Elie’s Story

Hello – I’m Elie, the founder of Welbi.

Over a decade ago my grandfather needed to move into an assisted living community. He had a stroke, and while he recovered, he needed more care than our family could provide him with at home. My parents lived far away, and he needed more care than his wife could provide at her age.

The closest community we had was far enough from home it made it difficult for his wife, children, and grandchildren to visit often. It was a hard change for him – his first time in 67 years living apart from his wife. And he was grappling with this change alongside the new realities of his health and well being after a stroke.

Unfortunately, my grandfather declined quite rapidly after the move. He passed away within 6 months. It’s something that I now know is quite common, but back then it left me with the question of why, and as I learned more, does it have to be this way?

This led me to start Welbi, with the idea that wellness and clinical data – together – in elder care settings can be powerfully linked to change the outcomes for many people just like my grandfather. 

• How could my grandfather’s experience, or the experience for anyone’s parent or grandparent, be improved if we could empower residents to choose their own path?
• How could families feel confident their parents and grandparents are engaged in their community, and get involved?
• How could care teams understand when someone may be isolating or declining early so they may intervene?
• How could operators be able to make informed changes to the business that drive better resident outcomes – to keep seniors healthier and independent for longer?

Digital tools like Welbi, and new practices in person-centred care have created change. We can see that in the statistics. Engaged residents are healthier for longer, on average spending 8.8 years in senior living communities (up from 6.1 years). Our clients report a 12% increase in resident satisfaction scores. And with solutions like Welbi, activity teams have up to 25 hours more per week to spend with residents instead of on paperwork.

But these solutions were getting us from zero to one, in making resident engagement a core part of the elder care offering. We’re now entering a moment in elder care where the world is shifting beneath us. We’re at an intersection of trends that make prioritizing wellness not just possible, but required:

• The gray wave will be bringing a demographic shift not seen in elder care, not just a boom of new residents, but new expectations for what the experience in the continuum of care needs to deliver, and anxieties a new cohort of residents have from previous generations. How can they feel confident they can, and are, living a fully engaged life whether they are at home, in a community, or in a care setting?
• Families are more educated and informed than ever, but how can they be engaged with their loved ones?
• Data has mostly moved from pen-and-paper to digital, giving us access trends and insights, but how do we make it easy for staff from activity directors to owner/operators to trust, access, and act on?
• AI is already, and will continue to be embedded across engagement and clinical care. From simple applications like program ideation, to ambient data collection like resident assessments, to complex analytics that identify the need for intervention at a person, community, and portfolio level. How is AI going to be embedded in a safe, secure way that helps the business drive better outcomes in resident care, efficiency, and competitive advantage for your business?

This may seem like some far off challenge – but we’ve seen the results first hand. One portfolio of communities we work with saw an increase in hip injuries and falls. They couldn’t explain why, but over the course of 18 months the numbers kept creeping up.

With their resident engagement data all in Welbi, and linked to their EHR, we were able to correlate this increase in falls with a change in activity programming. The team at headquarters saw this was not just in one community, but across the portfolio. The team acted on the data – a change was made to programming focused on physical dimensions of wellness, to focus more on improving mobility, and falls began to decrease. Quality of life for residents increased. Length of stay increased. Clinical staff had fewer incidents and lower intensity to handle.

This is all possible for your teams today, and even more is possible as we dive into the data-driven future of elder care.

Today Welbi helps over 100,000 residents live longer, healthier lives with meaningful and engaging experiences in senior living. Our mission is to ensure every older adult can age with dignity.

– Elizabeth Audette-BourdeauFounder and CEO, Welbi