126. Rethinking Resident Safety Without Cameras with Helpany and United Zion

In this episode of Raising Tech, Amber Bardon is joined by Sandro Cilurzo of Helpany and Miranda Troyer from United Zion to explore a new approach to fall prevention in senior living. They discuss how radar-based, privacy-first technology is helping communities shift from reacting to falls to proactively identifying risk before incidents occur.

Miranda shares insights from implementation, including resident and staff reception, workflow changes, and the importance of balancing safety with independence. The conversation highlights how thoughtful technology adoption can improve care outcomes while preserving dignity and reducing staff burden.

Learn more about Helpany on their website or click here.

Case Study: Fellowship Square Mesa

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Transcript

Amber Bardon: Welcome to Raising Tech podcast. I'm your host Amber Bardon, and I am really excited about today's episode. I have been teeing up this episode, everyone I've been talking to, I've been telling them about the solution that we're gonna talk about today and letting them know you were coming on our podcast.

And so I think we'll have a lot of people who have been waiting for this episode and let's dive into it. So today I have two guests. One of our clients is on the podcast today, Miranda Troyer. She is the director of personal care at United Zion and for non Pennsylvania people, personal care is associated with assisted living.

I know in other states it's called different things. And our second guest is Sandro Zo, who is the founder and CEO of Helpy, which is a falls management platform.

And I will let him give you more information about that platform. Welcome to the show. 

Miranda Troyer: Hi. Hi, [00:01:00] 

Sandro Cilurzo: Amber. Thank you for having us. 

Miranda Troyer: Yes. 

Amber Bardon: Sandro, let's just get started and tell us what Helpany is. 

Sandro Cilurzo: So Helpany is a privacy preserving fall prevention solution. Literally tailor made for senior living communities, serving the full continuum of care from independent living up to memory care and it's, uh, radar based technology.

I will, I have theise with me here. Um, we will talk about it anyway, much more depth. But this is Paul, which is literally at the center stage, our invention, which is this privacy preserving technology, which has an ability to, um, uh. Let's say empower communities to be as proactive as possible in their fall prevention approach.

Like spotting residents, which have an elevated risk of falling triage staff members to be with the right resident in the right morning time. And through that, they see a significant reduction in their monthly fall rate. 

Amber Bardon: So there is so much false technology out here on the market. I feel like it's kind of the wild west of, of, of senior living tech with falls.

So what was your inspiration to [00:02:00] come up with this product? Like tell me a little bit about your story, about how you came up with Helpany me and, and as how did you get involved in senior living? 

Sandro Cilurzo: Yeah, with pleasure and number one, probably the listeners can hear it. I have a really strong accent. I'm not out of the states.

I'm based myself in Phoenix, but I'm out of Switzerland. So, um, I find it Helpany me in Switzerland because I was working as a cybersecurity officer in a big. Healthcare facility. And nine years ago my colleagues back then, the Chief Medical Officer, director of nursing, they have tasked me to find a full prevention solution for my colleagues on the floor because of course in Switzerland, the same issue is like, um, the falls are, has been the number one topic in those monthly meetings.

And after one year in trialing out all the existing systems nine years ago and nothing was meeting expectations for different reasons, um, we literally had not either the clinical results. More importantly, the maturity of solutions have been focused so far on reacting. Like reactive in nature. It was, everything was centered about [00:03:00] reacting, but not about being proactive.

And secondly, the privacy and dignity aspect has been a huge issue. Because from a clinical standpoint, specifically, when we think about personal care, where Miranda. Can give much more details to it, but it's our home. It's an apartment where we live. It's not a temporary situation like in a hospital, in acute environment where we just for seven days.

So it has been clear that we need to have a privacy preserving technology, which doesn't have a camera, doesn't have a lens. Nothing watching me because this is a huge part of the experience or these residents that they feel it's still a home because who wants to have a camera in their own bedroom? And this led them to the creation.

After one year of trialing out existing system, I was like, you know what? I would build this completely different myself. And then I founded the company May, 2019 in Switzerland. So we were operating quite a while and, uh, we're serving then Swiss clients first. And it was always my vision to come to the us.

[00:04:00] And then end of 2023, I was then literally in the transitioning from moving from Switzerland to the US was direct then in San Francisco and then a Phoenix based community. A-C-C-R-C heard about us. They heard about this privacy preserving fall prevention solution because they were literally searching something which focused on prevention, like on being proactive and not reacting.

And this is then how I ended up for the first time in Phoenix, January, 2024. They had a huge success with that approach. Published a case study, and I didn't spend a single day in San Francisco, so I moved to Phoenix. Now Phoenix is my home. So October, 2024, I moved to Phoenix because it started to spread like word of mouth recommendations between communities to communities.

And this is as well how I met Miranda and United Science. So we got recommended to them through other communities which were having success. 

Amber Bardon: Awesome. I love to hear the founder's stories about how people got into senior living. I've been in senior living for [00:05:00] 20 years, so it's always interesting to learn how other people come to the industry.

So, um, Miranda, tell us about the personal care program at United Zion and what were the drivers that pushed you to look for a solution like Helpany. 

Miranda Troyer: Sure. I mean, obviously the forefront of everything that we do in, in, in healthcare and particularly senior living is, is safety. We were always looking at safety as our number one priority and, and their wellbeing.

So we kind of started to look at different tech options and different, uh, companies that were available. And what we really liked about Helpany is the fact that there is. A lot more privacy to it. When you're starting to introduce new tech to this kind of generation, it's met with a lot of opposition.

Typically, they don't wanna be watched, they don't wanna feel like they're being so closely monitored and they have some still feel of independence. So that, that was one of the drivers for us to opt with Helpany, [00:06:00] um, because it doesn't have those cameras and microphones and it, it, the way the system is, is kind of created, really protects their privacy the most.

And we were finding that, you know. Like anywhere in healthcare falls are a concern in our hospital, send outs and even hospitalizations. And then ultimately transitions were seeming to happen much quicker, uh, and more frequent. So looking at ways to be more pre proactive versus reactive was, was huge for us.

Amber Bardon: Since you have it rolled out in personal care, are you planning to look at other levels of care since I know United Zion has all three levels of care? Tell me a little bit about the decision to start with personal care. 

Miranda Troyer: Um, I think our, our personal care is on the smaller scale. Um, so I think it was a nice toe into.

This, this kind of change and, and adding more tech into our daily, daily, um, [00:07:00] schedules. So it was nice to start small versus our residential and our, our healthcare populations are a little larger than we are, so just to see how we liked it, what, um, the residents, staff, families, how everybody kind of felt about it before we rolled out.

On a giant scale or campus wide, I do believe we have intentions on. Expanding this to both residential living and healthcare. I'm not sure where we're at at this exact moment with it, but I, I do know that we've been talking pretty, pretty regularly about, about the system and how we're liking it and how it's, it's really already benefiting us.

Amber Bardon: Okay. Yeah, I'll be interested to hear how you're able to expand the program. I think when we think about falls technology, we have to be really specific about the use case and the level of care and then the type of technology behind it. And so, Sandro, tell me a little bit more about the radar component, because I know other falls technology uses like, like Miranda mentioned, [00:08:00] cameras or sensors or ai.

So tell me about the, the backend tech for the radar monitoring, and then what is the level of care use case. 

Sandro Cilurzo: Yes, sure. So I think, uh, most importantly the, the fundamental part, the radar technology is a tailor made radar by us. So literally it has, every single piece is tailor made for that specific use case from senior living for senior living.

But the real difference is the main field of expertise of Helpany is the artificial intelligence part. This is like literally the background of the founders. This is where we're coming from, and Paul leverages. Literally a really sophisticated way of understanding human motion patterns like. Over time because again, in Switzerland, before we came to the US we served already thousands of residents.

So this poll device has been used in many residential environments for a long time. And you can imagine that over time our system had a. Literally the exposure to a huge [00:09:00] variety of different individuals and the artificial intelligence is by now powered by more than 6 billion motion measurements.

And this is where the really unique stay stays in because what Paul does is he understands those motion patterns of individuals literally. Skate posture, stability of walking stride length. How is the person transitioning from a standing position into a seated position? How do I rest at night? Quality of sleep aspects like more frequent tossing and turning restless leg syndrome, more frequent bathroom with it.

It's literally the entire of these motion patterns, which are considered by Paul. And we have the ability to spot if a resident has an elevated risk of falling before they fell. So that's what I see as is one of the huge differences is literally the challenge is for each organization who needs our attention.

That's the real problem. I mean, we have some individuals where we know they have a high risk of falling because they have a fall history. But my director of [00:10:00] nursing nine years ago, she was like, you know, the real challenge is how do I figure out the ones which I don't know, like the chicken egg problem, because there's a life before a fall and the life after a fall.

And the best way as a mitigation strategy is that we have a way to spot the ones we don't know. And so Paul can be seen as a virtual caregiver assistant, like literally, that's the artificial intelligence behind the scenes, which makes a difference in spotting residents, which have a elevated risk. And then what Paul will do is he automatically selects those high risk individuals on any given day.

Enables what we call preventive alarm just for those individuals because there is no value to alert for everyone because alert fatigue is a huge challenge in each organization. And what Paul makes unique is that he's able to incorporate staffing level. Automatically because he not only understands motion pattern of the residents, he understands the entirety of the motion patterns in the room, including staffing, providing [00:11:00] services.

So he selects high risk individuals, enables preventive alarms automatically, and then Miranda, the staff member, gets preventive alarms. On their phone for specific circumstances that they can be with the right resident in the right moment in time. And all of that is literally only possible because of this proprietary artificial intelligence, which we evolved over time as a company before we came to the US and now it's literally scaling along the full continuum of care.

Yes, we started in personal care. We always start in personal care al all our clients do because it makes a lot of sense to start there. Why, because you experience everything there is to experience from Helpany me. You see every single part because, um, in personal care, I would say the distribution of acuity levels is really interesting.

You have some people which are extremely independent still, and some which are on the edge for higher needs. And this is where Paul can provide [00:12:00] the biggest aha moment and wow effect because there have been people which have not been known, and I think Miranda can tell there more, why Paul was able to help there in a unique way to spot individuals, which were unknown to them, that they have some challenges and that's why we say personal care is a good start.

But it's used in independent living and memory care as well, which is really unique because of the privacy aspect 

Amber Bardon: for the independent living. Do you have the devices out in the common areas so it's throughout the whole building, or how are you tracking people who are, you know, gonna be everywhere? 

Sandro Cilurzo: Yes, great question.

So, uh, short answer. Absolutely. So we literally had right now a rollout where 330 apartments have been equipped, like the full continuum. So 220 aisle residents receive poll in their apartment, living room, bedroom. Yes. There has been like a selection of common areas as well for strategic, like areas of interest, let's put it like this.

And, um, this is one part of the population [00:13:00] health management approach for these communities. Like that they have an ability to know who is thriving in independent living. Who is thriving in assisted living and who is thriving in memory care in their environment, and it's about making the triaging between the level of care as proactive as possible.

That's why it's used in independent living as well. 

Amber Bardon: I think that's an interesting use case for all Falls technology. I, I go out to a lot of communities and I try to meet with residents as much as possible, and I always ask residents about this kind of technology, how they feel about it and think about it.

And whenever I ask the question, they're always a little bit quiet at first, and then someone will tell a story about someone who fell, usually an independent and no one knew for a couple of hours. And so, you know, now they're, they're viewing this type of tech technology as much more favorable. So, I mean, uh, Miranda, what was the reception of the residents at United Zion to this tech?

Did you involve them in the selection process? Tell me what their attitude and how they felt about it. 

Miranda Troyer: [00:14:00] So once we decided to, to go, go ahead and do the install and, and really roll it out for our personal care, everybody, we kind of all met together at resident council. We discussed what it, what it is, roughly how it works.

I didn't want, we're in a very conservative area. In Lancaster County and the, the tech is just not there. They, a lot of them just still really don't understand a lot of tech stuff. The AI is, you mentioned AI and everyone gets a little on the edge, so that was kind of another reason enrolling this one out is it was a nice, um, kind of lead into.

AI and tech. And so we kept information to a minimal as far as kind of what it does, but fully explaining, you know, this is up to benefit them and, and reduce falls and kind of assist staff when we can't be in the rooms with them. And a lot of 'em were open to it. We had follow up meetings after. [00:15:00] Um, one of the features that Helpy has is a Health is Wealth report, um, that the residents can get weekly and it kind of tracks almost like your.

Your health app on your cell phone. It gives them kind of scores where they're at currently. And then there's tips and encouraging things to kind of increase their scores so they can take a little bit more charge of their own healthcare. That one has been kind of a mixed bag. Um, I would say more people liked.

Getting that report, then not I think it was a little eye-opening for some residents, kind of where they were falling in, in those categories. But overall, they've, they've liked it. They haven't been too upset by it. Most of, 

Amber Bardon: did you make it mandatory for everybody in assisted living? 

Miranda Troyer: We do. We have it in installed in every room.

It's turned on from admission and then it, you know, they're, they're informed about it during [00:16:00] the whole admission process. So from the time of even touring personal care, since installation, I've been informing families as well as the residents about what this is and what it, what it does, what it looks like, and families are.

Thrilled families are so excited to know that there's just an additional level of safety that they haven't had. You know, we were rarely running into families asking if they could bring in their own cameras to install in rooms, and it, it gets a little, a little tricky with that with. Regulatory guidelines and things of that nature, because then that would be recording, you know, everyone in the room, visitors and things like that.

So, this was just a wonderful option. People that had asked about installing cameras actually were like, oh, no, having this, this will be perfect. This is all we need. And then they have the ability to, to download an app and be able to check up on their loved one as well throughout the day. Um, weekly, however often they would like to.

Amber Bardon: Sandro, I know you mentioned alert fatigue [00:17:00] earlier, and that's one of the reasons I hear people say they don't wanna do false technology or it's a barrier, is because it's just another system to manage what happens if you miss something. So, Miranda, I'm curious, how did you change your operational procedures to incorporate Helpy and talk us through the staff reception to that and how has that been part of your daily workflows?

Miranda Troyer: So. I mean, it, it really is not much different from them pressing their call pendant. I, you know, we've kind of, we've had multiple training sessions with this team because we do have some folks that are not as tech savvy, so they were really struggling to understand how it can see what it sees, what, you know, what, how it can generate what it does.

So, and Sandro and his team has been amazing with getting us information and educational tools to kind of just help. Answer some of those questions a little bit better. So that's been great. But really, I mean, it's, what it's done is caused more purposeful [00:18:00] rounding. I mean, typically on our night shifts prior, you know, you're doing two hour room checks, you're checking on people throughout the night.

We were running into, we're waking people up as we're checking on 'em, no matter how cautious we were being, which was causing disrupt in sleep. So this is now telling us, Hey, these folks are up and moving. They may need assistance. So it's giving us a, a preemptive nudge to go and check on them and, and go help them versus, you know, just checking on folks that maybe don't necessarily need it 'cause they're, they're asleep.

So being able to do that has been great. And even just. The flagging of folks that the system is saying, Hey, these folks maybe need a little extra attention. Keep a closer eye on them, has been. Really beneficial for the staff and, and for me to be able to assess their plan of care and, you know, how much help they're requiring or needing.

And also get, and other, other interventions in place like physical [00:19:00] therapy, speaking with doctors about pain medications. And this system has already benefited us in multiple ways across that end. So. It's been, it's been pretty good and it's very user friendly. That's one of the big things that I love about it.

I am not the most tech person either. So even from the management interface the, the backend of things that you can see, it's so user friendly. 

Amber Bardon: No, that's good to hear. Sandro, this next question is for you. With Helpy being deployed in more communities and starting to have these devices in a lot of different areas, in the rooms, in the common areas, in a lot of different use cases.

I'm curious, do you see the technology being able to do more than falls management, and are you able to share potentially some of those ideas or things coming with helpy? 

Sandro Cilurzo: With pleasure. So it already does right now much, much more, which has not been, um, discussed that much at the moment in, in this podcast so far, but more than happy to [00:20:00] share.

So, um, by end of last year, we announced for all the existing Helpany communities, which have installed pole at their ceilings, such just. Be really clear, they just have pole at their ceiling, nothing else. And that we have launched a full baked emergency call system pol the pendant system, which is baked in and ready to use.

So when you install the pole devices at the ceiling, you get the full fledged emergency pendant system ready to use as part of the offering. And this has been one big initiative last year, which we, because we received many requests from the existing help in communities, hey, um, we would really appreciate if there would be like an.

A way of having a really modern wireless emergency call system because you have poll in the apartment. And we were like, we are working on that anyway. And then we launched that to provide more value with the same device because you only need poll at the ceiling and then you are ready to go to use this emergency call system as an extra value add.

And down the line this year we have multiple parts which will be, announced and provided [00:21:00] to these clients. So really important. Our philosophy is pretty straightforward. You install poll once and all the values through the software, and we update them all the time and add the, like, add additional software based modules for them, like for benchmarking additional reports, additional, um, parts in the system, like in the direction of resident engagement.

That's a big part this year for IL specifically, like we literally added with, um, different communities at the moment and rolling this out that this pol that pendant, which I showed you before, can do much, much more. For engagement purposes, like understanding residents, attendance tracking, when I go to events, like when I go to the Bingo or chaplain service, because this is not a regular pendant, and this is for example, for 2026.

One additional part to provide this ecosystem. That's how we should see help. He provides an ecosystem with a lot of future proof aspects for these communities. And it's literally, um, addressing different parts of that. And of [00:22:00] course, on the triaging side with staff members, I think this is, has been extremely impactful, like to celebrate high performers, if this makes sense, that you can celebrate your people, which maybe don't get the recognition.

On the floor because Paul brings transparency into that as well. And I think this has been, um, really crucial for us to highlight that. Paul is not preventing the fall. He's empowering the caregivers and the staff members to be proactive. Paul is just a virtual caregiver assistant. That's it, and that's how it should be.

It's just a tool to elevate those caregivers with information, and this is our primary focus to provide as much actionable information as possible for the people on the floor. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah, that's great. I mean, it's so, it's so interesting to think about what the future of senior living communities is gonna look like as we just are able to do so much more with these systems.

And to your point, Miranda, with [00:23:00] the, with the families loving this, one of the things I always ask sales and marketing teams is if they're talking about this. Type of tech with prospects as a competitive edge to say, if you live here, you won't be able to take advantage of this technology and your your family members will be, um, more, you know, potentially impact longevity, healthy aging and aging in place, that kind of thing.

One of the other barriers that I feel like I hear with implementing technology like this is cost. So Miranda, I'm curious, have you been able to determine any cost savings or any. Anything along those lines for an ROI on putting in this type of system. 

Miranda Troyer: Most of the billing went through our finance team, so I, I did see some things but in comparison to a lot of the other companies that are out there Helpany, was very affordable and given everything that they're driving to do and already offer since we kind of, made the decision to go with them, they're growing faster than some of these other companies are.

And. In services offered, I'll say. And, and [00:24:00] you know, I am always looking towards the future as we're looking into elder care. The demographics are changing all the time. The acuity level of, of residents moving into these facilities is changing all the time. So being able to go with a system that is going to be able to grow and, and shift as the climate is for our residents is huge for us.

But for, from a financial end, um, I mean, I, we, we found it very affordable. There really wasn't too much cost. Concern there for us. 

Amber Bardon: Yeah. I was curious if you're tracking anything like how many falls you've prevented Yes. And what the cost of that is. Um, you know, if you've put any metrics in place like that or Sandro, if you have any recommendations around things like that.

Sandro Cilurzo: Yes. I just wanted to add there, um, there will be a case study soon announced and release together with United Science. So yes, they tracked it really closely and I only can. Tell at the moment without too much spoiler alerts that the results have been really impressive. And they will be a case study which exactly covers the part of the fall [00:25:00] reduction, the impact from a financial standpoint and the positive ROI.

And this is literally how we grow. Primarily based on these numbers which these community are able to measure, we are really numbers driven. Probably it's as well part because I'm engineered by training. I like numbers to have perspective to see the impact and quantify them. And there will be a case study from United Sign, which will be announced really soon.

So we just talked about this yesterday, that this is soon coming. 

Amber Bardon: Okay, great. 

Miranda Troyer: And we, I mean, our fall reduction has been pretty significant. Um, in January as we only launched, uh, I believe it was the second or third week in January with, uh, having them go, go live in the rooms. So we had upwards of like 12.

I think 13 falls in January. Primarily a little over half of those were on night shift specifically, and then in February we had three and none of them were on our night shift, and they were all in locations that were outside of their bedroom versus the, the [00:26:00] month prior where they were all in their bedroom.

So being able to already and within. L you know, less than two months. Really. Seeing that kind of change has already been a huge driver. And the other details that the Paul system can pick up has already alerted us to so much more. It's been great to see how it works, and implement different measures.

Amber Bardon: Well, we'll look forward to that case study coming out and, uh, potentially share that on our resources as well for, uh, for both of you. I'll start with Sandro. Is there anything we haven't covered yet that you want to make sure our listeners know before we wrap up? 

Sandro Cilurzo: I think we covered all the parts. I think the most important thing for us, which I can just highlight to all these communities in their evaluation and processes that, uh, I think specifically when privacy preservation and the prevention and proactive nature is a priority, and being able to have one solution.

To serve the full continuum of care. We always provide trial experiences. That's like how we roll. [00:27:00] Like we always wanna be the right partner for these communities. So when a listener think this could be valuable, they should just reach out to us and we will be more than happy to accommodate that. They can see it in action first before they scale it, because that's like how we serve all our clients, that they have a risk-free decision process.

Amber Bardon: Alright, thank you. And we will include in the show notes how people can find you as well. And Miranda, what lessons learned would you share with our audience for both, uh, from the perspective of going into the process of selecting a tool and then any lessons learned after the implementation. 

Miranda Troyer: Um, I, I, I wish we could have started this sooner.

We, you know, we had some other things that needed to happen prior to getting, getting on board with Helpany Ian, getting them. Live in our building and I, I, I just wish we could have started sooner because I do feel like there were so many opportunities that having had this system in place, we could have prevented moves, we could have, you know, maybe maintained people [00:28:00] living in this level of care for a longer period of time.

Hindsight, I guess. But we're really enjoying it and, you know, it, it, it is a great system, especially if you're, you know, a little nervous about delving into that tech AI field. 

Amber Bardon: Well, thank you so much to both of you for coming on the podcast this morning. It was really, uh, it was really interesting for me to learn more about this tool and to hear how it's, I mean, actually used at United Zion and UZ of course, is one of our most frequent guests on the podcast who has been on multiple times.

So thank you again for joining us today. 

Miranda Troyer: Yes, thank you for having. Thank you so much.

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