A change in perspective
As we entered our third and fourth weeks of SVIA and conducted more interviews to understand the plethora of problems and issues that people with dementia face, our viewpoint on the problem completely changed.
Understanding the real problem by talking to real people
As far as popular wisdom goes, people with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias are perceived as
a. Incapable of leading a normal life; this is in part due to archaic stereotypes of bed-ridden Alzheimer’s patients, that are then promulgated by mass media.
b. Defined by the disease; Indeed, people fail to appreciate the fact that people affected by the disease still retain their own unique personalities, likes and dislikes, and idiosyncrasies. Moreover, even the symptoms that these people face differ from person to person.
c. A burden on their families; this was an incredibly sad insight we gained into the disease. From speaking to various caregivers, we understood that people often assume that people with Alzheimer’s bring only stress to their families and caregivers. People fail to understand that the disease often also brings out positive aspects in its affected patients — such as their inner creativity when understanding the world around them.
Removing the stigma
The inability of most of the companies entering this field to understand key points such as the above is leading to literally hundreds of wearable devices/applications/games/etc. that claim to bring various benefits to their consumers. From tracking the affected people to supposedly improving their memory via a game interface, these products try to approach the disease in a very general manner without really understanding the variability of the symptoms and the individuality of the affected people themselves.
“ I wish people creating technology products for people with Alzheimer’s would actually consult us first” — Phyllis Fehr, Ontario Dementia Advisory Group
For the most part, this leads to a saturated marketplace with very little differentiation amongst different players and in turn very little value actually created for caregivers and their affected family members, despite the various products and services available.
Considering this understanding, we have therefore identified a new market opportunity that will add huge amounts of value to the various parties affected by the disease.
A portal for positivity
Amongst all the feedback we received, the key opportunity we identified was in solving the multitude of emotional difficulties faced by caregivers when their loved ones are diagnosed with dementia and start to exhibit some of the symptoms of the disease. These pain points varied from a deterioration in communication between them and their loved ones, a feeling of isolation and hopelessness due to a lack of a proper support community, and facing the overall stigma associated with dementia due to the public’s perception of such diseases.
We found it incredibly surprising that no such platform exists to meet the needs of the caregivers of more than 5 million people, just in the United States, that are currently living with Alzheimer’s — despite the fact that there are countless wearables and applications that claim to aid this demographic. Although general information websites exist, e.g. http://alz.org/, these websites are not interactive and don’t allow for communication between different affected people, and therefore don’t alleviate the isolation connected to the disease.
As such, we decided to focus ourselves on alleviating this pain point via a web platform that helps people affected by Alzheimer’s and other dementias connect with each other and cope with the disease in a more interactive and engaging manner.
The specifics of our web portal will follow in the subsequent post, so stay tuned!
