scheduling booking managing turnover all

that that like something could do it for you so that was kind of like the initial concept of like literally uberize you

know this industry and you know there's pros and cons to Uber but whatever the analogy is like you know create a tech enabled platform solution where this

workforce could be available where all the hard work the vetting background checking interviewing you know

scheduling could all be done for you and then you as a family caregiver could simply book and access and then on the

other end for the student side by bringing in the formal market they would have a lot of structured opportunity

where it's like oh I'm just seeing some random flyer um in school and then calling and arranging something but okay

I have this platform that's then going around vetting families back we background check families we do all that other stuff too so that it's like a high

trust online marketplace of both sides um so yeah I you know that was kind of like the opportunity that we thought

okay this is a huge opportunity and no one's doing it and you know seems to be

a no-brainer i can see like on this on on some level this is this is

reinventing the the whole concept of inhome care i mean yeah the way that you

describe this and and I'm imagining the uh med students

exposure in the homes um that um typically and I know I'm speaking

generally here but typically you're you're attracting people who are um um

invested curious people who are interested in the latest research people

who are um innovative people that are are taking that information and applying

it in all these different ways like man um and then to your point that you made

earlier um so one of the things I do here in my community is I teach um uh

doctors that um at our local hospital when um they're in their their last year

uh I I teach them a little bit about um uh dementia and and righting and

caregiver the plight of the caregiver and you know they get they get like a little bit of time you know to learn

this stuff and unless they have experienced something in their own personal life um they're really clueless

to the experience and so part of my work as you can imagine is um been over the

years hearing caregivers families tell me one of the biggest pain points that

they experience is um that the doctor that the medical providers do not

understand what it's like for them and Yes whether they are carrying uh whether

they're a power of attorney or or a family member that doesn't even have that that medical um um healthcare

directive trying to communicate with doctors and trying to um do what's best

for their loved ones and then coming up against roadblocks to your point I am so excited to think

about the like you said the future of our providers the future of those ER

doctors um the family practice doctors the nurses that have started out as

caregivers or I can at least understand what it's like to be in the community outside of a medical model system in the

community in people's homes seeing the the struggle the the real struggle um th

this is I mean I 100% I'm getting chills Neil yeah thank you but no 100% I would

echo everything you said you know like many of these young individuals you know if you think about the alternative they

could volunteer at a hospital or sometimes they will go work at a hospital if they want to go pursue all these certifications but the work will

involve fairly clinical and you know there I use the word clinical I mean it has multiple connotations but in that in that sense sometimes clinical has a

connotation of impersonal robotic and I think when you see a college student volunteering or working as a CNA at a

hospital the work is 5 to 10 minutes here 15 minutes here 15 minutes here

clinical in terms of I do specific things for people i don't really get to know them i don't get to know them on

ongoing because they're here one day gone the next they might even be gone a few hours later so you don't truly learn

how to develop empathy bedside manner truly understand the full picture of not just what the person is going through

what's a family going through all part of a community we're all part of Exactly yeah and you even see them as a patient

at a hospital rather than a 82-year-old lady living in her home with dementia

who all of a sudden talks about this whole other life she had and her dayto-day you know isn't all just the

disease and not defining her but there's other things and I feel like that you in a home ongoing relationship context even

if it's one day a week two days a week but you spend time with someone the relationship and your exposure is

dramatically different than You could spend time with a thousand people at a hospital on these 15-minute shifts and you'd never kind of like humanize what's

going on and if anything in the hospital you start you know becoming almost a robotic where it's just like oh these

are and not just the hospital you know um it's whether that's skilled nursing facilities or it's even um even our um

and I say this with all respect you know it's even our case managers at the state who are um you know focused on Medicaid

like it when they are not taught um you

know a lot of people go into that line of work because they care um by the time they're done by the time they've been

educated and they're kind of spit out the other end they have learned to turn off that that empathy

and um so what I'm seeing here is just the opportunity that it's not just

starting out and having the early experience of um yeah providing care and seeing people more you know their to

their humanity it's it's also the it's it's the end product as well when we can

somehow influence a health care system into um honoring that the whole whole

family the whole person the whole Yeah totally agree oh my gosh so you also

mentioned something I just want to call out too sure all right i'm getting over this cold so Yeah no worries me too me

too the uh you mentioned um the the

the struggle or the the the hardship of hiring finding and hiring um private

care and there are several different ways that people typically do that there are

the big franchise home care companies there's the local nonprofit home care

agencies there's um there are home care cooperatives that are now popping up

here and there um then there's this whole industry you talk about of independent providers that the the the

range and scope is so vast um so that in and of itself finding that

um a quality person that fits your family's values and and can work with you is one thing but this whole other

piece and you touched on it for just a second is this piece of people I don't

think realize especially those people that are like "Okay I'm at the point I finally I'm going to accept i need help

um it's going to help me it's going to help my loved one." They don't realize

how much work it takes to then manage hiring it's like adding another job it

can be I don't want to I'm generalizing but um it's a whole another set of

challenges and um oversight and a whole a whole other area that people often aren't um experienced in and um some

people just choose to not go there because it's just another layer that they can't handle or they go there

without realizing the challenge that they're about to see and so I'd love to

hear a little bit more again you touched on it just a little but you talk about the vetting both sides and the the

clarity and of um the the roles and tasks and how are you

actually making life easier for caregivers yeah great question Laura and

I think you know you've phrased it well where um even if people make the decision if I'm going to seek care

support um they very soon find I now have taken a second job of care manager

coordinator hirer HR of a company you know and I think that you know and and and there I would say let's say like the

few paths people can go down but if you want to just take two paths of care agency path and then finding private

caregivers on your own path right um the care agency path it's not as much do it for me as you'd expect it is do it for

me in the sense that you pay someone you sign a contract they then have um vetted and reliable people uh that will come

help you and then they match them and schedule them and then they come and help you but nonetheless there's still a

lot of challenges one in the traditional and so I I'll speak in North Carolina but I I think in your area and in many

areas the traditional care agency path is anywhere from $35 to $45 an hour let's say nationwide average is kind of

averaging high30s in some of these big cities is averaging like 42 45 so let's say 40 bucks an hour as average baseline

you spend 40 bucks an hour and what do you get they pay the care worker less

than half so depending on what state city you're in it's like barely minimum or subsistence wage right um in our area

in North Carolina the care agencies typically charge $35 an hour and the average caregiver pay in the state is $1.50 an hour right so like it's like

literally the caregivers are like struggling and and and then so what happens so you pay that money and

because of the way the care agency model works right where they're keeping most of the money for themselves no one wants

to do that work so there are some good-hearted people but they'll burn out and go take a job at McDonald's or Walmart because pay's way better part of

the health care crisis by the way I I serve on a board here in Washington state for health developing the health

care um industry and this is this is a crisis across the country is finding and

maintaining health care provide health care workers at the level of career because of the wages so and so so no

thanks and and you know what's funny is that these care companies are saying "Oh complaining caregiver shortage caregiver

shortage." I'm like "How about business model change?" Like if you charge 40 bucks an hour in our case 35 bucks an

hour in this Northtown area and you pay them 1150 no wonder there's a caregiver shortage like no one wants to do that

how about you it's like and this is where I was thinking like if you just think about pyramid from a logical perspective the care company is compared

to who's adding the value the care worker is doing 99% of the hard work going to somebody's house helping them

around doing difficult things right spending hours and hours of their time the care company yes they're doing some

value I would call it 1% of the value right like whether Kerry or anyone else right of like vetting background

checking um scheduling staffing and all that so if you're adding 1% of the value and the person who's doing the care on

the ground is adding 99% of the value how the heck does it make sense that economic distribution should be care

worker gets 30 to 40% care company takes the remaining 60% blows it on

advertising marketing royalties to national franchise or you know owner salary um whatever else money is being

wasted on so there's something illogical about that of like value delivered compared to value captured and in my

opinion the private for-profit like care agency industry is capturing an

unegregiously excess value compared to what the value they're adding and I'll give you another example so this is why

it kind of falls back on the family caregiver is that the family caregiver thinks okay fine i'm just going to pay an arm and leg then this company will do

it all for me what do they get one they get low quality care because these companies are paying the caregivers nothing two because they're paying the

caregivers nothing many of these are um middle-aged women who oftentimes have to take second and third jobs to make ends

meet and and they might even be single mothers okay well what do you know they didn't show up to the care shift you

know who could really blame them maybe they got more money working at Food Lion that shift or elsewhere so you have a

ridiculous reliability issue across the industry from a lot of the families I talked to even when I was researching on

average 15% of the shifts are multiple hours later no show no show no call so

family caregiver is basically like I'm paying top dollar i'm buying like Mercedes type product but I still might

have to call out sick for my job once a week because the person didn't show up or if the person does show up I've

experienced this sometimes they're just unengaged sometimes they're tired goofing off on their phone when you get home from work because it's showing up

yeah exactly so massive turnover industry and I think it's because of you know effectively like labor exploitation

you know hate to say it but you know it's like when so much of the share of money is kept by the company and not the

individual when they're bearing the most of the work share so I think that experience for me I've been a customer

of it sucked um and that's only for people that can afford it most families

can't so then you have the 80% of families who are like well I can afford something but I can't afford these

companies who are just going on their own in this black market gray market of finding people on their own there you have a even further challenge of okay

finding all these people vetting them managing scheduling uh what if the person doesn't show how do you find the

next one blah blah then how do you like do you just leave books of instructions how do you how do they know what they

want to do so in both of these markets I perceive the care experience from having used both of them is not that great what

we have done through tech innovation and through workforce innovation is one uh we have found now we're um north of

20,000 college students across the country we're at over 30 different universities Yeah we started in our backyard and it's like scaled it's

skyrocketed everywhere so we're all over like um obviously all over North Carolina like Duke UNCC Chapel Hill a

bunch of other schools but we're also all over um San Francisco like Berkeley Stanford San Francisco State uh we are

expanding to Seattle so we're UDub University of Washington um we are all over New York like Columbia NYU Forom

some of the other schools boston is one of our biggest markets we have like seven different universities there Harvard TUS Nor Eastern so we have like

now 20,000 plus college students at all these places vetted background checked available scheduled on demand so one we

have made the experience a lot easier for you two the reliability is through the roof like the students are profusely

apologetic if they're five minutes late like they're calling and texting you like crazy no shows is unheard of you

know in terms of like they would be deactivated from our platform if that happened and then worst case is they

woke up sick and then out of courtesy they tell people like hey I can't make it I really have a sore throat I don't want to get your mom or dad sick so I

think that part of it is you know and I can talk to that in terms of like the model is our model is highly affordable

so we actually almost too affordable in the sense of we charge nothing so we are running a tech platform that we are just

eating all the costs and that poses a challenge of scalability and sustainability but for now we're just like okay winging it um and all the

money goes to the caregiver so in most markets like let's say Boston where prevailing elder care rate is $45 an

hour for through any care company kaya is uh offering Harvard toughs nor eastern students at 20 to 25 bucks an

hour depending on length of session and student gets the whole money um in place like San Francisco same thing 20 to 25

bucks an hour seattle and some higher cost markets um it might be 22 starting

22 to 25 um but students love it um families love it because it's 30 to 50%

more affordable and because you're delivering it all through a tech platform um your um incremental costs are not very high so we are just kind of

funding the organization through uh grants and like angel investors for now but a very low budget operation can run

a national kind of like highquality massive workforce with high reliability

like 98% plus on-time percentages like literally unbelievable quality tens of

thousands of care sessions have happened every session is rated mutually by the family and the student we're averaging

4.87 out of five stars rating um like sky-high Google reviews like traditional care industry Google reviews on average

like 3.3 out of five most people don't love the experience so it's like it's literally a higher quality experience at

a lower price delivered more conveniently for the busy stressed out family caregiver where you manage

everything booking scheduling all through tech um you know instructions can be uploaded through tech dynamically

updated and then that's delivered to everyone so I think just kind of like ongoing management notes are delivered

of like what happened in the care session um so yeah it's like all around it just like takes a lot of the pain

points of your manual experience whether through a care agency or through a informal kind of like gray market and it

just like streamlines it all into like as convenient of experience as you know I'm sitting at my desk I open my phone

and call an Uber and I go downstairs three minutes later once you know it's like that exactly i have a quick

question and I do want to shift gears a little bit because I want to talk a little bit more about tech and um AI and

your visions um the quick question we'll see how quick it is um okay is um my

mind is going towards um you know uh certified uh nursing assistant versus um

home care aid qualification like is there a certification i I know that

technically at least in Washington state technically in order to hire an independent provider they don't have to

be certified or trained in anything um and when you're working with a home care

company um then they have um qualifiers for um registration or certification i'm

just curious what your Yeah sure so I would say ours is um no certifications required many of the

students have them CNA or EMT but we don't require them um we uh run it like care.com not like a homeare agency so

it's a caregiver it's an online caregiver registry but we don't rep it as an agency um and critically we guide

that it's companion level care only they're not supposed to be doing injection insulin injections and kind of

like higher accuty needs um but you know we did a lot of research with ARP which by the way ARP is a big supporter and

backer of ours um they they chose us to be part of the age tech collaborative and I was actually earlier this week I

was at the ARP conference in DC and um you know when the LinkedIn news came out like literally they announced at the

whole conference that are like one of our companies is now recognized as like top 50 startups in America and they were like it was everybody at ARP was so

proud because they've been making a big push in caregiving yeah thank you thank you it was like really fun so they did a

lot of research with us and their research suggested that of older adults above 65 who need help with home care

61% of them can be served by companion level care so yes we cannot address the other 39% which is really unfortunate i

hope that as we grow we can figure that out but that 61% that has companion care needs we can dominate that because why

should someone pay 40 bucks an hour for a companion care and then have the care worker not make anything these students

are doing a great job of that so that's you know predominantly those individuals

that are remaining at home that are able to remain at home those care the family caregivers are doing a fantastic job and

they're burning out so this this is just addressing the solution of um burnout and support for family caregivers and um

and providing I mean I'm imagining the quality of care in just the

attentiveness alone that that is coming with these companions

um okay shifting gears if you don't mind i I wanted a little touch on um you talk

about um health technologies and um being in the tech and AI and IT kind of

world did just give us a little sample or taste of maybe uh other ideas you

have or the things you're most excited about um for the future of um utilizing

tech in um the world of aging yeah sure so you know one of one of the big

opportunities we realize as we're scaling this is that we have a couple of different things happening one is this

is a tens of thousands of Gen Z smart college students population going into

the homes of older adults around the country these are um highly ambitious digitally native young people who know

how to use smartphones who know how to use other technology that they can then deploy into the home setting so we kind

of feel like okay this could be an awesome test bed and we started actually we were approached by the National Institutes of Health about this where

they're like you realize you guys are running a massive research lab that can be operationalized to do technology

innovations for older adults because a lot of people are just pure tech doing it but they don't have the channel to

kind of get it and test it in homes so we do so we started kind of like really pivoting and thinking so that's

happening at the same time as AI is now being massively democratized as the cost is getting cheaper and um ability to

build on top of it is getting easier and easier so we rapidly started building AI projects so our first project was um

caregiver training so we're like okay we have all these student caregivers watch dementia training videos ucla

Alzheimer's dementia center has made available to us a bunch of those but we're like okay next level so we proposed a project to Johns Hopkins and

National Institute of Health which had this big funding for AI and we won this grant and then we started developing it and now it's already out in the field

and it's basically AI power to caregiver training we call it Dualingo for caregivers which is you know that language learning app that a lot of Gen

Z people use to like quickly learn Spanish or whatever language we're like the key is using AI to personalize

figure out what you already know figure out who you're going to take care of and then deliver you bite-sized training

modules so you can gradually get badges and build your confidence level it really reduces the intimidation right

from a student to like oh I got to go through 80 hours of watching these DVDs or going to this class to know I'm

getting three minute five minute 10 minute sessions here i'm getting quick quizzes i'm learning i'm upskilling you

know as I need and I'm building my confidence it's actually personal i can see with the AI it can be personalized

to the individual that they're going to see too it's not just general exactly and and it can be used real time

of like while you're there and hey this is happening what should I do it's kind

of like having a care coach in your pocket so to speak which will tell you okay do this and this and try this so

that launch so that was like our first big for and it's like awesome there's like so much like um encouragement from

um healthcare systems and NIH on this of like okay projects like this that can expand access so we kind of launched

that then there's other projects that we just kind of built in-house like here's another one there's generative AI now um

for um imagery right so we observed a lot of people who are helping um have Parkinson's so it's not just dementia

right but there's like a decent sizable minority of people um who are getting care for mom or dad with Parkinson's so

we observed okay a lot of people um some of them had told us oh I used to like to art look at art draw art try to create

art now I have tremors but I want to try and we saw okay well now generative AI is advancing rapidly so this is now by

the way this project is like literally now a year old it's like kind of crazy this is one of our older projects but we

have had in the field and I'm happy to send you the link if anyone wants to use it it's like freely available all our innovations are like we get them on

grants and we let them you know out there in the world for free so people can use them but um we have this um a

tool that um students will take an iPad to um help people with Parkinson's also usable for people with dementia anyone

um so they can say okay the student would type in okay I want to draw golden retriever because that's what the person

reminisces about their dog that died 15 years ago so it'll be a golden retriever then person would start drawing on it

and of course people with tremors like their drawing wouldn't be that great but it would draw and then we use generative

fill to like fill in the picture and then make it look really good and then the person's like "Oh wow this is nice i

drew that." And then you can kind of play around and draw a bunch of other things so it's like this is like almost like took us like a few weeks to code

that it wasn't even that hard um but social impact massive you know we started um deploying virtual reality um

as an option where like VR goggles are becoming cheaper and cheaper a lot of the older adult population can no longer

travel they may never go to Paris again they're certainly not going to go on African safari etc but we can bring that

to them so we found a bunch of content and then we personalize the content based on what they want to see um and

then we launch those so we've been doing a lot of those projects in the inhome setting as well as in like um dementia

day centers like a lot of in our area a lot of churches run day programs for people with dementia so we do that all

the time and it's just like so feel-good students love doing it older adults love doing it um the person who runs uh

dementia center uh at United Methodist Church in our area um said uh it was the he's been running it for 26 years and

like recently we did an hour session there and he was like this is the most fun I've seen anyone here have in the

entire time of doing this and I was like "Yeah because it's like fully immersive and they got to escape and go to all

kinds of things." So that's been an impact yeah and then like um I I'll pause but I mean if you want me to keep

going I have other even cooler okay yeah this is great um I I want to be

respectful of your time so um if you don't mind sharing a couple more and and

then um and then I'd love to You mentioned um links and stuff i'll make

sure I just want to let our listeners know I'll make sure I get those links from you and I'll include it in our show and everything too but yeah sure here's

a couple other projects so we're currently actively working um with Johns Hopkins researchers on um AI powered eye

tracking so cognitive decline screening is a massive problem right now in society where a lot of people can't

access um expensive neurologists and you know MRI and PET scans um but you can

now literally use your smartphone and you know now a lot of smartphone have like infrared eye trackers and by

observing micro oscillations of your pupils like for example right now if I were to look on the screen and look from bottom left to top right my pupils would

be oscillating like this right but somebody with dementia early stage the pupil might oscillate up here and then

have don't go down there and then just go up here again you know might go like that and then somebody with more advanced dementia it might go up here

and then tracking the dot it might just kind of skip and then end up here and then end up here right so so through and

then I'm exaggerating you know for just like the visual but small changes in how the people's oscillate when they're

following a line can be used to diagnose cognitive you know cognitive decline and

then stage so we're working on an AI project for that there's actually the most exciting thing um which I sorry I

ran out of time is neuroch now you can actually read brain activity for three $400 headsets in your

home so we actually have another project um that we've been working on um directly with NIH which is to um buy

these uh devices out of a Canadian research lab that are available for three 400 bucks um and students go into

older adults homes put them on their head and it's non-invasive um but it can read electrical activity in the brain

and tell you uh where somebody's off you know in terms of like okay and if you do that once a week you can kind of develop

a pattern of like if somebody has dementia oh suddenly in these few weeks it's getting worse go get it checked out

so it's been very helpful from a preventative setting where like a lot of times falls and things happen because

people's cognition suddenly declines because these are progressive neurological diseases um so that's been cool so you're capt you're able to

capture a baseline you're able to capture um I mean what I'm thinking from a behavioral standpoint is looking at um

when someone's not getting enough sleep or they're not getting hydration or nutrition you're going to see these so

you're able to catch this exactly along with the the bigger changes happening with process wow

exactly and then the biggest home run on that is twofold there's two therapeutic things which we're both actively working

on one is um observing and personalizing music to calm people um who are agitated

and we've launched that with UCSF um their hospital uh in their ER they're having it problem where like a lot of

people with dementia are sharing up agitated so by simply putting this on and observing the brain's response to music you can very quickly personalize

the music intervention to calm people um and then the second home run project this is a little bit of a moonshot but we're having some decent success in this

is for people with aphasia who can no longer communicate but they still have thoughts you know if you kind of think

about the the process of aphasia it's the connections are severed between different parts of the brain so they they're thinking they just can't get it

out um we're now uh building a what's called brain computer interface but non-invasive where through reading

electrical signals you're able to guess what the person's thinking about so for now it's like you're able to guess

orange or you're able to guess lemon and things like that and then put those on a computer screen with really the hope of

building a very simple basic BCI of like okay I want to go to the bathroom versus

I need food versus give me a glass of water um so if you can kind of read that

through a non-invasive um device to then communicate intent um that could be a

game changer for a lot of people whose thoughts are locked in their mind um so that's like yeah it's like between AI

and neurot stuff is advancing like crazy you can I had no idea when I asked that question what I was Yeah I can imagine

for you Neil you are like uh from hearing about your background and then

you know being interested in tech and like you're getting a second degree in

in neurology and Oh yeah medicine and we're reading all the time yeah go it's

a cool field yeah incredible incredible um this is fantastic i I want to thank

you i I think I could talk to you for a whole another hour just on this topic i realize maybe we could have had two

separate episodes sure yeah happy to do that and yeah I might yeah we may have you back for sure to to um keep us all

updated on the the tech and a AI front you know it's funny because I was just I

was I actually had an interview with the Wall Street Journal the other day and we were talking about tech and um one of

the things that I was sharing is that here in the state of Washington you know they're doing a lot of investing in um

tech support because as we all know the the longer we can keep people at home

the the less money it's going to cost the state you know by moving to higher levels of there and so how can

technology step in whether it's just simple things like um voice um uh

automation for you know opening doors or turning off or on you know appliances or

things like that or even or or things like pill uh dispensing or um but it

it's incredible uh what the technology is presenting to us what I love so much

about you just talking to you is your excitement your enthusiasm the curiosity

the the potential of the future and this is all rooted in your own personal experience of um recognizing the pain

that so many people have have gone through and that there are solutions so thank you thank you thank you i actually

I forgot to mention the coolest thing thanks for mentioning if you don't mind I'll sneak this in but we we just

launched another product we were working on for like last three months which is the world's first ever at least under my

um knowledge um a voice AI companion for older adults that can be um

operationalized fully through phone call um so I can share with you a link but we call it quick talk you know after just

like Tik Tok you know but it's like quick talk but basically it's a um people can call it or it can call them

so for older adults experiencing loneliness or isolation who may not even get a caregiver um we've been able to

fully create a AI voice that is very humanlike sounding full conversational

ability with you um and I've had a bunch of people in like area agencies on aging when I was at the ARP conference I was

having a lot of people from the DC um agency on aging office try it and like they were just shocked like one of them

had come back from Safari in Tanzania so she was like testing it and she was like "Oh you know Frank was the name of the

bot." And we were like "Oh yeah Frank was asking "Yes so um what have you done recently?" And she was like "I just got back from Tanzania." And literally Frank

was asking "Okay so did you go on safari?" She was like "Oh my god." And then and then so she said "Yeah I did blah blah blah." And then Frank's next

question was "Did you see the big five?" Which I didn't even know what that is nobody would know what that is category

of five animals that you're supposed to see on Safari and she was like "What?" You know so it's like we So the the kind

of the idea of a companion chat AI I can't believe this product isn't in the market um and it's like not that

expensive to launch like we're able to get the cost down to less than a dollar a call in terms of how much it cost us

but we've had so many people beta test it and it's like awesome so we're going to be launching that next few weeks but I can share with you a link on that too

but yeah there's just like so much social impact stuff you can do by like basically democratizing access to AI and

like solving problems you know for people that you know may be like lonely and don't have people to talk to and

that is not a small problem i mean um I've done so many episodes on Yeah the studies and research out there about

longevity and and connection and I mean that's just wow oh

this is a fantastic all of this is fantastic information i I want to thank you so much for coming on um thanks you

and I will be in touch okay sounds good yeah thanks a lot i I will share the um

the links with our uh listeners for sure and is there any last thing that that I

can share like maybe um is there a good place to find you and um just kind of follow what you're doing or um yes our

our site is www.careyaya.org board um and then you can also connect with me on LinkedIn um you know we use

that a bunch for communications and it's just Neil Ne and then middle initial K and then last name S H Ah um but yeah

would be happy to chat and I'll give you links of our site and then some of these other AI tools if people want to sign up

for them but yeah we're rolling out a lot of cool stuff and it's all social impact it's all grant funded and it's typically all free um so would love to

help people awesome thank you so much Neil thanks for coming cool thanks for having me Laura really appreciate it all

right all right have a great day