For dementia caregivers who struggle with caregiving responsibilities and looking after their own well-being, Zinnia turns the TV and other devices into a non-pharmacological solution that helps people living with dementia reduce and soothe unwanted behaviors, accomplish essential activities of daily living, and find engagement, connection and joy. Zinnia, an AgeTech Collaborative™ startup participant, can also be used for caregiver respite and features content that encourages education and self-care.
As we observe June as Alzheimer’s and Brain Awareness Month, we spoke with Zinnia’s CEO and co-founder, Bill Uniowski, about the company’s unique offerings and how they help people living with dementia as well as their caregivers.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Please tell us about Zinnia.
Zinnia is therapeutic TV for dementia. We support people living with dementia and reduce their caregiver stress through a platform of videos that are specifically crafted to be digestible by, and engaging for, people living with dementia. The videos are research backed, and caregivers use them as tools to help reduce agitation, to ease activities of daily living, and to help engage, connect and find some joy in caregiving.
What kind of content do these videos include, and how do they work?
We have a curated ecosystem of appropriate and dignified content. We create it ourselves to be slow moving and gently paced, often free from plot or dialogue, but still with a narrative arc to make it engaging.
Our catalogue includes videos about a huge cross section of potential interests. We have videos about nature, gardening, and walks in the forest or along the beach that set a quiet, soothing tone. We also have humorous, silly videos that inspire playfulness and fun. Our videos about babies and animals are very popular. One caregiver told us how she had been looking for a non-pharmacological way to calm down a particular resident who would frequently become agitated. They knew she had been a pediatric nurse when she was younger, so they showed her Zinnia’s babies video. Within minutes, the woman had calmed down, was cooing and reaching out to the screen. So they changed that woman’s care plan to include Zinnia instead of relying so heavily on medication.
We also have videos that are focused on activities of daily living — things that someone with dementia might be resistant to doing, such as drinking water, going to bed or taking a shower. These videos normalize an activity, and help prepare for it by demonstrating in a very accessible way the thing that they are about to do themselves. Our “Let’s Drink Water” video, for example, shows a glass filling up with water and all sorts of people drinking water in different scenarios — even dogs drinking water! The videos are tools that the caregiver can use to help the person accomplish things they need to do over the course of the day. And if the video is particularly engaging for the person, that allows the caregiver to step away and get a respite.
You mentioned that your videos are backed by research. Can you elaborate on that?
We’ve done two years of research with the University of British Columbia and Vancouver General Hospital. They looked at Zinnia both in long-term care and hospital settings. They were able to report in peer-reviewed journals that Zinnia helped reduce agitation and also helped with activities of daily living, especially when used as part of a daily routine. The videos also allowed the person living with dementia to connect with their caregiver and with other residents in their particular setting. In our own survey of caregivers using Zinnia, 83% said it entertains the person they support; 74% said Zinnia reduces agitation in the person they care for; and 79% of caregivers said Zinnia reduces their own stress.
How did Zinnia get started?
The husband of one of our co-founders was diagnosed with dementia at the age of 47. She became his full-time caregiver and experienced those stresses firsthand. When her husband moved to long-term care, he was often left in front of a TV watching programming that resulted in him becoming agitated, confused or bored.
Our co-founder got curious about solutions that would be better than existing TV, and she found indicators that slow-moving, gently paced videos could be helpful. So she used her phone to build slideshows of personal photos set to music — and she found that they helped. But she only had so many photos of their kids, their dogs and their vacations, so she started making calls and getting connected to people, and we ended up forming a team to build this, and it’s been growing ever since.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced?
The biggest challenge was figuring out how to deliver the videos in a way that’s simple for the end user. We started with all our content on a website, but people couldn’t use it with a TV and it didn’t fit with the workflow of many home caregivers, so we built our apps to make it simple in a way that people are already used to.
It’s also difficult to get the word out for a new product and drive awareness among family caregivers, who are often overwhelmed and not aware of all the resources available to them — so we have a challenge of finding large groups of caregivers at scale.
A more fundamental challenge has been helping people comprehend the problem we’re solving. If someone has had a loved one living with dementia, they instantly understand why Zinnia is beneficial. But for people who haven’t had that experience, we found we had to start at the beginning and explain about dementia, the stresses it creates for caregivers, and why a solution is necessary. Fortunately, there has been an increasing amount of awareness about the challenges of the aging population in general and about Alzheimer’s and dementia in particular.
What's ahead for Zinnia?
We’ve been focused on serving individuals and their caregivers in their home, and next we’ll be working with organizations that support large groups of people living with dementia and their caregivers; this will allow us to scale and have a greater impact. We’re doing more research, and we also plan to explore how Zinnia can benefit people who have other neurodivergent conditions beyond dementia — such as children who are on the autism spectrum.
Visit Zinnia’s website to learn more.
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