Latest / Glovisor Podcast / Her Mom Fell—So She Invented an AI Device to Change Patient Mobility | Sheila Buswell (Ep 60)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Can thousands of lives change because of the hardest moments
- 0:03Speaker 1: you've ever faced? This is a story about resilience, innovation,
- 0:07Speaker 1: and purpose. Welcome to the Glowvisor podcast, where we explore
- 0:14Speaker 1: business growth, communication, and personal development through real conversations with
- 0:18Speaker 1: people that make an impact. Our guest is the CEO
- 0:21Speaker 1: and co-founder of Buzzwell Biomedical, the company behind Upward Mobility,
- 0:26Speaker 1: and AI-enabled mobility device transforming how hospitals support patient movement.
- 0:32Speaker 2: A U.S.
- 0:33Speaker 1: Army veteran and engineer, she brings a passion for restoring
- 0:37Speaker 1: patients' independence, reducing caregiver strain, and pushing healthcare forward through innovation, entrepreneurship,
- 0:45Speaker 1: and resilient leadership. GloVisor welcomes Sheila Buswell.
- 0:49Speaker 2: Thank you, Joe. I'm happy to be here. A pleasure.
- 0:52Speaker 1: Looking forward to the conversation.
- 0:53Speaker 2: All right.
- 0:55Speaker 1: So, Sheila, let's begin. Please share with us a little
- 0:57Speaker 1: bit more about what you do.
- 0:59Speaker 2: Being a patient myself, but mostly when I saw my
- 1:01Speaker 2: mom in rehab, I wanted to empower her in a way.
- 1:07Speaker 2: And I wanted to empower myself and patients totally. And
- 1:10Speaker 2: I'm an engineer, so I look at things technically. And
- 1:13Speaker 2: I was like, oh, how do we solve this problem?
- 1:15Speaker 2: And then every day I try to solve that problem
- 1:19Speaker 2: and make it more obtainable for everybody in those situations.
- 1:25Speaker 2: And so day to day, I work to further the business.
- 1:29Speaker 2: And sometimes that's cleaning toilets and taking out trash. But
- 1:32Speaker 2: sometimes it's pitching, you know, for millions of dollars or,
- 1:36Speaker 2: you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to venture capitalists
- 1:39Speaker 2: or angel investors.
- 1:41Speaker 1: Tell us a little bit more about Buswell Biomedical. What
- 1:44Speaker 1: are you focusing on right now?
- 1:46Speaker 2: We have the product Upwork Mobility, Upmo for short. And
- 1:53Speaker 2: I got a patent for it. where the whole business
- 1:56Speaker 2: is formed around that and to get input from health
- 2:00Speaker 2: care workers to make them safer and from people who
- 2:04Speaker 2: are patients or have loved ones that were patients and
- 2:06Speaker 2: see what we could add. And one problem that we
- 2:09Speaker 2: hear all the time is that when you're in a
- 2:11Speaker 2: hospital or rehab setting, activities of daily living, especially toileting,
- 2:15Speaker 2: can be cumbersome. And so to figure out how to
- 2:18Speaker 2: do that. and make it expeditious. And because when you
- 2:22Speaker 2: have to go, you have to go, you can't wait
- 2:24Speaker 2: hours sometimes. And that would be, that's a meaningful work.
- 2:31Speaker 2: But when I worked for a beer company, I didn't,
- 2:33Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't that meaningful. When I worked for
- 2:36Speaker 2: Harley Davidson, not that meaningful, but this is meaningful on
- 2:39Speaker 2: a level I can't explain, like to make people's lives better. Yeah,
- 2:42Speaker 2: that makes sense.
- 2:43Speaker 1: Now, does the patient have the ability to, to move
- 2:47Speaker 1: out of the bed using the upward mobility under OWN,
- 2:51Speaker 1: or does a caregiver or a nurse have to help
- 2:54Speaker 1: the patient?
- 2:55Speaker 2: The answer to that would be, it would depend on
- 2:57Speaker 2: the patient. The idea is to empower people where they can.
- 3:01Speaker 2: And so the current status of care is if you
- 3:06Speaker 2: have to conduct any activity of daily living and you're
- 3:08Speaker 2: considered a mobility concern, you call a nurse or healthcare worker.
- 3:11Speaker 2: The healthcare worker comes or an entourage of healthcare workers
- 3:16Speaker 2: when they can do the things. I mean, you're supposed
- 3:21Speaker 2: to lift like 50 pounds and I haven't weighed 50
- 3:25Speaker 2: pounds since I was under five. But like you need
- 3:28Speaker 2: to have a number of people. Even my mom was
- 3:32Speaker 2: 99 pounds. She had to have two people in theory.
- 3:36Speaker 2: But you would call this device, EPO, and it would
- 3:39Speaker 2: travel to you autonomously like a self-driving car. They have
- 3:42Speaker 2: wheelchairs that do this in airports. but I don't think
- 3:44Speaker 2: that's the best. Using lighter technology like a Roomba or
- 3:48Speaker 2: a self-driving car to come to you in an airport,
- 3:51Speaker 2: in a hospital setting. And then if you're able to,
- 3:57Speaker 2: this device, you'd hook your own, the lanyard to your
- 4:00Speaker 2: specialized harness, and then you put that harness on like
- 4:03Speaker 2: a jacket, and then you could go conduct any activity
- 4:05Speaker 2: day living by yourself. If you're able to do that.
- 4:09Speaker 2: If you're not, it could help people in a situation
- 4:13Speaker 2: if a healthcare worker needs to come because it turns
- 4:16Speaker 2: one healthcare worker into many because they won't have the
- 4:20Speaker 2: same strength. Like they're using more cognitive ability, hand-eye coordination,
- 4:28Speaker 2: not brute strength lifting.
- 4:30Speaker 1: This is really interesting. So I guess just for more clarification,
- 4:34Speaker 1: just because I haven't seen this in progress, but so
- 4:37Speaker 1: if you're in a room in a hospital, you can
- 4:40Speaker 1: call this device that will self-drive to your room. And
- 4:44Speaker 1: then if I'm able to, as a patient, I can
- 4:47Speaker 1: just latch on and it will help me get out
- 4:50Speaker 1: of bed. Will it bring me to the restroom or
- 4:54Speaker 1: will it just help me up?
- 4:55Speaker 2: The reason you have a specialized harness is it can,
- 4:58Speaker 2: it knows your body. Like I walk with a lump
- 5:00Speaker 2: and it knows that that would be normal for me,
- 5:02Speaker 2: but it probably isn't normal for most people, but it
- 5:06Speaker 2: would compare what everybody's motion is. And that's the machine
- 5:09Speaker 2: learning part with your motion. and anticipate a fall. But
- 5:12Speaker 2: other than the way it would prevent a fall is
- 5:16Speaker 2: like a little kid, when he's learning how to walk,
- 5:18Speaker 2: you pick it up. And it's not to have somebody,
- 5:21Speaker 2: a patient hanging there like a pinata. It's just so
- 5:23Speaker 2: that you can have your feet under you, like stabilize yourself.
- 5:28Speaker 2: But you go to the bathroom. Most people fall between
- 5:32Speaker 2: 11 p.m. and 1 a.m. going to the bathroom. So
- 5:35Speaker 2: the idea is to, and when healthcare workers are going
- 5:39Speaker 2: to help somebody, There is usually, they had to go
- 5:43Speaker 2: like when you ring the button, when you ring for help, right?
- 5:45Speaker 2: Like you're not, sometimes they wait for hours. When you
- 5:48Speaker 2: go into a rehab facility, you meet with a person
- 5:51Speaker 2: who's like a RN or equivalent and they can assess
- 5:56Speaker 2: whether you're physically able or, and that the assessment needs
- 6:00Speaker 2: to be made at that level. And at that time,
- 6:03Speaker 2: they would also say, you know, if you, if you stumble,
- 6:07Speaker 2: you can control lower to the ground. They could pick
- 6:10Speaker 2: the corrective action or raise you up a little bit
- 6:15Speaker 2: so that you could get your feet under you, take
- 6:17Speaker 2: your weight off. Off-weight people, I think, is the right term.
- 6:20Speaker 2: And right now, this type of device is used in
- 6:24Speaker 2: the hakoma. It's to fit around a treadmill in physical therapy.
- 6:29Speaker 2: But the upward mobility would fit through a doorframe and
- 6:31Speaker 2: around a toilet. So... That's why it's used in hospitals
- 6:36Speaker 2: and rehabilitation hospitals because the door frames are standardized. In houses,
- 6:41Speaker 2: they're not, you know. But I think once we get
- 6:43Speaker 2: that motion library, we can find out where people are unstable.
- 6:47Speaker 2: And we know a lot of people have stabilization issues
- 6:54Speaker 2: in the bathroom. right? Like there's a, but there's a
- 6:57Speaker 2: lot going on there. They're standing up. If it's particularly,
- 7:00Speaker 2: you have a problem standing up or sitting down or
- 7:04Speaker 2: walking is a, there's a huge library on that, but
- 7:07Speaker 2: people who the ultimate goal is to let people stay
- 7:10Speaker 2: in their houses longer, but we can learn a lot
- 7:12Speaker 2: from the motion of when people fall the most and
- 7:15Speaker 2: what predictors are identify you as soon to fall. We
- 7:20Speaker 2: want to stop that or limit it. That travel distance
- 7:23Speaker 2: to six inches or, you know, not get to the
- 7:28Speaker 2: point where in hospitals, they say an unplanned descent to
- 7:32Speaker 2: the floor with and without injury. That's a whole thing.
- 7:36Speaker 2: But the idea that we would just be able to
- 7:40Speaker 2: make people safer and patients safer and healthcare workers safer,
- 7:47Speaker 2: because Your healthcare workers get injured a lot of the
- 7:50Speaker 2: time helping heavier patients or helping patients, period. You're not,
- 7:53Speaker 2: there's the OSHA thing of lift with your legs, not
- 7:56Speaker 2: your back. Well, what do you catch with in an emergency? Whatever.
- 8:00Speaker 1: Now, how does AI integrate with the hospital? You mentioned
- 8:04Speaker 1: how different patients will have different requirements. Is there an
- 8:09Speaker 1: integration process? where it identifies which patient can do which task?
- 8:15Speaker 2: I think most people, when they think of artificial intelligence,
- 8:18Speaker 2: they think of large language models, like my chat GPT
- 8:20Speaker 2: can write an email for me or Grok can tell
- 8:22Speaker 2: me what the best pet sitters or pet trainers are.
- 8:26Speaker 2: And I think the idea of a machine learning, and
- 8:29Speaker 2: that's where it goes to, it's like the understanding of
- 8:32Speaker 2: motion and like what's normal motion and what's, right now
- 8:36Speaker 2: we don't know enough about what predicts a fall. Some
- 8:40Speaker 2: people just fall. But there are some things that, you know,
- 8:44Speaker 2: they know little rugs all over your house can make
- 8:46Speaker 2: people trip and fall. So eliminating that and little things
- 8:51Speaker 2: we can learn where we help. We're going to have
- 8:53Speaker 2: more data. We can get more information from it. So
- 8:57Speaker 2: that's how it integrates. The machine learning algorithm that determines stability.
- 9:03Speaker 2: And then the self-driving car. I use that. like the
- 9:08Speaker 2: up mode driving to you, like a Roomba or a
- 9:11Speaker 2: self-driving car, it totally is a LIDAR technology that's artificial intelligence.
- 9:17Speaker 2: It can determine if there's obstructions that they need to avoid.
- 9:22Speaker 2: Different hospitals have, different states have different laws. Like I
- 9:25Speaker 2: think Texas had a hospital shooting or something. And so
- 9:32Speaker 2: there is doors that have to remain shut. And there's
- 9:36Speaker 2: limited ability to travel from one place to another. So
- 9:41Speaker 2: that would have to be navigated and have to use
- 9:45Speaker 2: artificial intelligence.
- 9:46Speaker 1: Every successful entrepreneur has that defining moment that made them
- 9:53Speaker 1: make that item or come up with that idea and
- 9:57Speaker 1: put it to action. What inspired you to pursue this path?
- 10:01Speaker 2: It definitely, I didn't have the entrepreneurship spirit. It was
- 10:04Speaker 2: one of those things where I gave myself a pep talk.
- 10:07Speaker 2: If not you, then who? And if not now, then when?
- 10:09Speaker 2: And so we talked before I got it. I had
- 10:12Speaker 2: a scholarship when I graduated high school to the University
- 10:14Speaker 2: of Utah. I was tied to a high GPA that
- 10:16Speaker 2: I did not maintain. And after two years, I joined
- 10:18Speaker 2: the U.S. Army. And I was injured in Bosnia in
- 10:21Speaker 2: 1998 on a deployment there. And I had a generator
- 10:25Speaker 2: fell off a forklift and my foot was under it.
- 10:29Speaker 2: And I was a patient in a UN hospital called
- 10:33Speaker 2: the Blue Factory. I'm sure they call all the, knowing
- 10:36Speaker 2: the military, that's what it's called, on a peacekeeping mission
- 10:39Speaker 2: or any, anyway. It was a thing where I was like,
- 10:46Speaker 2: I had a cadre of Norwegian nurses and I had
- 10:50Speaker 2: no problem there, but it was like, that was the
- 10:53Speaker 2: hardest thing for me to get. There wasn't a shortage
- 10:55Speaker 2: of people. It was just that, oh man, going to
- 10:59Speaker 2: the bathroom when there's somebody there is just not something
- 11:01Speaker 2: you want to do. And after I got out of
- 11:03Speaker 2: the military, I got a medical discharge and I got
- 11:05Speaker 2: out in 2001. And then 20 years later, my mom
- 11:11Speaker 2: falls in Arizona and has an accident. But this time,
- 11:15Speaker 2: After those 20 years, I worked for a lot of
- 11:19Speaker 2: great companies. I ultimately obtained a master's in engineering, right?
- 11:23Speaker 2: So I go out to, I'm not a caregiver. So
- 11:28Speaker 2: I go out there and my first impulse is to
- 11:31Speaker 2: be mean to the healthcare workers because my mom's, I
- 11:34Speaker 2: was frustrated. And I saw my mom struggle with the
- 11:38Speaker 2: same standard of care that I experienced 20 years prior.
- 11:41Speaker 2: And I knew by this time that there was a
- 11:43Speaker 2: better way. But it's hard when you're talking to healthcare workers.
- 11:47Speaker 2: They think large language model. This means more paperwork. I
- 11:51Speaker 2: don't want more paperwork. They don't mind helping people go
- 11:54Speaker 2: to the bathroom. That's something they can do. They're trained
- 11:55Speaker 2: for that. They're expecting that. Filling out a paperwork to
- 11:59Speaker 2: keep the lawyers happy is not what they want to do.
- 12:04Speaker 2: But I was able to identify a solution to the problem.
- 12:08Speaker 2: I thought at the time, I'll just go work for
- 12:09Speaker 2: the company that's developing a solution to this. Well, that
- 12:13Speaker 2: problem was there nobody was developing the solution. Like, so
- 12:19Speaker 2: I was like, well, I figured out how to solve
- 12:23Speaker 2: the problem. And I was like, well, what to do now?
- 12:25Speaker 2: And so I started Best Well Biomedical and obtained a
- 12:29Speaker 2: patent for the utmost.
- 12:32Speaker 1: So can you share with us a little bit about
- 12:35Speaker 1: how long did that process take from the moment that
- 12:37Speaker 1: you realized there was a need, you found that no
- 12:40Speaker 1: one was fulfilling it, And now you're going to step
- 12:43Speaker 1: up and you designed this machine, this AI mobility or Upmo,
- 12:50Speaker 1: as you call it, and you designed it and then
- 12:53Speaker 1: you put in. So how long did that process take
- 12:55Speaker 1: to get to the point where you're patting and ready
- 12:58Speaker 1: to roll?
- 12:59Speaker 2: What happened initially when my mom fell was like April
- 13:01Speaker 2: of 2019 or 2018. And then I figured out a
- 13:04Speaker 2: solution by June, but, and I, it took a while.
- 13:11Speaker 2: I would say a couple months to determine that there
- 13:13Speaker 2: wasn't anybody working on this. And I was just going to, oh,
- 13:16Speaker 2: I have this personal experience. I can go work on it.
- 13:19Speaker 2: And that was 2018. And now it's 2026. And then
- 13:24Speaker 2: closed in that timeframe. It was first, I wanted to
- 13:27Speaker 2: prove that my idea was feasible, right? So I went
- 13:31Speaker 2: and developed a short machine learning library and I got
- 13:36Speaker 2: a hundred specimens with four inertial measurement units and I
- 13:41Speaker 2: gave it to a data scientist, but it was awesome
- 13:43Speaker 2: because the time was like 2020 and I was going
- 13:46Speaker 2: around and be like all the age group, male and
- 13:49Speaker 2: female across the age spectrum. It was really great to
- 13:52Speaker 2: talk to a 20 year old man as a middle-aged
- 13:54Speaker 2: woman and be like, stand up and sit down for science.
- 13:57Speaker 2: I need to capture your emotion. It was weird. There
- 13:59Speaker 2: was no way to, that took a lot of the
- 14:01Speaker 2: military in me to be like, we're going to do this.
- 14:04Speaker 2: And it's for, for it's for the betterment of humanity,
- 14:09Speaker 2: but it was hard. And then to get that proven
- 14:12Speaker 2: and then to prove that it was feasible. And then
- 14:14Speaker 2: we got a mechanical prototype and tested that it could,
- 14:19Speaker 2: we physically made it so it could fit through a
- 14:21Speaker 2: doorframe and around the toilet, but then it was like
- 14:26Speaker 2: stable enough and it could lift enough weight. So we
- 14:28Speaker 2: have a mechanical prototype that can lift 500 pounds at
- 14:32Speaker 2: a Like having the idea, I thought we had an
- 14:40Speaker 2: idea and it was needed and there was a need
- 14:43Speaker 2: for it. But it's almost like you don't realize you
- 14:48Speaker 2: have a problem or people don't realize they're going to
- 14:50Speaker 2: be old. And it's really hard to sell somebody who's
- 14:53Speaker 2: in their 30s that they're going to be in a
- 14:54Speaker 2: nursing home or you're going to have problems with your knees.
- 14:59Speaker 2: And that's a difficult sell, but it's easier. To talk
- 15:02Speaker 2: to people about their loved ones. For myself, when I
- 15:04Speaker 2: was 20 years old, I was like, yeah, this is terrible.
- 15:06Speaker 2: But it was more mentally taxing and pulled at my
- 15:11Speaker 2: heartstrings more when I saw my little mama waiting to go,
- 15:14Speaker 2: you know, for any of the activities of daily living
- 15:16Speaker 2: and to solve those problems. It's something that's going to
- 15:19Speaker 2: affect everybody. And it's important to work. Like I keep saying,
- 15:23Speaker 2: bringing this back to it. I feel like this work
- 15:26Speaker 2: is meaningful and it's going to impact a lot of
- 15:29Speaker 2: lives in the future.
- 15:30Speaker 1: You have a prototype. What is the next step after this?
- 15:35Speaker 2: Well, we absolutely need FDA clearance. But to get to
- 15:39Speaker 2: FDA clearance, we have to figure out that this is
- 15:42Speaker 2: safe and applicable and we have to be able to
- 15:44Speaker 2: prove that. And then, so there's a lot of testing involved.
- 15:50Speaker 2: And I don't, Joe, it's really expensive to get testing
- 15:52Speaker 2: and to develop a machine learning algorithm, but that's the
- 15:56Speaker 2: next steps.
- 15:57Speaker 1: So who should be contacting you right now?
- 15:59Speaker 2: So venture capitalists or angel investors would be great. But
- 16:01Speaker 2: I'd love to hear from people who have been patients,
- 16:04Speaker 2: have loved ones of patients or healthcare workers to just
- 16:06Speaker 2: give me your input, what problems we could solve. That
- 16:08Speaker 2: would be great. What problems have you faced that you
- 16:11Speaker 2: think we could help with? So that's helpful, right?
- 16:14Speaker 1: To listen to some feedback and then integrating. And I
- 16:18Speaker 1: guess that would be version two, version three. As you
- 16:21Speaker 1: move along, these models just continue improving like every other product.
- 16:25Speaker 2: Well, and I think when more people, we get more
- 16:27Speaker 2: people using it, we're going to get more input. We
- 16:29Speaker 2: get more people. I am a total believer in that
- 16:34Speaker 2: the more people use it, that's feedback you get. But
- 16:38Speaker 2: you have to ask the right questions. You have to
- 16:40Speaker 2: get it. Doing things in a vacuum, I've learned so much,
- 16:44Speaker 2: mostly around what I didn't know before. But healthcare workers specifically,
- 16:47Speaker 2: they fight those battles daily. So what could we do
- 16:51Speaker 2: to help make your life easier?
- 16:53Speaker 1: If one of our listeners is an angel investor and
- 16:55Speaker 1: contacts you today and just gives you endless amount of money,
- 17:01Speaker 1: how long before you think you can get to market?
- 17:05Speaker 2: After we get the FDA clearance, I think it would
- 17:07Speaker 2: be about six months.
- 17:08Speaker 1: Yeah, because I can see this model being very interesting
- 17:11Speaker 1: to hospitals today, but I think ultimately... Other variations, it
- 17:15Speaker 1: may be a little smaller. They can be used in
- 17:17Speaker 1: the home. Some people may be interested if it can fit.
- 17:20Speaker 2: Well, that's the biggest thing about it. I think our
- 17:22Speaker 2: ultimate goal is when we learn more about motion. But
- 17:25Speaker 2: we can't make something any smaller. Door frames in houses
- 17:29Speaker 2: are variable. Like our house in the city, when we
- 17:32Speaker 2: lived near St. Louis City, it was a 100-year-old house.
- 17:35Speaker 2: And it had one door frame that was 28 inches.
- 17:39Speaker 2: So there's people these days that are bigger than 28
- 17:41Speaker 2: inches across. So it's very hard to make something, if
- 17:46Speaker 2: not impossible, structurally sound to prevent a fall and be mobile.
- 17:52Speaker 2: But if we know that you have these moments of
- 17:55Speaker 2: instability when you stand, where we could place stuff that
- 17:58Speaker 2: doesn't have to move so that you can stay in
- 18:00Speaker 2: your house longer.
- 18:01Speaker 1: Now, if listeners remember only one thing from today's conversation,
- 18:06Speaker 1: what do you hope that message is?
- 18:08Speaker 2: I think when I was young and it would still
- 18:10Speaker 2: serve me, it still serves me today is to just
- 18:13Speaker 2: trust my gut more than I do other people. And
- 18:17Speaker 2: because that's your intuition. And I think that a lot
- 18:21Speaker 2: of people think we're only going to be able to
- 18:24Speaker 2: do this or that. It's not ill-intentioned. It's just they're
- 18:28Speaker 2: limited by their experiences and their education and I think
- 18:33Speaker 2: that's what led me down this path of entrepreneurship and
- 18:36Speaker 2: is just being open to that and just being like, okay,
- 18:39Speaker 2: we are offering something and people think exoskeleton, people think
- 18:43Speaker 2: they're robotics in a different way. Like they think a
- 18:46Speaker 2: robot is gonna be like the humanoid robot that can
- 18:50Speaker 2: run faster than Hussein Bolt. Well, it might be a
- 18:52Speaker 2: robot that folds your laundry or does your dishes or
- 18:56Speaker 2: at Harley-Davidson, we had packaging robots that were awesome to watch,
- 18:59Speaker 2: but they did not look like a humanoid. And I
- 19:02Speaker 2: think to really think outside the box, you need to
- 19:06Speaker 2: feel and to solve problems, you need to be able
- 19:09Speaker 2: to trust your gut.
- 19:11Speaker 1: Now, where can our audience connect with you? Find out
- 19:14Speaker 1: more about your work and continue this conversation.
- 19:17Speaker 2: BuswellBiomedical.com.
- 19:19Speaker 1: Nice and easy. Sheila, thank you so much for spending
- 19:22Speaker 1: time with us today and sharing your story and your invention.
- 19:28Speaker 1: I'm looking forward to seeing it in person.
- 19:30Speaker 2: Thank you. Thanks, Joe.
- 19:32Speaker 1: Thanks, everyone, for listening. If this episode inspired you, share
- 19:35Speaker 1: it with someone who needs it. And don't forget to
- 19:37Speaker 1: follow the Globalizer podcast for more conversations to make an impact.
- 19:41Speaker 1: Till the next time.