A Discussion with Fahad Aziz of Caremerge

Voice First Health

In this episode, Teri welcomes Fahad Aziz, the Co-founder and CTO at Caremerge and a Forbes contributor.

He has a lot of experience in technology, Artificial Technology, and Voice. He is also a contributor to Forbes Magazine where he covers technologies in healthcare. Caremerge leverages Artificial Intelligence and Voice to offer the most innovative wellness and engagement platform for senior living communities. They have been tackling some of the biggest pain points that users have when it comes to using voice technology in their homes and living facilities.

Caremerge was named one of the 2018 Inc. 5000 fastest growing companies in the US and have won a number of awards.

Key points from Fahad Aziz!

• Caremerge’s incredible work in the seniors’ living space and how they support those seniors wherever they may be living.
• Caremerge’s formal partnerships with Amazon to help them address some of the pain points that seniors have when using voice technology.

Fahad’s Background

• He has been in technology for over 15 years and while working with different organizations he felt inspired to start something new, and decided to quit his job and move to Chicago.
• He initially had the idea for a Facebook for healthcare, but realized it wasn’t a good idea two months into it, so he pivoted into something else.
• He got an opportunity to spend some time in a seniors’ community in the suburbs of Chicago, where he witnessed a lot of challenges, so he decided to do something to solve those challenges. That was the birth of Caremerge and since then they have been serving 400 communities with over 100,000 residents.
• In their interactions with the communities, they saw the need for voice technology to be implemented in the communities.
• He did a research that he published on Forbes. Part of the research was on what voice technology could do for seniors and the results showed that the technology could really connect hundreds of thousands of people to technology.
• They were the first ones to build a product like theirs and build it the right way.

The Caremerge Product

• They started with basic features like allowing residents to ask simple questions like, “What’s on the menu. What are the activities today? Has the mail arrived?” Once they deployed that, they saw a need for more. What was needed wasn’t more features but more capabilities to answer questions correctly.
• They spent a lot of time improving their AI engines and creating their own models for understanding questions and answering them correctly. They then launched their Alexa technology and started seeing an increase in their adoption.
• They got involved with Amazon to help them build an Enterprise Fleet Management System that would be used to deploy hundreds of thousands of Alexa devices from one portal and ensure their effective management.

Name Free Invocation of Skills

• The biggest challenge that came to them with Alexa and voice technology, was that seniors had difficulties remembering to invoke the skills.
• They worked with Amazon to further improve their system that it was then deployed through the fleet management system, so that seniors didn’t need to say, “Alexa, ask community”, they would just say, “Alexa, what’s on the menu.” They got rid of that invocation command that was there to increase an option.

Feedback from Users

• They have received mixed feedback. There has been a lot of excitement, but they are now going into a bit disappointment phase.
• They are waiting for that aha moment when people will realize that their product is exactly what they want.
• They are in the phase where people have bought their devices and enjoyed the first few weeks, but their uses for the devices have plateaued a bit.
• Some other feedback is that people love the whole oral experience. They like the fact that they don’t have to pick up the device to get whatever information they need. They use Alexa in the most mind blowing ways.

New Features

• They just rolled out a reminders feature which enables people to set up reminders with Alexa where Alexa will wake up to remind a user whatever they needed to be reminded of.

Google Assistant

• They are planning on designing their platform for Google Assistant too.
• The only difference with Google Assistant is that they don’t have a fleet management system so it would be challenging for enterprise deployments than it is with Alexa.

Alexa’s HIPAA Compliance

• They are very excited about this development.
• They have been part of the program and watching it very closely as an Amazon partner.
• For the first time, a care provider doesn’t have to take up any liability any longer. Before Alexa’s HIPAA compliance, the care providers were liable for any Alexa device in their buildings. Now, when a vendor deploys a device, they sign a BAA agreement while Amazon will sign the same, which takes a bit of liability away from the care provider or community.
• Caremerge can now comfortably deploy their devices due to the compliance.

The Future for Caremerge

• They are doing more research on how to further improve their response model (how to better answer questions)
• They are also continuously working on their reminders and notifications features.
• They are working with Amazon to address and improve on data privacy and safety issues.

Links and Resources in this Episode

• Caremerge Website

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