86. MemoMate- AI-Powered Storytelling & Satisfaction in Senior Living

Host Amber Bardon welcomes Raphael Rubens, Founder & CEO of MemoMate, an AI-powered platform enhancing resident and staff satisfaction in senior living. Inspired by his grandmother’s need to document her life story, Raphael developed MemoMate to capture life stories, streamline surveys, and reduce admin burdens for communities.

He shares insights from living in a senior community, how AI-driven phone surveys improve engagement, and the future of AI in compliance, well-being, and predictive analytics.

Learn more at memomate.app or by emailing Raphael: raphael@memomate.app

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Transcript

Amber Bardon: Welcome to Raising Tech podcast. I'm your host, Amber Bardon, and today our guest is Raphael Rubens, who is the founder and CEO of MemoMate. MemoMate is an AI powered platform that helps senior living communities improve resident satisfaction, staff satisfaction, streamline administrative tasks, and capture life stories of residents.

Welcome to the podcast. Thank you very much, Amber. Thank you for having me. So I'd love to start off with you giving us some background on [00:01:00] your story and how you came to enter the senior living industry. Of course. So let me maybe first introduce my myself so you know who I am and where I'm from. You maybe heard from my accent that I'm not from the United States.

Raphael Rubens: So my name is Raphael. I'm I'm originally from the Netherlands, from Amsterdam. But since a few years, I'm based in Israel in Tel Aviv. The founder of MemoMate. And Mermaid started with a personal story just like you, just like all the other startups that are entering this space. Both of my grandparents were in an assisted living community.

And after my grandfather passed away, my grandmother understood that she, it was really important for her to document her life story and shared this with her children, with her grandchildren. So she went to the life enrichment department and asked, Hey, can someone help me write my life story?

Probably sounds familiar. There were all, there was a huge labor shortage that didn't have time. There weren't any volunteers available, so they couldn't help my grandmother. So my grandmother approached me and she asked me if I could help her write her life story. And I told her, grandma, I'm not a, I'm not a good [00:02:00] writer, but I know something about technology.

Let's maybe see if I can get like a technological solution for this. So that's how MemoMate was started. So we developed an AI interviewer that interviewed my grandmother about her life. At that time it was still web-based so on iPad. And my grandmother was just chatting with this AI autobiography.

And after a few weeks I visited her again and I just looked at the whole chat conversations she had with this bio biographer, and then I just said, Hey, convert this conversation into a 10,000 word autobiography. And like this, I had a biography of the life of my grandmother. I thought, oh, this is pretty interesting.

Maybe there's a business out here. And someone recommended me to have a look. At the senior living community in the United States. There's a lot of opportunities there. And that's that's how I basically got into this industry. After we we built this product for my grandmother, we did a few mini pilots with people that we knew in like adult day centers here in Israel.

We got really positive feedback and with this positive feedback, we're also able to raise some money and and with that, we were able to make the jump to the United States. [00:03:00] 

Amber Bardon: So you actually lived in a senior living community for a period of time. So tell me a little bit about that experience and how did it influence your development of MemoMate?

Raphael Rubens: Sure. So it was quite an experience, both like from an anthropologic point of view. I learned a lot about people. I also learned a lot about myself, but also from my company. It was really good. The reason why I got to the senior living community in the United States was because.

After we're doing a few POCs here in Israel locally users were saying that having frequent interaction with the AI biographer quote unquote jogged their memory. And I thought this was a pretty interesting statement. And at that point when I said, okay, I need to go to the United States to.

To sell this to senior living communities. I thought to myself, I need to take a step back. And first of all, before I'm gonna try to sell them stuff, I need to understand what's going on on the ground there on a day-to-day basis. I knew people that owned this senior living chain called Wingate Living.

I spoke to the owner and I said, I have this idea. And it's like a radical idea. I want to test this out. Can I stay in your community for two months? And he said, yeah, [00:04:00] sure, no problem. You have your own private room, you have your own you'll eat, you can eat here. You can make use of the gym, everything.

So I packed my bags. I moved into the senior living community in Boston and we did a fascinating research study there. So fir in the first week I was just observing, trying to see what was going on. And after one week I gave a lecture to the residents. And this lecture I was speaking about what is ai?

How they could leverage AI technology to write down their life stories. And after this presentation, I, first of all, I was extremely surprised by the amounts of questions that I got. These were really complicated questions, complex questions. Some questions were even harder than than I even got from investors.

And after this lecture had a group of 50 residents that wanted to try Memo made out on a, like a, on a daily basis and with them and they use it every day. We, when we and we've seen that residents. That used our Meade every day reported a significant reduction in feelings of loneliness. It improved their wellbeing and it also improved their memory and cognition.

And we compare [00:05:00] these results to a controlled group of residents that didn't wanna try this out. And we've seen like great improvements. We wrote a case study about this, and with this case study, we were able to raise additional funds and that's how we got moving to also different use cases. I travel all around the country doing strategic assessments, and I always stay at our clients' sites and their guest suite.

Amber Bardon: And I started meeting with residents. The last couple of assessments I've done, and they are really interested in this topic, and I think that a lot of times we don't give them enough credit for how tech savvy they can be and how interested they are. 

Raphael Rubens: Exactly. A lot of them have an iPad, they have wearables. They go to YouTube, they know how technology works. But I. The what we did in the beginning.

So ate at that time when we were focusing on autobiographies it was completely web-based, so they had to log onto our website and they had to press some buttons. And we've seen that this caused a lot of problems because people forgot their passwords and buttons were too small, their browser wasn't updated.

And at some point I was seeing that that. Like 70% [00:06:00] of the users were churning because they weren't able to go past the login page. And then I thought to myself, Hey, I see that most of the residents, they have phones. They know, like they don't have any problems with picking up a phone and hang up a phone.

Why don't I just call them, at least not me, but the AI. And that was like a pivotal moment because then there, like every like every form of noise was just eliminated. And we've seen that residents spoke for hours with the AI on the phone and they know that they were speaking to an ai. But they were saying, yeah, it's just fun to speak to Mermaid because Meade doesn't get angry at me when I tell the same story a few times in a row.

And me mate is way more patient than my own caregiver. So it's actually fun to speak to MemoMate. That's how we really were shifting from like a web-based biography platform to an AI agent over the phone. And at that time we started to understand some other use cases because while I was there, staff members approached me and they said it's so nice that that residents are having this interaction with this AI biographer.

I wish that I would have more time to have these meaningful conversations with [00:07:00] my residents, but I'm just stuck with admin all the day. I just have to fill in reports and I need to fill in checklists. And then I started to think, Hey, how can we actually leverage our technology to reduce the administrative workload of our payers, which are not the residents, but which are the senior living communities?

 We identified that one of the key for Wingate, but also for other customers of ours, one of a very time consuming task was the annual or semi-annual resident satisfaction surveys. Why? They would either do this by mail. So they would send out a survey by mail and they would complain, Hey, nobody's responding.

I said, yeah surprise. Who's going to fill in a survey and goes to the post office and send it back? I. Or they would have the activity director print, I know, 300 pieces of paper with a survey, and then they would have to distribute it. They have to collect it. Then the executive director had to have to like alone, analyze a pile of paper of 300 pages, or they would type it over on an Excel sheet.

The problem was that, again, very time consuming. They have a huge staff [00:08:00] shortage, and the insights that they were getting out of it weren't really helpful because if you see that the satisfaction with the food is three out of five, what does that mean? Does it mean that the food is cold? Does it mean that the menu isn't varied enough?

Does it mean that the staff is slow? So ideally you're having. Qualitative research you having, you're asking open questions to the residents, but again, this is taking a lot of time. So some communities, they work with companies like Holleran or or Pinnacle or now it's acquired the Home Care polls and they have call centers, right?

And they call people on their phones to conduct the surveys. Problem. What we've seen is that they charge a lot of money for it. Something like $50, $40 per phone call. And on these phone calls, they're also conducting quantitative research. Hey John, on a scale for one to five, what do you think about the food?

So it wasn't really helpful. I. And once I heard about this, that they're using call centers to conduct the satisfaction surveys, I thought, Hey, we are already calling residents on their phones to interview them about their life story. We can also just call them on their phones to interview them about their satisfaction.

And we asked open questions. Residents gave a lot of information, and based on [00:09:00] what the residents are saying, our AI assigns a score to it and we provide very interesting. Insights to the communities both on individual level saying, Hey, John Smith doesn't like the food and here are the main reasons why.

But also on a community level, 70% of your residents don't like the food and here are the main reasons why. And also on a portfolio level that we can really see how I. Living communities can allocate their resources based on performance of each specific location. And right now we're also taking it a step further by, we are a we build our own neural network that's able to understand which residents are most likely to churn or most likely to move out based on the service that they're doing.

So these are some of the things. 

Amber Bardon: If a community is interested in working with you, what would you want them to know in advance as far as lessons learned tips for successful implementation? How do you engage the residents and get them to accept use of this technology? 'cause we know we just talked about how some residents are a little bit more tech savvy, but there also is the the other end of the spectrum where they don't want to [00:10:00] have anything to do with technology. 

Raphael Rubens: Yeah. Very good question. So first of all. Transparency. What we do the communities that we work with that have the best response rates and the best data is that they communicate this ahead of time with their residents.

They put it on digital signatures on the lobby saying, Hey from Monday to between 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM you can expect a phone call with the annual satisfaction survey. This is going to be an automated phone call. And don't worry, it's not a scam. And what we are, what they're also doing is they're putting notes in every room of the resident informing them that they can expect a phone call.

So this has proven to be very effective. And another great thing about our product is that. We don't need any involvement from staff. The only thing we need is literally an Excel list of the names and phone numbers of the residents and we take care of the rest. So we see that these two elements are are very beneficial.

And we see in communities that have low response rates, we really see that the residents weren't informed beforehand or maybe too long before the actual phone call, so they forgot about it already. [00:11:00] 

Amber Bardon: Are you able to also do the staff survey or is it just the resident side? 

Raphael Rubens: Both we're doing residents, we're doing family members and also staff.

And for, of course for staff, it can even be more interesting 'cause if we're able to, like turnaround from staff is much higher than from residents. So if we're able to predict which staff members are most likely to leave and we can give them very tailored mitigation strategies, so what they can do in order to incentivize their staff members, it can be huge.

Amber Bardon: I'm curious, do you have any numbers on your average response rate on staff surveys? Because I did a presentation on workplace culture at multiple leading ages, and one of the biggest pieces of feedback I got was low participation in staff surveys. And so I'm just curious if by using the processes you are using and different types of technology, if you're seeing an increase on response rates?

Raphael Rubens: Yeah, because we see, like the, I can give you an average, but however, it really varies per community. But on average we see for both residents and staff that we at least have a 70% response rate. And a great thing about the [00:12:00] staff surveys is that most of the staff members are not, that we're surveying, are not from the us I.

And our ai it speaks multiple languages. So it can do the set satisfaction survey in Spanish, in Russian, in Haitian. It doesn't matter. And this is like a big reason why people are not filling any surveys is because often these questions are a bit complicated and maybe it's hard to read very small letters.

And for what else is just like having a phone call and you're being interviewed and and yeah. So we don't really see any low participation there. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, 70% is pretty high. A lot of times the average response rate is, three, five, 10%. At, on these staff surveys 

Raphael Rubens: we're doing a bit better there.

Amber Bardon: Yeah, so of course one of the buzzwords out here. There's two that I wanna talk about. So integration is a big one. And, we're, there's so much new technology coming into senior living that I think one of the challenges we're dealing with is all these silos now. So everyone has a new system.

But how do those systems all talk to each other so we're not creating more work for the staff, where now they have, 25 passwords they have to remember and log into and none of the [00:13:00] systems are integrated. So tell me a little bit about how you handled data flow and systems integration, and then I'll ask my second question after that.

Raphael Rubens: Sure. So right now the complete honest answer is we're not, we don't, we're not directly integrated yet with any systems such as point click care or resident engagement softwares. It is on the, it is on the pipeline. That being said, for some, most of the communities, they only want to do like an annual satisfaction survey or by satisfaction survey.

So it's not really needed for them to be fully integrated into their. Into their systems because they're just looking at it once a year or twice a year. So we didn't have that challenge yet. However, we're seeing now more and more that now that we were gonna work with a bit more advanced senior living communities, that it becomes a requirement because they want all of, they want our data to flow into their into their e, Mars, et cetera.

So this, it's something that's on our, in our, on our roadmap. We're speaking to some players. So yeah, so this is something that we have to work on still. 

Amber Bardon: Okay we'll look forward to that coming out in the future. The other question I wanna ask you about is just the term ai, because it's [00:14:00] almost a joke at this point where how many times people are dropping the word AI or asking about ai.

I almost feel like it's the way, the word cloud was, a while ago. Mm-hmm. So can you give us a little bit more specific information on how you're using ai? What does that actually mean for Memo A? 

Raphael Rubens: It means everything for me. It means everything for MemoMate. So I know the official term of an AI is basically a computer program that can think and act like humans.

That's the very basic definition here. And what we are basically doing is that we are able to conduct qualitative research in terms of the service. So asking open questions on a huge, on a mass, on a massive skill for a very low price. And this is not possible with a, this, it is possible when you're doing this with humans.

However, it's, it will be very time consuming and very costly, and with, in our case, we can do this on mass for a very low price. That's what AI means for us from the survey element and from the biography element, the exact same. Like ideally, you're getting interviewed about your life story by an actual biographer.

However, hiring a real biographer. For is often very [00:15:00] costly, also at least $7,000, $8,000. And how do we use ai? We tell our AI to act as a very empathetic autobiography that just has conversations with residents. And that's what we are doing. And these things, we're not able, we're not possible before the ai before the AI age.

Amber Bardon: So as a follow up to that, where do you see the future of this technology going? How do you see it continue to advance specifically for mem Mate, but just if you have any comments on the industry in general. 

Raphael Rubens: Good question. I ask myself this question a lot and when to every conference I go I leave with it, with different thoughts.

And I also think that the use case of AI will also differ per type of facility. I think in memory care the use case for AI are going to be different than for independent living. But what I'm seeing is that, at the one end, you're seeing that since covid digitization in senior living has accelerated a lot and you're, they're not really ready for it.

If you look at the average office of an ed, it's just paperwork. [00:16:00] I. So the way that I'm seeing is that you have this rapid digitization at the one hand, and also the other hand that some that Medicare, Medicaid are requesting more and more data from residents or patients in order to in order for the communities to be reimbursed.

And many of these communities, they don't have that data on hand. So the way that I'm seeing it is that AI in senior living, but also in healthcare, is going to allow them to capture all of these different type of data points from different type of systems. It will help them to meet compliance compliance standards.

And I also believe that, I know that this is for, what these engagement platforms are really looking for is to come up with this Happy aging score. So they have all of these different variables. They know how often a resident participates in activities. They know how often a family comes, they know what they're eating.

So you know, all of these variables. How can you make sense of these variables to make sure that somebody is aging in a healthy way and also in a fun way. Because yeah, longevity is there, but you also want people to age in a in a dignified way, right?

So I think that AI is gonna play a role in compliance. It's gonna help [00:17:00] play a role in making people age healthier. 

Amber Bardon: I think the longevity concept is something we're just starting to hear as a buzzword, and I think we're gonna start to hear more and more about that as the technology is gonna shift towards that. 

Raphael Rubens: Yeah. What do you think that the, that, that it's heading 

Amber Bardon: for AI in general?

Raphael Rubens: Yeah. AI and senior living. 

Amber Bardon: I think that. We have a lot of barriers to overcome until it can be really effective. As we were chatting a little bit before we started recording, I think that, right now, a lot of the ways people wanna use AI is dependent on having data in the systems. We have a lot of process related issues that I think. We need to solve for technology and for AI to be really effective.

I, I think there's definitely a use case for these individual applications, like what you're doing with MemoMate. We've had some others on the podcast, like you mentioned, the Happiness Indicator built into some of the engagement platforms. But I think to really see this comprehensive improvements in technology that we have to solve some more basic [00:18:00] issues.

You know, Right now they're generative ai. Tools that can sit on top of your data systems and give you information, but that depends on getting the information in there in the first place, which is a huge time burden that clinical staff don't have time to manually enter all of this data that's required to get the data out.

So I think we have to solve some of those issues with automating how data gets into our systems and how it talks to each other. And I haven't heard a lot of people talking about that side of the problem yet. 

Raphael Rubens: I like it a lot what you said because in the beginning I, I didn't even realize it's that AI can only be effective if the basic stuff such as wifi is working and I've in plenty of communities where I wasn't able to connect to the wifi.

Or at least it didn't really work well. So I agree with you. Some of the basic stuff has to be arranged for, has to be fixed first before we can speak about big AI applications. But I believe that's where your company comes in. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah and I think, it's really exciting to jump into some of this new innovation.

Falls prevention. That's definitely a hot topic we're hearing a lot about, but I [00:19:00] think you really have to understand the use case and the requirements of what you're trying to do and what are the goals you have to make the appropriate technology selection to make sure it really is gonna have a positive impact.

And it's not just another app that you're adding. 

Raphael Rubens: Absolutely. And also with fall prevention, what I'm hearing is that there's also like a whole compliance element here. So what happens if the nurse in the middle of the night receives a notification that a resident fell, and let's say the nurse fell asleep or it's at the bathroom and and it misses the notification and a resident passes away the senior living communities think, okay, I'm gonna get a few million dollar lawsuit.

May, maybe I should not have this technology because I don't wanna be liable. So these are also like completely different. Yeah. Like elements that you don't even think about when trying to offer that software, which has very good purposes, like it can actually save lives.

But on the other hand it adds a lot to liability. 'cause who's gonna be responsible? 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, that definitely comes up when I talk to clients about monitoring solutions it's great to have all these sensors and monitors going off, but like you said, if [00:20:00] who's checking that and who's making sure we're being responsive to that, otherwise you could have a bigger issue than not checking it at all.

But there's definitely ways to implement this technology in a way that is beneficial to everyone. It's just you have to be intentional and make sure you're thinking through all your different scenarios and the operational process side of it at the same time. 

Raphael Rubens: Yeah I've heard similar stories.

It's a bit off topic, but for instance social robots for elderly. And what I've seen is that some elderly, they really love to speak to to interact with these robots. But then a big reason why these robots are not always as successful is because the family members, let's say the children of the residents are blocking this because they're thinking.

Oh my God, my my mom feels lonely and now she has to speak to a robot. No. Forget about it. I'll just try to visit her more often in the end. I know, I'm not sure if they actually end up visiting them more often, but these are also like elements that play a role. Yep. 

Amber Bardon: Is there anything we haven't talked about Memo Mate that you want our listeners to know about?

Raphael Rubens: I really enjoyed this conversation and I really see that when, in [00:21:00] conversation that I'm having with senior living committees, that satisfaction  is becoming more and more important also from a competitive point of view.

So like people tend to people tend to. Move out relatively easy from senior living communities because they're not happy with the amenities that are being offered. And we're able to provide insights to these communities that weren't really, that they weren't really aware of, and something we didn't touch upon, which I believe is also pretty interesting is that we're able to.

From the surveys that people are doing, they're, we also asking for instance, NPS questions. And right now we're working on and we got some nice traction on this, is that we basically take testimonials from the survey and automatic from the surveys that we do over the phone and automatically convert them into Google reviews or Yelp reviews.

And this is something that can really help senior living community with online visibility. Because what I've seen with some of my customers is that residents actually like. Actually love that place. They say that staff is great, food is great, they love to be there. But when I look at their online reviews, I see like maybe seven reviews or something.

And we are interviewing [00:22:00] 500 people. And if we're able to get hundred testimonials and convert 'em into online reviews, they will be super helpful for them. Because besides location, online reviews is one of the key decision factor for people to pick a senior living community. So there's a lot of work to be done there as well.

Amber Bardon: I think that's a really good point actually. A lot of communities are doing surveys for staff and residents because they have to, because it's a requirement. But I think we're definitely seeing a shift where there is more emphasis and actual care and thought being put into the types of environments people are working and living in and truly wanting to improve the happiness level.

 I do a lot of, speaking presentations, and we always submit different topics for proposals. And in 2024, the number one topic I was asked to speak about at leading age conferences with workplace culture, which has nothing to do with what our company does. We just have an amazing culture, and I thought it was really great to see that shift in that level of interest.

So I think that we are gonna see. People look at trying to use a tool like Memo [00:23:00] Mate to really, truly try to make positive differences in the day-to-day life of staff and residents. 

Raphael Rubens: I don't have to convince you anymore

Amber Bardon: All right. Where can our listeners find out more about MemoMate If they're interested? Yes, so they can first of all look at our website, www.memomate.App, app, like an application. And they can send me an email on raphael@memomate.App or they can find us on LinkedIn. 

Thank you so much for joining us today.

Raphael Rubens: Thanks for having me. 

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As always, thank you for [00:24:00] listening.