118. Cogensus: Building Human-Centered Cognitive Health Tools

Host Matt Reiners chats with Matthew Edgerton, founder of Cogensus, a cognitive health SaaS platform designed for older adults. Cogensus is reshaping how we support cognitive wellness, combining AI companionship, provider analytics, and family connectivity into one empathetic and powerful ecosystem. 

What You'll Learn:

• Cogensus is a three-pronged platform for managing cognitive decline through AI conversations, clinical-grade assessments, provider dashboards, and memory book creation for families.
• How Cogensus sets a standard for ethical, human-centered AI in senior care designed to augment, not replace, human relationships.
• How preserving narrative, agency, and social bonds can slow cognitive decline and combat loneliness in senior living communities.
• Learn how seemingly small memory slips during storytelling can provide early indicators of cognitive changes and how Cogensus captures and surfaces them.

Cogensus is now open for pilot programs ahead of their commercial launch in April 2026. If you’re a senior living provider looking to enrich care, ease family stress, and empower your staff, reach out to explore a custom pilot. 

Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you get your tech + senior living insights.

Learn more about Cogensus on their website.

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Transcript

Matt Reiners: [00:00:00] Welcome back to another episode of Raising Tech. Today I am joined by Matthew Edgerton, the founder and CEO of Cogensus, who provides a media enabled cognitive health SaaS for older adults. Matthew, thanks for joining me today. Always great to meet another Matthew with two T's. So appreciate you making some time.

Matthew Edgerton: It's a pleasure, Matt and I would say the same. We really appreciate you having us on today. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah. So, Matthew, tell me about your platform. It sounds like a mouthful, and I'm sure you could do a better job explaining it than I can. 

Matthew Edgerton: Sure, absolutely. So Cogensus is a platform that, um, we built specifically to help older adults, their families and providers navigate the complex journey that is.

Cognitive decline, uh, whether that be age-related cognitive decline, or whether it be disease related, um, it's a [00:01:00] painful process for everybody. So if you wanna think about the platform, it's three really familiar concepts blended into one, one of which is AI Companions. A second one is provider analytics, and the last part is a family ecosystem

So. At a very high level, an individual converses with an AI companion to help them just expound on their thoughts. Uh, we can administer questionnaires that are validated by neurologists, psychiatrists, things of that nature. All those learnings are plugged into a dashboard for providers who can then assist in the care transition, or I should say caregiving journey, however you wanna frame that.

Then as the residents use the tool, their conversations are saved and we give the residents the ability to convert those into text and pictures, and those get turned into memory books for their family. And so it builds community because community itself actually has an insulating factor for cognitive decline, and that is what Cogensus is.[00:02:00] 

Matt Reiners: I love that you're taking it like that next step and like putting together some of those pictures and images and stuff and being able to give that to the family that's, uh, you know, so powerful. And I hear all the time people wanting to capture those stories or their moments from their loved ones. Um, you know, unfortunately before it's too late.

So I love that how you guys are taking that approach. Um, and now, you know, this isn't a surprise to anybody listening to this. I feel like half of our episodes are around ai. There's a lot of buzz around it nowadays and a lot of concern as well. I'm wondering like from your perspective, like what is ethical human-centered AI look like in the context of senior care or the context of your platform?

Matthew Edgerton: Yeah, great question. So, I mean, when I worked in consulting not too long ago, we started this company in 2024. Um, I was seeing a ton of AI applications and everything under the sun, right? Uh, uses use cases I should say. And one thing that really bothered me is the vast majority were designed to completely remove human, human interaction, which I don't think it is a good use [00:03:00] case for AI because at the end of the day, we're all human.

And specifically something like the aging journey or you know, love or any of those kind of metaphysical concepts, um, those don't lend themselves well to complete human removal. But in the senior care industry, uh, broadly, whether you consider senior communities home health. Um, all that stuff, uh, there is a very real staffing shortage for workers 'cause it's a hard gig, right?

And so what we're trying to use, our tool and our applications are designed to work in concert with people in the fields rather than remove the interaction. So in my mind, if we're using AI to augment human capacity and capability. It's more human centered for some of the tools that I have seen and some that are still coming out.

Um, they're full automating people out of the workflow. And if we do that, then what's the point? To some degree, right? Like, why do we even exist? And so [00:04:00] that's, that's one way that we're approaching it. Um, I would say the other thing that you have to be aware of when dealing with any kind of AI application is that.

There is whether you want it to or not, a bias effect in AI and how it's trained and the materials and all that. And also we have seen in some cases that AI can, uh, what's the word? It can push someone down a route mentally that maybe is not the best for them. So you have to be very cognizant of the guardrails and the safety protocols.

So particularly for dealing with anyone who has any form of cognitive decline or is a vulnerable population right. So we are incorporating those into our standards where I think some of the more consumer facing apps that are more accessible wherever you go, right? They're not designed that that way.

And they're being misused when they get used in that capacity. So we often have to educate some of our, um, pilot folks and buyers, right, that like there's a reason we didn't [00:05:00] just use chat GPT because. It's not meant for that. Like, and that's okay, right? I wouldn't use a, a car to make a souffle. They're totally different things.

So that's how we're applying it. 

Matt Reiners: I think it's so smart. 'cause I feel like any technology company right now, at least in their marketing, is talking about the emphasis of what they're doing with ai. Right. And I think it's so important to call out some of those guardrails that you mentioned in terms of where it can take someone.

You know, I continue to see stories about people being led down dangerous tracks and if someone's, you know, living with some sort of cognitive decline, you know, that's, it's not gonna help them. Right. Um, so I love how you guys are taking that approach and, and being very intentional with your ai and to your first point there.

And I always try to tell people this, right? Like it shouldn't necessarily take away the human commo component. It should automate the mundane to elevate the meaningful to each person. That meaningful means something a little bit different. And I always like to talk internally is we're human first, but either AI augmented or AI empowered to kind of allow us to do the best thing that we could potentially [00:06:00] do.

Um, and I'm wondering with, yeah, and I'm wondering with your platform, uh, you know. Because it, I can make some assumptions, but I'm wondering from you, like, how does it go about helping older adults maintain dignity agency, social conne, social connection as they age? And what's that role of conversation and cognitive wellness that you're finding?

Matthew Edgerton: Yeah, lot. So you asked a lot there, so I'm gonna try to break it down in pieces. Um, so I think one of the biggest things about aging is that the process. Can in many cases, strip uss of our dignity, not intentionally. So, right. We are, we are born, you know, semi infirmed and we sometimes pass away semi infirmed.

So one of the things that we wanna do is enable providers through our tool, right, to allow people to age in place, in many cases, more comfortably, right? And what that means is you're not necessarily moving immediately into an advanced type of care. [00:07:00] The way we go about that is we hope it's through early identification of some of these symptoms that go missed, right?

So I mean, from a personal experience, I have had family members who have dealt with these diseases and before Cogen ssis, right? We as a family, were not prepared for that and we didn't see some of those smaller symptoms that are very readily missed. And so if you can get in front of something, you can usually, um, you know, slow it.

I'm not gonna say we're gonna stop cognitive decline 'cause that's not our, we can't do that with what we have today. Right? Um, but the reality is that that is a huge part of your dignity, right? If you can maintain your sense of self and you can maintain some agency in what you do and how you express yourself, that is the nature of what we're trying to get at.

The second part of that is that. As we move forward and see kind of like how people deal with this and social connection in the world we live in, and I've talked [00:08:00] about this in a few different podcasts I've been on in the past. A lot of the tools today were designed to actually, uh, bucket us and create this false sense of community.

Right. The, the community that you experience on the internet in many cases, not real community, like. Sure there are some crimes where people make friendships and those transfer into real life, but the vast majority are, you know, screaming into the void. And that is a particularly negative thing for people because we are now more connected than we've ever been, whether you're young or old.

And the, you know, reported loneliness has gone way the F up, excuse my language. Um, it's just that people are generally, they feel more lonely even though they know so much more. That's because I think we missed the forest for the trees. The part of loneliness that is actually where you get it, is in that small community interaction, not the vast crowds of the [00:09:00] nameless internet, right?

And so what we do with our tool is by better connecting family members with their aging loved ones. In a bidirectional way, meaning not only can the relatives, you know, while they use cogen sy, engage with a AI companion that can help them workshop their thoughts, and you know, it's easier to tell a story when someone's saying, oh, interesting.

Tell me more than it is just to talk to a dead camera. Right? That's one of the biggest critiques of a lot of these older platforms designed for legacy preservation. It's like just a camera in my face. It's like, I don't know. Right. Versus if someone goes, well, here's a picture of you when you were 12.

What happened here, right? So we do that one direction. The other one is so family members can actually submit text, pictures and video and allow the residents to speak to that, and then they can all engage in a shared ecosystem that is private. It is not social media, but it is a family unit type view.

And they can go back and forth. [00:10:00] And this particular feature was actually asked from us before I started the company. So. When I was going through this journey, my self journey of understanding this disease and thinking about how we could tackle it, I spoke with about a hundred different people. Um, those were doctors, those were older family members and friends and, and also just families who had people in some type of care, whether it be home-based or community setting.

One of the biggest things that was constantly mentioned besides to your point, you know, loneliness or agency, was I've put my family member there because we had to, it made sense, you know, for them and us, but they're not thriving socially for a variety of reasons, and I want to talk to them more, but I have three kids and I'm working and I just, it's hard and, and so what we've done is we've created kind of an offline layer.

That is directly built around your individual family experiences, and so that's how we have a very clear [00:11:00] focus about Entrenching family because family and kind of that provides an insulating effect for cognitive decline broadly. Like it's fairly well researched, so 

Matt Reiners: yeah. I love how you're, you know, including everybody into that.

And you know, we talk about loneliness and it's, you know, amazing. I think, you know, a lot of people would talk about it before COVID as a real issue. COVID kind of put this spotlight on it and even coming out of it, right, there's still this high level of loneliness to your point of all of us feeling in super connected on the internet and all that can look like.

But you know, a lot of loneliness is taking place and you know, we talk about like that cognitive decline and the cognitive health and you know, obviously you've been eating and breathing and sleeping this for the last few years. But what would you say are some of like the most un or I'm sorry, the most pressing unmet needs when it comes to cognitive health for older adults and you know, how do those gaps show up?

Matthew Edgerton: Sure. So a really clear one is that the manner for identifying cognitive decline is super [00:12:00] reactive today, meaning? When it hits a certain stage that is unmissable to the broader audience. They go, you've got blank. Right. That is like consistently, we experienced it as a family. Many others have had that same experience.

Right. And even to the, to the individual going through it, they don't know they're having an issue until it's so prominent that they're like, I can't dismiss this anymore. So like I've, my house nearly burned down 'cause I didn't know where I was. Right. That's bad. So. What we're doing in our tool and what we've been seeing is that like we are not only rendering, um, you know, validated medical instruments that are used by a neurologist, psychologist, et cetera, right?

That if you went to a doctor's office, they'd say, Hey, do this 10 question tests and it will give you a baseline, right? But also there's a ton of stuff. Just your daily interaction, everything from voice cadence to how you speak, to what you say, to what you're [00:13:00] talking about consistently. And so Cogensus is finding that, that what I call the hidden data.

There's a lot of hidden data in just our lived experience. And so even down to like, um, how you remember an event one day to the other, like you can't, there's no current questionnaire to test that, but that's something that we do, right? Because it's. There. And so it's like if you tell me a story one day about a blue dog a week ago, and you're like, I can never forget this.

There's a blue dog, and everyone's like, whoa, weird. And then I ask you a month later and I go, Hey, what color is that dog you saw? And you're like, I think it was brown. You're like, no, you told me very clearly it was a blue dog. And you're like, oh yeah, it was a blue dog, right? Like that, just that little nuance right there can potentially highlight a greater issue.

So I think today, across the spectrum of both the care continuum for older adults, but also the broader medical community, that's a gap, is that hidden data [00:14:00] that doesn't cleanly fit into a questionnaire that's established, but also is not so that, um, it's just not collected. So there's not the mechanism to do so or the pathway built.

And so we're fortunate in that that's what Cogen SSIS did. Um. So, yeah, that's that. Cool. 

Matt Reiners: I love that. Yeah. And I'll be on the, uh, the lookout for any blue dogs right now. 'cause I feel like, you know, that'd be one of those things. Uh, I would definitely jump out. I didn't wanna say 

Matthew Edgerton: red 'cause then we'll get in trouble with Clifford.

Matt Reiners: Hey, hey. Yeah. Yeah. Trade. We'll, we'll bleep that part out. Trademarks and stuff, but, uh, you know, there you go. It has to be huge though. Um, but I'm wondering from like, you know, the, the B2B standpoint, 'cause obviously I think the B2C makes sense, right? Families wanna connect with their loved ones, making sure that they're keeping a pulse on everything and they can't be there 24 7, right?

It, it seems like a no brainer there. And I'm wondering from like the senior care provider side, like using technology like yours, not only for quality of life and compliance or monitoring, but like how can they think about it as a way to differentiate their services and [00:15:00] really promote that mission? 

Matthew Edgerton: Yeah.

So I mean, we've been talking to a lot of senior care communities, obviously they're one of our, they're our key buyer, right? Um, one thing that we have noticed is that that industry as a whole is going through a rapid transformation. So not only are they now being asked and pressed to adopt more kind of digital first technology standpoints.

But they're trying to differentiate against their own competitors. So, you know, if you look at a senior care home in a rural community in the Midwest, versus you look at one in San Francisco, they're gonna be very different. And they're gonna have very different audience, you know, members of who's going to that community.

And so they themselves are going through a bit of a revolution. And so something like Cosis will not only allow them to differentiate their business to their competitors. Because of what we offer, which is a much more proactive view of cognitive health. Uh, we offer them greater understanding of their residents, both at a, you know, uh, cognitive health [00:16:00] level, but also a mental wellbeing, emotional and even what they're thinking about, right?

Just as a general basis. They can spend, you know, shorter windows with those folks, you know, understanding there's a staffing shortage, but those interactions can be far richer. So we're saving them time both from an operational standpoint, but also we're giving the residents a greater, um, a more enriching experience in just their daily life.

Right? So that's what we're seeing on that. But the other big thing that is interesting is that, and we talk about loneliness broadly, um, in 2022, I believe. I could be wrong here. The NCQA, which is a very large medical oriented body, um, mandated that medical institutions start looking at loneliness as an intake.

Or a, a piece of data that should be collected on visits because it has so many furthering effects on so many different conditions. [00:17:00] Right? Meaning if you're lonely, you're more likely to develop cognitive decline. If you are have cognitive decline and you're lonely or socially isolated, you are more likely to decline faster.

So these are like really apparent things that the research indicates and it's, there's other things like. If you're socially isolated and you had a cardiac condition, you're more likely to be readmitted. There's just a ton of stuff. 

Matt Reiners: Mm. 

Matthew Edgerton: And so just by knowing that we help these, uh, entities, you know, senior care, home health better evolve kind of how they're moving their residents and patients through the journey, and it actually helps them with a risk mitigation perspective.

So there's quite a few different ways it can enable their business to not only grow and take on more residents, but also create an enriching experience for their current residents. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah, and I think even one of the points you hit on early on is like that labor force too, and how do you just help them to be more effective and more efficient and you know, just, you know, I think technology is probably not the magic bullet for some of the labor force.

I do think it [00:18:00] answers 80% of some of the problems out there, and just making sure you're intentional with what you're. Technology, you're getting into your community and you know, stuff like what you're doing, the companionship, identifying those trends, the connection with the family. It checks a lot of those boxes of what senior living should be about, which is the living and the care side.

Mm-hmm. Um, and really maximizing that experience as well. Um, and I'm wondering, like, do you have any stories that stick out to you? You know, you've been going after this now a few years, whether it's a family story, a resident story or business story that, you know, any, any moving stories that come to mind for you?

Matthew Edgerton: Yeah, I, I have two. Um, so I'll start with an individual's experience using a very early version of Cogen ssis. So this individual is in their eighties. Um, they're quite active, right? They live a, an interesting life. And, um, but you know, they're, they're 80 plus and they have a, a much older family member who they're caring for.

It's just a whole thing. And so I asked him, I said, Hey, could you test this just. On your own, just [00:19:00] this is a super early version, like just tell me what you think. Right? Uh, they used it for about 30 to 40 minutes, and within that time they had a very interesting conversation with the AI about creating better boundaries with their older family member, which is actually a fairly nuanced topic that you would not expect.

Like, I was expecting something much lighter. Right. And this person went into, and they, they went for it. They went for it. They went for it. Yeah. And, um, like, I appreciate it. But so from that interaction, they not only gleaned a series of insights that they found useful and actually applied in their own life, but they were like, I didn't even know that this was an option.

There isn't like chat, GBT wouldn't have given that to them because it wasn't designed around creating necessarily as an output. It was designed to just helping them workshop something. And this had none of the cognitive layer, 'cause it was just very early. But [00:20:00] from that one experience, like we were like, okay, there's a lot of promise in an individual level.

Right. Um, recently we did a study. And, um, they call it human factors engineering study. It's a fancy word for a clinically significant usability study. Um, 'cause one of the concerns when you're dealing with older adults is techno technology literacy or tech literacy. Right? Just like, it's fine. I'm not as ly as probably some Gen Z kids about TikTok, so whatever.

Um, but. We did a study and we went out to a, a group that had, you know, a diverse range of, of folks, different educations, different ages, um, and what we found was the tech literacy was surprisingly high. So I think a lot of people are discounting the population thinking, oh, they're just, you know, they're old people.

They don't know what they're doing. Right. It's actually not true at all. In many cases, they're as tech literate [00:21:00] as you or I might be, right? They're using the internet, they're using mobile phones, they're using applications, they're engaging with AI components like Chat GT or Claude. Um, so we found that not only was it easily understood, but they were actually asking for something like it.

'cause they were saying, Hey, I really do wanna write down my stories. And in one case, someone had some movement difficulties, right? And they're like, it's, I can't write it down. But I wanna record it, you know, and so this is super helpful to me. In another instance, a group we're piloting right now, they were initially hesitant 'cause they were like, I just don't know if our population's gonna, you know, take to it.

And then they did a, um, unbeknownst to us, they did a group where they had people like writing memoirs and poetries and stuff, just like an activity. And they said about 90% of everyone that went to the workshop had used. Some form of AI to help them workshop their thoughts. And they were like, I, they were like, we didn't know they were this plugged in.

[00:22:00] And so then after that they were like, of course we wanna do a pilot. And, and we're off to the races with them. But I think those are the two big, like things we've learned thus far is that one, older adults are much more literate in tech than most people assume. And then at two it is like, you know, there's a lot of value in being able to expound your thoughts in a safe place.

And workshop those. And sometimes you don't want to tell another person that, right? Whether it's a your family or a care worker or whatever. You just don't want that burden. And so it's a much safer space to do it with a, a companion like this. So. 

Matt Reiners: No, and it makes a lot of sense. 'cause you know, I've got like my custom private GPTs made to me and I ask it the stupidest questions that I don't think I would ever ask another human being, just for the sake of judgment.

Uh, 

Matthew Edgerton: sure. 

Matt Reiners: Yeah. Every DIY project around my house not knowing how to do it, I'm definitely asking that. Um, and then Matthew, I guess final question, super specific, any final thoughts you wanna share with our listeners here? 

Matthew Edgerton: So [00:23:00] the, the only big one is that, you know, we are, uh, a newer company. It's just expected, right?

Uh, we're rapidly growing and we're very, look, we're very interested in doing more pilots, um, in advance of our commercial launch in April. So these are small engagements, you know, 30 to 60 days. Uh, we, we would love to talk to anyone that has an interest in what we're doing. Um, we're happy to work with you based on your size and population.

Um. Broadly, I think, you know, what we've seen from the, from the, you know, experiences thus far is that, um, I'm really happy 'cause I think Cogensus is living up to its mission and that not only is it enriching, you know, older adults experiences, but it's making life easier for family members and the care workers that we all know or have a hard job.

So. Cool. That's up. 

Matt Reiners: Well Matthew, I appreciate you, uh, joining and dropping some knowledge and sharing, uh, Cogensus with us. You're definitely one of those people that our industry needs to keep an eye on. So appreciate you making some time here today. 

Matthew Edgerton: Yeah, I wanna thank you Matt, and thank Parasol Alliance for [00:24:00] having us on.

You guys do some great programming, so we're big fans.