Latest / StartUp Health NOW Podcast / How LifeBio Is Using the Power of Storytelling to Improve Mental Health for Seniors

Transcript

How LifeBio Is Using the Power of Storytelling to Improve Mental Health for Seniors · StartUp Health NOW Podcast

• 0:00
  [on-hold music] Your daughter is busy.
• 0:14
  She's trying her darnedest to help you, but you... When she calls, you're thinking about, "Oh, I need to ask her about this or this or this," like, concrete things that need to be done, right? Mm-hmm. Wait a minute.
• 0:26
  Now I have my 85-year-old friend, and we get to talk about the things I wanna talk about, which I get to listen. So there's intimacy as I listen to her. She hears me, I hear her. So rich.
• 0:39
  [on-hold music] Welcome to StartUp Health NOW, the podcast about the entrepreneurs shaping the future of health and the health moonshots they're working to achieve. I'm your host, Logan Plaster.
• 0:55
  In 2020, the coronavirus caused a societal lockdown like this generation has never seen before.
• 1:02
  One of the results was that people who were already isolated and lonely, like many seniors, were put into a desperate situation.
• 1:09
  Beth Sanders, CEO and co-founder of LifeBio, a company that's been with StartUp Health since 2014, always had a heart for isolated and lonely seniors.
• 1:18
  She'd worked with them for years, helping them to tell their stories using what's called reminiscence therapy. But COVID-19 put LifeBio and this important work into overdrive.
• 1:29
  Not only was the work needed now more than ever, but LifeBio was able to connect the dots between fighting loneliness and improving health outcomes.
• 1:37
  It turns out a phone call with a trained conversationalist actually can fight depression, anxiety, and keep your mind mentally nimble.
• 1:45
  Their findings got the attention of health systems, insurance companies, and even won them a coveted SBIR grant.
• 1:51
  I caught up with Beth to learn more about how LifeBio works and the critical role of storytelling in healthcare, particularly in a post-COVID world. I hope you enjoy. [on-hold music] All right.
• 2:09
  Beth Sanders, CEO and co-founder of LifeBio. Great to have you on this show once again. Welcome. Thank you, Logan. Glad to be here.
• 2:18
  So we have talked before about the work that you're doing at LifeBio, um, I think it may be six months ago, right in the middle of COVID-19.
• 2:26
  Um, I wanna get into the product and the, the platform you're developing, but I wanna start kind of a little more high level.
• 2:35
  You're using storytelling in the healthcare space, and I wanna just have you talk about that more generally. What is the power of storytelling in health? Why do the two come together?
• 2:48
  Storytelling is creating an incredible bridge between people. If we know nothing else from COVID, we know people feel isolated and lonely and need to be more connected to each other in a variety of ways.
• 3:05
  Uh, and when people do it for, um, health and wellbeing, it's amazing too, because it's been found to increase happiness and satisfaction with life or overall wellbeing. Uh, storytelling lowers depression.
• 3:21
  It lowers loneliness. And we are all facing those things today, aren't we? Yeah. COVID has reminded us all that it, it is not good to be isolated or feel lonely.
• 3:32
  And so it's a problem seniors have, people over 65 have, but we really all are in the same boat. Okay. And so storytelling is that bridge. Are the health metrics that are connected with that...
• 3:45
  Uh, we, you mentioned depression, anxiety, um, other, other challenges. Are the health metrics... Uh, have they always been there, or are we growing in our understanding of the connection between storytelling and
• 3:58
  f- loneliness and these health metrics that we're all concerned about? We are growing in our understanding. You know, this idea was introduced by Dr. Robert Butler in 1963.
• 4:12
  He was the first head of the National Institute on, uh, Aging. And he, uh, he was a psychiatrist that saw that life review was okay, was normal. People like to reminisce. They like to tell their story.
• 4:29
  And so he founded this movement, and there have been over 100 studies, probably many more than that, that have studied the power of using reminiscence. Uh, what's new is finding ways to bring that to the masses
• 4:48
  and bring that more and more into the world of healthcare. Um, there's narrative medicine. There's ideas out there that are, uh, happening.
• 4:57
  There's a lot of interest in, in human to human connection more and more, person-centered care.
• 5:05
  You know, all these ideas are there, it's just what we've been trying to do is really focus in, laser focus on storytelling and reminiscence.
• 5:16
  So we have the LifeBio reminiscence method that we've been perfecting over many years. Okay.
• 5:25
  So as a great segue to kind of break down the platform, what exactly you've built, we know it's reminiscence therapy, uh, we know its, some of its health applications, but kind of break it down for me.
• 5:36
  What is the LifeBio platform? So LifeBio has three parts. Uh, lifebio.com happened first. It's just pure biography and storytelling. How do you make it easy for anybody to tell their story?
• 5:52
  That's lifebio.com. The second thing that happened was people said, "Hey, you know what? Older people, they're not all tech, tech, uh, all the way tech savvy.
• 6:06
  Can you offer this by phone?"Can you offer this by phone? So MyHello.com was born and it's providing ways to intervene in people's lives with a loneliness intervention with any phone.
• 6:21
  And so amazing with COVID that we've had this intervention called MyHello. The third thing that happened is LifeBio Memory.
• 6:29
  LifeBio Memory was, uh, developed and is in the midst of being developed for people with, uh, Alzheimer's and other forms of memory challenges. So we had already created LifeBio, but what if... Love those two words.
• 6:44
  What if there's a Alzheimer's memory care m- more, more, more friendly version. Uh, and so we are in the midst of this and, and this has grown out of a, a SBIR grant that is funding LifeBio Memory. Mm.
• 7:00
  Just to recap, LifeBio, then MyHello, then LifeBio Memory. Gotcha. That's all part of LifeBio's umbrella.
• 7:08
  When I last talked to you in the midst of COVID, uh, it was all about this MyHello concept, and I wonder what you've learned from that over the last six months.
• 7:17
  I think you were, you were just rolling it out at the time, or it was at least in its early phases. Now you've, you've gone through the summer, you've, you've been through the height, hopefully the height of COVID.
• 7:28
  Um- Mm-hmm... uh, what'd you learn? Yeah. We have been embraced by the mental health community. Does that surprise you? That was fascinating.
• 7:39
  So we'd been working with health plan, uh, executives in those health plans already, but to find that the mental health communities like, you know, ADEMA boards and counties, um, mental health, you know, recovery boards were interested in this too.
• 7:54
  People needed a way to reach out to people in their homes. And even though- D-... there's traditional therapies out there,
• 8:02
  there's something absolutely beautiful about everyday, ordinary, uh, conversations that can be led with different topics, which are part of the LifeBio reminiscence method, right?
• 8:13
  Let's just ask people about their school experiences. Let's ask about their work. Let's lo- ask about their family relationships. So that's one thing we've learned through COVID, that we have new clients, um- A-...
• 8:25
  that are embracing it. And, yeah, and you're seeing acceptance in the mental health, uh, community. How is, how are they seeing it as an adjunct and a complement to what they're providing? Yeah.
• 8:39
  You know, there's people that need, you know, serious, uh, forms of, of therapy out there, for sure. Uh, and then there are people who are isolated and lonely, and that's their main problem.
• 8:52
  And some of us can think of our own family members who just need more people to talk to, and especially when they're isolated at home, right? They're not depressed maybe. You know, they may have...
• 9:05
  They just are on oxygen, and it's hard for them to get out. Yeah. It was hard before, and it's hard now. So just they have chronic conditions that make it tough. Uh, they may not have a serious mental illness.
• 9:20
  Again, they're just lonely. So MyHello is that perfect, uh, way. The other thing we've learned is people love being matched up with each other.
• 9:30
  So to have a tech-enabled platform that uses anybody's phone and that I can match a 90-year-old in Texas with a 90-year-old in Michigan and they can talk about things that they know that their younger family members know nothing about- Mm...
• 9:47
  that is magic. You know, if you want to talk about the ice man, the milk man, um, uh, you know, your car breaking down in '53. So, so MyHello isn't just a young person calling a, a senior and chatting.
• 10:02
  It can also be a senior-to-senior, uh, hookup- Yes... situation. Yes. A connection. That's right. So there's MyHello Match- Okay... which is this matching that we're doing.
• 10:13
  It's fascinating that we've also learned how to match people better and better over time. Okay. Um- So, so it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a dating service for conversation, for, for just friendly conversation? Yes.
• 10:25
  Right. For widows- I'm guessing, I'm guessing you don't swipe, swipe left and right on this, do you? No, no. We kind of- Send, send the wrong message. [laughs] Right. Right. Interesting. But, uh- Yeah... yeah.
• 10:39
  I, I- We're trying to figure out what is the best way to match people to each other. And over time, AI and machine learning are gonna help and continue to us do that better and better, so. Yeah.
• 10:48
  I mean, that was exactly what my next question was about, is the technology needed to scale.
• 10:53
  One, one of the things I find so fascinating about LifeBio is the work that you're doing in the past, I mean, I could be wrong, but was often relegated to volunteers, even church groups, just a, a, a per, a kind person [laughs] who goes to the, the, uh, senior center and talks to people.
• 11:11
  Uh, this idea of taking that, um, that idea and scaling it is really fascinating. F- using tech tools to scale very non, uh, tech, um, gifts and applications like, like just good old conversation.
• 11:29
  So what are some of the tools that you're using to scale? Yeah. So f- uh, first we continue to build out LifeBio.com and make that easier for people to use.
• 11:41
  But with MyHello, we have, uh, just back-end phone systems that are automatically making sure those phone, those connections happen every week.
• 11:51
  So nobody is manually making sure that these two people are talking to each other. Everything is being, um... Their phone is ringing on either end, right? Yeah.
• 11:58
  It's just a matter of picking up the phone, and, uh, people have been, uh, have online ways and other ways to get ideas of what they're gonna talk about. Mm-hmm.
• 12:08
  So, you know, we're, we're continuing to build out, okay, how do you-Uh, engage them. Okay, get them to say yes. How do you onboard them? How do you make sure that they are, uh, continuing to have their conversations?
• 12:20
  You know, there's an auditing of these calls too, right? Okay. Is this a good match? So behind the scenes, all of this has to happen, and it's being thought through and getting more and more streamlined as we go.
• 12:33
  So we got... We have work to do, Logan. We're not done. Yeah. We got a lot to- Well, I mean, you-... do, but you've gotta have the groundwork laid, and we've got the tech groundwork already. Yeah.
• 12:42
  It's just, um, speeding things up. A- in te- in terms of scale, remind me what markets you're in and kind of where you'd like to move into. Yeah. Right now, the health plans are really interested in My Hello. Okay.
• 12:58
  'Cause tha- there is this, this, um, fear. You want low cost. You know, for both Medicare and Medicaid, a low cost... Hey, you don't need to have any fancy equipment. All you need is a phone number to participate.
• 13:14
  Mm-hmm. That is a rare thing. A- and to find health plans that are very interested in solving for loneliness is my number one goal right now. So in our, in our sales vis-dev activity, it is.
• 13:29
  Who's, uh, who's solving for loneliness? Okay. Because if you're lonely, you're gonna be more depressed. If you're more depressed, you may have higher incidences of Alzheimer's disease. Mm-hmm.
• 13:39
  I mean, all of these are billion-dollar problems- Yeah... that we're trying to address. So, uh, the health plans are our biggest, uh, target with My Hello right now. This is kind of a, a big picture question. Um,
• 13:53
  how do you see My Hello and some of the products that you're doing as a, a, a reaction to social media? So s- something like Facebook, everyone's got a phone.
• 14:04
  It kind of purports to connect people and give them a sense of community, and yet we've seen, uh, the opposite can happen, uh, and people can get into these, uh, unhealthy echo chambers.
• 14:17
  Uh, you can feel even more alone online than, uh, you did before [laughs] Like you're, you know, isolated within a crowd. So, you know, how, how much...
• 14:27
  how do you see, like, a person-to-person conversation as kind of a reaction or response to social media, if at all? I mean, it's a much more rich experience.
• 14:41
  I mean, it's nothing like the feeling you have from a social media connection. It is... I mean, I've experienced it so many times myself, so I'm just excited to give other people this experience.
• 14:53
  It's, it's an intimacy- Mm... of a conversation. You know, it's in no way, um... You know, this isn't a romantic relationship.
• 15:01
  This is a, is a relationship where this is my new best friend, and to have people have that reaction- Mm... to like... Think about it.
• 15:10
  You're 85, and your friends, some of them your best friends, in your local area have passed away. Your daughter is busy. She's trying her darnedest to help you, but you...
• 15:25
  when she calls, you're thinking about, "Oh, I need to ask her about this or this or this," like concrete things that need to be done, right? Mm-hmm. Wait a minute.
• 15:32
  Now I have my 85-year-old friend, and we get to talk about the things I wanna talk about, which I get to listen. So there's intimacy as I listen to her. She hears me. I hear her. Um, it's so rich. Yeah. It's...
• 15:47
  I'm like... And the, and we're, and we're told... We're given great topics each week to talk about. Okay. So we're walking through... Like, here's the other thing.
• 15:57
  Even if you say, see somebody you know at the grocery store, you know, and you're wearing a mask right now, fine. You're gonna be like, "Oh, how's it going? Oh, good. Oh, it's kinda cold out today.
• 16:07
  You know, hey, go, you know, whatever sport team," and, "Yay, how's your knee feeling today, Jean?" I mean, that's the normal conversation. Yeah. Boring. [laughs] I mean, sorry. Yeah. Families, stop it.
• 16:21
  I mean, that's boring. Yeah. Families should stop. Friends... I mean, you, you gotta take it to a different level, and so there, there's where Reminiscence is. It reduces boredom. You're teaching and informing someone.
• 16:34
  Yeah. Nothing is more fascinating than another human being. Yeah. So people are out there doing their crossword puzzles. Yay.
• 16:42
  You know, do all your brain fitness stuff, but n- there's nothing more amazing and complicated than another person. How cool is that? I love it. I love it. [laughs] Okay.
• 16:53
  Uh, you said that prompts are sent out on a weekly basis. Give me an example. Yeah. Describe a childhood memory, uh, riding your bike, playing with your friends. Yeah. Uh, tell me about your grandparents.
• 17:07
  What, what were they like? Um, what was a day like at your work? You know, what was your favorite work? What was your least favorite work? Mm. I mean, here's the thing.
• 17:19
  These questions need to be positive or neutral in their approach. They need to be asked in the right order, in the right way. I mean, those are... A really important thing for them- Yeah...
• 17:33
  to know what's safe to talk about too, right? It's imp- over time, we've learned, okay, this is, this is good. It's rich. It's safe. And, and we give people, like, follow-up ideas too.
• 17:45
  So I'm just giving you some basic topics. Yeah. But there's even more. If they gotta go further, right, we're trying to say... We're giving them training too to kind of ch- keep going. Why? How did that happen? Yeah.
• 17:58
  Yeah. I love thinking of the ancillary benefits of this training just in life. You're meeting with your friends for a drink, and you start asking better questions. It's great. Yes. Let's, let's- They have said that.
• 18:09
  Yeah. They're talking better to their own family. Yeah. So isn't that amazing to have them have-... shared interests, shared experiences with their phone, MyHello friend, right?
• 18:23
  And then they, they see that, uh, translate to their other friends, or their sister, or their- I, I love-... daughter... I, I love thinking about this, uh, you mentioned in the realm of a crossword puzzle.
• 18:35
  We talk about these games we can play to keep our brains elastic, you know, and the importance of it, and some people are obsessed with crossword puzzles for that reason.
• 18:45
  Uh, but this idea that the complexity of another individual interacting with them is, is the, you know, is just the top [laughs] when it comes to keeping yourself elastic, uh, and engaged, and- Yes...
• 18:59
  uh, energized- Yes... in life. Let's, let's transition- Can I, wait, I have to tell you this. Okay, yeah. My, one of our MyHi- MyHello guides, we hire older people to work in this, like, MyHello Guide platform- Mm-hmm...
• 19:13
  where they're calling out to visit with people, right? When, when we don't match, we have guides. And one of them is, maybe she's 65, 67, something like that.
• 19:23
  She's being inspired by the 82-year-olds she's calling that are, like, still out, you know, walking every day and, you know, telling her all the things. She's like, "I gotta up my game." Mm. Like [laughs]
• 19:37
  you know that idea that you're inspiring other people- Yeah... to take better care of themselves. Yeah. Eat better, whatever.
• 19:45
  I mean, that, that, that speaks to, um, the benefit of this to an entire generation of, of recent retirees.
• 19:53
  You think about someone who engages at that level, at 65, 70, and maybe they're going through a little bit of a personal crisis themselves, a, an identity crisis, as they end a career and look for what's next. Yes.
• 20:05
  And to engage, um, as a helper, but then realize that they're receiving, you know? It's, it's a, it's a dual benefit. That's awesome.
• 20:13
  Uh, let's talk a little bit about LifeBio Memory, since that's new and you're developing it. Uh, for Alzheimer's you've got an SBIR grant. Why was that grant important?
• 20:26
  The grant was very important because it's funded a huge new part of our technology team. Okay. So they are experts in AI, and machine learning, and natural language processing.
• 20:41
  It allowed, allowed us to bring on, uh, Northwestern University to help in some, you know, capacity too, beyond our tech team. And LifeBio Memory is reimagining
• 20:57
  everything we've already built in, into its most simple form, voice-based form. We know power, the power of voice, right? We've all used Siri, we've all used Alexa. Mm-hmm. So the, the thing is, how do you...
• 21:12
  I'd said people are complicated, right? LifeBio Memory has to take in that story, process it, summarize it, right? The future is that I'm not only gonna have the story for me easily because I spoke into this- Mm...
• 21:30
  or my family helped if I had memory challenges, but I'm also gonna be able to share that story with my, uh, doctor. Mm. Um, at my senior living community, when I'm on a hospice. You know, somebody will know who I am.
• 21:47
  People with Alzheimer's disease may be in care for three, five, 10 years. Yeah. How hard is it to take care of someone you don't know? Yeah.
• 21:57
  So are you envisioning a, a voice-based prompt system, where the person can kind of feed their story in at their, you know, at their leisure? Yes. That's right. Okay.
• 22:09
  So it's just, again, guiding them through, so the LifeBio Reminiscence Method's at the core. Great. We're asking the right questions, bringing out the story.
• 22:17
  If you can't do it yourself, your family or a loved one's gonna help. But again, nobody's sitting, nobody's typing anything, you know? No.
• 22:24
  They're just talking it, and then, um, all the cognitive services out there, uh, are being incorporated in this. So complicated, though. [laughs] It is...
• 22:35
  Like, the different voices happening, the, um, the voice of someone with dementia. Are we gonna have trouble hearing it? It is... Y- you know, uh, there's a scientific part of all of this, and that is
• 22:50
  why the SBIR is so important. Yeah. 'Cause we h- we are pushing the envelope way beyond anything. Even, even our university partners are like, "Wow, you're talking about serious differences in what content is coming in."
• 23:08
  Got it, okay.
• 23:09
  So just to understand it at my layman's level, uh, you've got an element where, um, the m- machine learning is gonna be able to, uh, start to diagno- start to, uh, understand deteriorations in, in maybe in memory, in mental health, through the storytelling.
• 23:28
  So it's like a, like a very strict health component. But then there's also the, the re- reminiscence therapy, more for the family's sake, like helping the staff and family know that person's story as well.
• 23:39
  So would you, would you say those are two big sort of differentiators? Right. So the first part is just getting the story into the system and understanding that that is in there correctly. Got it.
• 23:51
  And then there's things, uh, of a- of analysis happening. Yeah. As, as this, as this evolves, right? The sentiment analysis or, wait a minute, uh, can we detect these, uh, conditions- Yeah...
• 24:05
  earlier, maybe, as people are using this? Yeah. Gotcha. Interesting. Many possibilities. Gotcha.
• 24:11
  So once you sort of figure out the far reaches of the Alzheimer's care with Memory Care, you can start incorporating that earlier.
• 24:20
  And so someone who's telling their story at-80 or 75 who doesn't have Alzheimer's yet, you might have the technology on the back end to start identifying things. Right. Interesting. Right. Is there a depression here?
• 24:32
  Yeah. Is there, is there early cognitive issues that we m- might hear? Mm. Who knows? You know, we- Yeah... this is a new, uh, world that we're in right now, for sure. Fascinating. And it is... Yeah.
• 24:48
  And, and can, can we summarize it? Like I said, the, the, getting the story, summarizing the story, and then can we analyze? How exciting is it?
• 25:00
  Because I know the clinicians, the people delivering care to people, want to know... If they can't read 20 pages about them or listen- Yeah... you know, or listen online or anything to someone talk for four hours, right?
• 25:16
  They don't have time. But can this summarize their story into three paragraphs, where it's like, "Hey, Bill," you know, "Yeah. Oh, I see you were in Vietnam in '67, '68. Oh, I know you love collecting this or that.
• 25:31
  Oh, wow. W- you know, I see you were a police officer. No wonder you're up at 3:00 AM." Okay. So we want to know the person. At the core, Logan, this is, this is a huge remarkable part of what we're doing.
• 25:49
  We are trying to understand the entire human being, and that is never being known today- Mm... in a healthcare environment. No. Your doctors and nurses, you are a puzzle to them. Yeah.
• 26:07
  And a, and, and it's a series- And we wanna unlock that... and a series of data points. Yes. Yes. They're concentrating on your physical health.
• 26:15
  They are not concentrating right now on the mental health or who you are enough. Yeah.
• 26:20
  And we are on the cutting edge of knowing who the person is, which could lead to knowing why they have these health issues happening, right? Interesting.
• 26:28
  If you understand at the core why is this person like they are- Yeah... is there anything we can do to help them? Yeah.
• 26:36
  And then you start really understanding the power of lifestyle decisions and kind of where those originated and habits. Mm-hmm. Yeah. You know, we're getting to the end of our time, but- Yeah...
• 26:47
  you know, I wanna ask you about...
• 26:48
  You know, you're really suggesting or sort of looking towards a, a big shift in how we think about aging and how we think about patients as, as whole, you know, s- story- beings with stories.
• 27:02
  Um, what do you think will be necessary to shift cultural attitudes? You know, we have, um, whole industries around senior care and- Mm... attitudes, uh, among caregivers that are, are set, have been set for generations.
• 27:18
  What do you think needs to happen to really shift some of those attitudes in the, in the right direction? So I would say our age tech is at the core of what we're doing.
• 27:34
  I worry about ageism in our society. I think it's alive and well right now. I think we're discounting older people all the time,
• 27:44
  and I don't think their issues are being addressed properly in the doctor's office, in the hospital. In... The entire long-term care system is going to need an overhaul.
• 27:59
  Um, I think people are discounted. They need to... They, they really do have purpose and meaning and wisdom, and we are, we are writing people off all the time, and we can't do that.
• 28:16
  We have just too many, you know, 60 million plus older people in our country, and that's even growing. Yeah. So what are we gonna do to change the system and stop, uh, coming at people
• 28:31
  saying, "You, you've got nothing to live for"? Yeah. I mean, really, in a roundabout way, we are not celebrating people. We are saying, "You're done." Yeah. Yeah. "Now, you know, you don't, you don't matter anymore."
• 28:47
  Yeah. Well, w- what I hear, what I hear you saying is i- it's not a little tweaks, [laughs] little tweaks here and there we need in senior care, adjusting this technology or this type of facility.
• 28:58
  It's really an overhaul of our thinking about the value of, of human beings as they age, and understanding their stories is a key component to bringing that value. You, you are right.
• 29:13
  I interviewed a 91-year-old this week and his wife, who's 85. I was helping them tell their story. Who really got more out of it? I did. Yeah. Every time.
• 29:31
  We are not listening to people- Yeah... in the healthcare system. Yeah. They are telling us what they need. They don't n- need just a TV in their room. They need human beings connecting with them. Yeah. And this is...
• 29:44
  Mmm, I hope this changes. [laughs] Yeah. Or we're gonna be in a world of hurt. And, and we did... We could have, we could have, uh, learned so much if we'd listened. Yeah.
• 29:55
  Well, Beth, I, you, I think you're onto something. I know you're onto something. And, um, I appreciate all of your, your dedication and hard work making this a reality.
• 30:06
  Um, I think you're, you're connecting the dots here in a really important way, and a lot of people are gonna benefit. So Beth, thanks for taking the time, uh, to fill me in, uh, and thanks for all your, your work.
• 30:18
  [upbeat music] StartUp Health invests in health transformers from around the world who are committed to achieving audacious health moonshots.
• 30:32
  If you wanna learn how you can join this community of entrepreneurs or if you wanna connect with one of our 330 companies, go to startuphealth.com. Thanks for listening to "StartUp Health NOW." We'll be back next week.
• 30:44
  [upbeat music]