GreatCall, the company best known for its senior-friendly Jitterbug phones, has jumped into the crowded space of Personal Emergency Response devices, or PERS. It’s the company’s coming out party for the Lively brand, the sensor maker it purchased a few months back. It’s called the Lively Alert and is branded as an “Urgent Response Device.” We had the opportunity to chat with GreatCall CEO David Inns about what makes the Lively Alert different from other PERS products.
David Inns: First of all, it’s smaller and lighter than any mobile PERS to date, which is really important because as we’ve been playing around in the space and looking at things, we already have I think what was the smallest device, but we’ve made it 30% smaller now again. And that’s really important for users because it just makes it that much more comfortable and practical to make sure you bring it with you everywhere you go. So that was one of the main goals of the new device was to make that happen. But we did add some really new interesting features to it. The first one being that this now has Bluetooth low energy in it as well so that it can provide the functionality to become a health hub for pairing with other Bluetooth monitors. So it whether it’s blood pressure or whether it’s glucose or anything else that’s a Bluetooth health monitoring device, you don’t need to have a health hub in the home, you don’t need to have Wi-Fi, you don’t need broadband or anything that you plug into your wall. You’re basically just going to be able to wear your PERS device, take your readings, and they’ll automatically flow through the PERS device. It’s a mobile PERS device. You can do it anywhere, anytime. You can do it at your daughter’s house. You can do it in your car and it will go through and get stored in the files for analysis and presentation back to the carrier.
Tech50+: It will do this without needing to access a smartphone?
David Inns: Correct. The Lively Wearable is a standalone mobile PERS device that uses the Verizon network to connect to the web.
Tech50+: How long does it last on a single charge?
David Inns: It lasts at least a day. So we try to train our users to charge it every night, but we also are actually working on some accessories that will allow it to charge while being worn. So that’s going to really change that. But right now it’s at least over a day so that we can get through that. And by the way, this also has all of the same features that we’ve become famous for. So the quick response, the 5Star agent, the GPS 
tracking – GPS tracking and all of the connectivity to the family caregiver app GreatCall Link, which is then taking all of that information including the kind of artificial intelligence story if you remember that’s written for the family caregiver to see how mom’s doing based on that trend and geographic movement.
Tech50+: You have falls detection in this device. What kind of fail safe do you have on the falls detection?
David Inns: We use BioSensics falls detection algorithms, which are literally some of the most robust in terms of the clinical verifications that have gone on. This is not a few engineers in a room playing around with an accelerometer, these guys are a very serious medical sensing company and do a lot of clinical work to verify the accuracy of their algorithms. So we’ve done a lot of work with that and that is the company we’ve now put into Lively Alert as well, using their fall detection algorithms.
Tech50+: Recently, Royal Philips, which had already been doing stuff with connected health monitoring for aging in place, came out with a whole suite of health related devices that they’ve registered with the FDA as being medical grade. Do you see yourself in a position where you would need to qualify as medical grade from FDA or is that not relevant?
David Inns: It’s going to be relevant as we continue to develop more and more services for the devices. Right now it’s not relevant, but for example when we start collecting measurements from say a blood pressure monitor, if there’s any analysis done on those measurements, then that’s where we would require FDA approval. So that is something that we’re looking at as we move deeper into those services that we will be actually getting FDA approval on some of the products and services that we offer. Today it’s not necessary.
Tech50+: The latest hardware technology is probably about 5 to 10 years ahead of our ability to deal with the data that’s generated. We just don’t have the monitoring services, the management by exception services, and so on that can deal with the kind of information flows that we’re now going to be capable of gathering. What’s your take on that?
David Inns: Two things. First, that’s why I think the family caregiver becomes critical in that – rather than trying to have some kind of public commercial healthcare case managers managing the data of thousands of people, which would become extremely overwhelming. By having a family caregiver that is just keeping an eye on the daily activities of mom remotely through an app, it’s not that overwhelming. In fact it’s probably a lot better and less stressful than what they’re dealing with today, which is constantly worrying about them and calling them and trying to have people drop by and see how they’re doing. So that’s one thing I think, getting that more one to one relationship with family members as opposed to trying to run thousands on some kind of commercial grade monitoring.
But the second thing is artificial intelligence. Rather than presenting graphs back to our family caregivers, when we were looking at this we did a lot of customer research and found that presenting graphs back about mom’s activity levels or how often she’s leaving the house and showing that over time is not that inspiring for people. Staring at these graphs is really not 
something that’s interesting. So instead what we’ve done is we’ve taken all of that data and we plug it into an artificial intelligence engine. We literally work with a company that is a specialist in this area to take that data and analyze it and it actually writes a story about how your mom is doing using the actual data and the trending. But it writes it in plain English. It writes it almost as if its been written by a human and that becomes very meaningful and actionable. Instead of just presenting all data, take instances of exception and write about them in a competent and cohesive way and understandable way so that people can actually understand that it something they should be doing something about.
Tech50+: Do you require a contract to use the device?
David Inns: We never use contracts. We’ve always been focused on the customer experience and we think that using contracts is not a good customer experience way to go. So we’ve never done contracts, we will never do contracts. For customers, if we’re not doing our job or if they don’t have a need for our products anymore they can stop using them. But I should clarify that we do our job and people love working with us so our customers stay with us for a really long time.
Tech50+: Does this have a two way capability or is it a one way only?
David Inns: It’s two way, so you hit the button and you’re in two way communication with one of our live operators over loud volume where they have access to your medical profile, they know who you are, they know where you are, and they have specific instructions. So in a non-emergency, we will be contacting friends or family or a neighbor if it’s say that you’ve fallen out of a wheelchair and just need to be picked up and you have that arrangement with your neighbor, we will call them to come over and help you. But if it is an emergency and using our protocols of the decision trees of when it’s necessary, we are capable of dispatching as necessary.
Tech50+: So when you hit the button, it automatically goes to your notification center and at that point a live agent will make the determination as to what needs to happen next, whether it’s a call to EMS or simply a call to a next door neighbor.
David Inns: Correct. And those protocols are different obviously depending on what county you’re in in the US. Not many people know that 911 isn’t consistent across the US. If you’re in a county where police is separate from 911 or where fire is separate from 911, they don’t have integrated feedback in some counties. So we have all of that information and know to go directly to fire or directly to California Highway Patrol for example if you’re on the highway and something’s happening.
Tech50+: What’s the availability on the unit? Is it out now?
David Inns: Yes, it is out now. It’s available online at GreatCall.com or through one of our agents who can always help in selling. And it’s also available at WalMart pharmacies, RiteAid, and at Sears.
Price for the Lively Alert and charger is $37.49. Monthly service plans range from just about $20 to just under $35.
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