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Livindi, an AgeTech Collaborative™ startup participant, is an in-home connected care platform and virtual clinic for seniors, caregivers, home care agencies and senior living facilities to communicate, monitor and deliver care services, including Medicare-covered virtual mental health therapy. Partners use the Livindi platform to deliver their own clinical and non-clinical services. 

Brothers and co-founders Dave Watkins and Rick Watkins, who are also the CEO and CTO, respectively, spent some time telling us more about how Livindi works.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length. 

What’s Livindi all about? 

Dave: Livindi is doing wonders in the world by providing technology-enabled health therapy to seniors in their own homes. We’re focused on seniors who are struggling with conditions like depression and anxiety; they might be transitioning into or out of vocations; or they might even be having suicidal thoughts. We provide a range of services, from helping people maintain connections with family members, to providing professional support and group therapies. That allows people to be much more engaged with the process. 

Rick: On one end of the spectrum, some of our customers are consumers whose families might be worried about them — for example, a family might see that a loved one is lonely and needs extra support after a holiday season. On the other end of the spectrum, we have customers who benefit from professional mental health services. On our platform, we have licensed clinicians that provide Medicare-covered, technology-enabled virtual mental health care. 

Dave: On the non-medical side for things like companionship and support, there are applications that allow people to play games, which is a form of engagement. There are other different therapies that depend on aroma or light. All these help people be more engaged.

How does the system work? 

Dave: You can go to Livindi’s website and buy it! We send you a kit, which includes a tablet, some sensors, and a button that tells people there might be something wrong. They’re sent to you fully configured and cellular-enabled, so you just plug it in and literally you’ll be online and talking to somebody right away. 

Livindi isn’t strictly about delivering therapy-based behavioral health. Members of the family can use Livindi to communicate with their aging loved ones. For example, let's say you have an older adult in your life and you can’t get a hold of them. They might be sitting in their wonderful chair with their earphones on and they're watching TV, but you don't know that, and you're worried. Livindi lets you call them and it automatically picks up, so you can interact with the person and see what they’re doing. 

Rick: Livindi’s motion sensors also pick up passive information such as eating patterns and doors opening and closing. We also have an optional wearable that will detect your pulse, respiratory rate, temperature and more. We have an AI that analyzes all this data to try to find issues that you might want to address with the senior — for example, if they aren’t sleeping well at night, or have a fever. 

What was your journey to founding Livindi? 

Rick: We watched our grandparents age in place, and we saw the turmoil my parents went through trying to manage them remotely. One of the problems was just trying to figure out if our grandparents were OK — without having to bug them, because sometimes seniors don’t want that phone call that’s checking in on them. But as a caregiver, if you can just glance at your phone and be assured that they’re awake and moving around, then you don’t need to call them to know they’re OK. That's why we saw a need for something to help folks live independently, whether that’s at home or in a facility. Prior to Livindi, we founded a human resources management company, where we worked with a lot of insurance companies and Medicare, and we saw a need for our product there as well. 

How have you made Livindi’s devices accessible for seniors? 

Rick: When we first launched our product, we realized that some seniors aren’t used to touch-screen technology, so we made it so they can interact with it completely passively: The device has auto-answer — it will light up and tell them somebody is about to say hello to them.  

Another key thing was just making the device simple for the senior. There are tons of features on the enterprise side for doctors and caregivers; but for the senior, if you have a hundred features, that can overwhelm them and make them not want to use it. 

What’s on the horizon for Livindi? 

Rick: We’re looking for a testbed partner, and we’re also raising our series A. 

Dave: We’re seeing real challenges for companies that provide health care services in the home: The reimbursement rates aren’t what they used to be — and we’re here to help! We’re finding it to be a great opportunity to partner with people to provide services to their patients and help them monetize that in a different way. Anyone interested in that can reach out to us at dave@livindi.com or rick@livindi.com. 

Visit Livindi’s website to learn more about the company and its many offerings.