Cypress Living Puts Focus on Data-Driven Senior Care, Partners with K4Connect to Bring Innovative Experiences to Residents and Staff

K4Connect expands in Florida, integrating best-in-class technologies to deliver holistic care and hospitality excellence for older adults

 

K4Community will be integrated throughout the entire community, giving Cypress Cove residents access to a myriad of technologies that empower their independence and elevate daily living, while community staff benefit from enterprise tooling that expands operational efficiencies and enhances care. 

  • More communications, better connections – a resident mobile app and Amazon Alexa voice devices that provide instant access to information (daily dining, activities and announcements) and secure communications (video chat, messaging and calling).
  • Safer, accessible home environments – smart home automation – such as lighting and temperature – creates both a luxury environment and safer homes for residents with K4Connect’s award-winning automated Resident Check-in daily well-check system.
  • Premium amenities and experiences – residents can curate a personalized at-home experience by customizing living preferences, such as arriving at an already illuminated home, access to hundreds of virtual content experiences at any time, or having Alexa recite your personal schedule in an instant.
  • Operations optimization – enterprise-level tooling for staff saves teams critical time and resources by reducing operations redundancies and creating a connected workplace. 
  • Holistic resident care – teams can use data to better inform resident care with insights into dining, fitness and wellness activities, in-home safety, and more.

At the core of K4Community is the company’s underlying patented FusionOS technology, senior living’s first and only operating system that integrates disparate devices, technologies and services – whether dozens or hundreds – into a single comprehensive system. At the same time, FusionOS is delivering data-driven insights and reporting for the community on resident tech usage, behavioral trends and in-home safety enabling more informed care and services.

“Cypress Living is truly an innovative organization that is bridging the gap between technology and older adults – a mission we both passionately share and one that has never been more important than right now,” said Scott Moody, CEO and Co-Founder, K4Connect. “We’re thrilled to bring our solutions to Cypress Cove to empower their residents through technology to live healthier and fulfilling lives.”  

K4Connect is a leading provider of enterprise technologies being used by tens of thousands of residents and staff teams across the nation. For more information about K4Community, visit www.K4Connect.com. 

About K4Connect

K4Connect is a mission-driven healthtech company that integrates the best in technology to serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities, together with the people, communities and organizations that also serve them. We believe meaningful technologies have the power to make the lives of older adults simpler, healthier and happier. Our leading solution for senior living, K4Community, is an ecosystem of smart products and features that help residents live more independently while streamlining staff workflows and driving operational efficiencies for operators. The entire K4Community experience is powered by our patented FusionOS operating system, enabling all of our community partners to finally unlock the value of enterprise data. 

Based in Raleigh, N.C., K4Connect is currently serving thousands of senior living residents and staff at continuing care, independent living and assisted living communities across the nation.

About Cypress Living

Backed by a mission to continually empower those we serve, Cypress Living is the area’s leading innovator of programs and services that ensure the health and wellbeing of older adults throughout Southwest Florida. Cypress Living manages Cypress at Home, a comprehensive suite of in-home services that allow older adults to maintain independence and age successfully and safely in their own home. Cypress Cove is the flagship Cypress Living luxury retirement community with unmatched amenities and fine dining, as well as a full complement of quality living options, including maintenance-free independent living in villas and apartments, assisted living, skilled nursing, memory care, rehabilitative care, and home health.

Technology helps California senior living community through pandemic

Technology is helping residents of one California senior living community get to know who is behind the mask while maintaining pandemic safety.

Head to McKnight’s to read the full article. 

Pandemic pivot pay off: Triangle tech provider K4Connect triples users, doubles revenues

The company, which provides technology to companies serving older adults as well as individuals with disabilities, plans to continue expansion in 2022, according to a company statement and to company co-founder and CEO Scott Moody.

K4Connect Growth Leads to New Strategic Investors, Accelerates 2022 Market Expansion

As the need for older adult technology resources grows, senior living innovator itself innovates to meet demands

Sequoia Living’s Viamonte at Walnut Creek Selects K4Connect as Its Technology Partner for Residents and Staff

Leading Northern California senior living operator takes innovative approach to older adult hospitality and care

Voice Plus Visual Tech: The Secret Sauce for The Age-Friendly Home

Multimodal technology is creating new, meaningful experiences for older adults aging at home.

By: Cindy Phillips | Managing Partner, K4Advisors

January 30, 2022

The sentiment of wanting to age in our own homes (vs. moving to a senior living community or moving along a continuum of care within a senior living community) has not changed during the pandemic. In fact, comparable AARP surveys from 2018 and 2021, both show the consistent pattern of three out of four adults 50 and older wanting to remain in their homes. 

What keeps evolving is how people want to live as they age, what is important to them, and how providers can effectively serve them. Given the labor shortage is likely to only get worse, we know technology is part of that solution. 

Unfortunately, several obstacles still stand in the way of realizing the full potential technology has to improve the lives of older adults. Many are without the necessary Wi-Fi to support it, others lack the skill to use it, do not trust the payment model or have privacy concerns. Even those who are willing find it cumbersome or complicated to navigate the disparate pieces or to keep up with the pace of change.

One of the challenges for providers in this AgeTech space is not only meeting the needs of today’s diverse customer base, but a more sophisticated one five years from now. It’s easy to get discouraged, believing older adults are not “ready” for this yet. But we must keep innovating with one eye toward the future, and one on more effectively serving the needs of today. 

We start by asking two questions – Why aren’t they ready? What is the key to advancing the use of tech that we know could help? I believe it’s simple (not to be confused with easy), we must deliver solutions that are so beneficial and so easy to use that anyone  –whether 50 or 85 years of age– will embrace them. We’ve got to flatten the adoption curve, providing value immediately recognized by the user. So much value, they are willing and committed to pushing through the challenges of early use. 

As an example, look at one combined set of technologies poised to be a positive force in the lives of seniors if designed and integrated in the right way. Evolving as a cousin to smart speakers, smart displays (e.g., Amazon Echo Show, Facebook Portal, or Google Nest Hub), are an incredible combination of intelligence (AI), human-like voice controls, with the addition of a visually appealing touchscreen. 

This voice-plus-visual technology may appear complex on the surface but is oddly similar to the television and the telephone, both devices that older adults have successfully adopted. In fact, I would argue that a device like the Echo Show can provide a more intimate connection than a telephone – showing the face of a driver before they arrive, providing a personalized reminder of the pick-up, or even sharing the estimated time of arrival to offer peace of mind as they wait near the door.

The technology is also more interactive than either the television or the telephone. For example – if the appointment is to attend an event, the Echo Show device can display lunch options (with rich color and even nutrition info), ask if they plan to stay for the meal afterward, place their order, and remind them what to bring along in the way of supplies or a sweater if the venue is chilly.

In a more passive way, the Echo Show can work with smart home technology to send a private note to the daughter when her father has left home and when he returns. Additionally, it can automatically turn on the outside and living room lights at sunset to ensure it is safe and welcoming when they get home.

The above is just one scenario that feels valuable. There are others that make ordering groceries or meals easier (through the voice and screen interfaces). Arranging household services such as house cleaning, snow removal or plumbing repairs through a pre-screened set of vendors accessible with a voice request or the touch of one or two buttons.

The key to any of these is not the display box, it’s the content. Customized to deliver value to the user in a frictionless way. It is the one-time set up, easy voice or single-touch commands, and a trusted means to personalize that content and/or to pay for items as needed. The average 70+ year old may find value in many of these services but does not want to create a notebook of passwords to remember, nor learn a device designed for a 20-year old. 

The answer lies in how we marry the simplicity and familiarity of the old TV remote and the telephone or the calendar with handwritten reminders, with the advances of newer tech such as fingerprint and eye scanners, motion sensors and AI predictive capability that can recommend or offer intelligent prompting instead of cumbersome typing. That is the secret sauce that will make voice and visual technology a building block of the age-friendly homes of tomorrow!

For Startup K4Connect, Connectedness Is More Than Technical—It’s Connecting Aging Adults With Loved Ones And Beyond

“The notion that older adults dislike technology, Moody told me, is false. They dislike technology that’s hard to understand.”

January 28, 2022

By: Steve Aquino

Although it is very true accessibility is first and foremost built with disabled people in mind, it’s also very true accessibility is not exclusively the domain of the disabled. Accessibility is beneficial to literally anyone and everyone, from larger text on computers to subtitles in foreign films to meal kits and more. The discrete set of software features companies like Apple and Google include in iOS and Android, respectively, represents only a smidgen of what accessibility means conceptually. This is what makes accessibility so dynamic: as many people have various needs and tolerances, the same can be said for accessibility’s potential applications.

Consider the aged community. Amazon has poured considerable resources (most notably, Alexa) into projects designed to help senior citizens live more happily and independently. In the past few months, I’ve reported on two such efforts: Smart Properties, which helps those in assisted living communities stay better connected with loved ones and their care team; and Alexa Together, which allows seniors to use Alexa to call for help if assistance is needed, amongst other things.

K4Connect is another company dedicated to helping the aged population through accessibility. The North Carolina-based startup describes itself as a “mission-driven technology company” that works to make technology accessible (and thus empowering) to older adults and other individuals with disabilities. The company does this by unifying disparate pieces of software to make everything accessible in one place, rather than a hundred places. “[It’s] really this idea of helping them [older adults] live their optimal like, using technology, no matter their age,” said Scott Moody, K4Connect’s chief executive, in a telephone interview with me conducted last September. “So it’s the whole idea of allowing them to live [a] more independent, healthier, and happier life.[That’s] what K4Connect does.”

Head to Forbes to read the full article!

K4Connect Quarterly Product Update: NEW Dining and Menu Communication Feature Makes Its Debut!

“Learn about four new, impactful K4Community updates.”

By: Diana Gore | Product Marketing Manager, K4Connect

January 18, 2022

K4Connect is proud to deliver exciting new technologies and features to senior living communities and operators through our K4Community solution. 

This quarter, our team focused on features that benefit residents, their family members and community staff in the areas of:

  • Dining and Menu Communications – a NEW offering for community staff, residents and their families
  • Segmenting content based on care setting in K4Community Plus
  • Enhanced calendar widgets
  • Integration updates

Here’s how our newest features and updates improve the lives of residents and increase staff efficiency in senior living communities.

1. NEW Dining and Menu Communications

Reduce redundant, time consuming work with our new menu communication feature. Following  our “create (enter) once, publish everywhere” philosophy, staff members now have a quick and simple way to communicate menu information via K4Community Plus, Voice, Digital Signage and Direct Broadcast. This robust and highly customizable feature enables senior living staff to save time as they create and share menu information. 

 

Highlight features include:

  • Repeating menu options available to accommodate common menu cycles and reduce repetitive data entry
  • Ability to automate dining and menu information via our newest integration with Grove Menus

2. NEW Content Segmented by Care Setting(s)

Ensure you are getting relevant content to the right group of residents with the added ability to segment based on resident care setting. Community staff can designate a piece of content, event calendars and/or menu information to be shared with desired resident groups. Additionally, this update enables more robust reporting and data insights around residents and staff usage.

3. Calendar Enhancements

Increased customization options with calendar creation widgets allows staff even more flexibility as they design calendars while still benefiting from time savings that comes with the automation of event data. Over 20 new designs were added to the content calendar giving staff more options to choose from.

4. Integration Updates 

In addition to seeing their dining/meal balance, residents can now see their FullCount and Volante transaction history in K4Community Plus. This gives residents easy access to their full transaction history enabling them to review information like date/time, amount and location of a transaction as well as image receipts, line items descriptions if applicable. 

Ready to learn more about K4Community? Book a demo today!

Tech, labor, wellness, business concerns factor into senior living industry trends, predictions for 2022

The pandemic has left its mark on the senior living industry — good and bad. As another new year begins, some industry experts share trends and predictions for what lies ahead.

January 6, 2022

By: Kimberly Bonvissuto

Technology
Technology likely is going to transform the competitive landscape for continuing care retirement / life plan communities and other long-term care settings, according to a senior living trends survey from professional services firm CLA.

Survey respondents indicated that new residents are moving in with higher expectations for and comfort with technology. Fifty-eight percent of operators participating in the research said they plan to invest in new technology in the next five years, whereas 37% indicated that they are in the process of or planning to develop custom programs and apps to leverage data.

K4Connect Chief Growth Officer Keith Stewart predicts that more technology industries will invest in aging services that serve the older adult population, including major device manufacturers, business-to-consumer electronics providers and wellness / lifestyle companies.

Stewart said “the line is blurring” between active adult / 55-plus and early levels of care, including independent living and aging in place at home. This blurring, she said, follows the wellness trends led by companies marketing fitness tracking devices and health technology.

Gig services — primarily ride-hailing and on-demand delivery — also have started to make their way into the older adult market. Stewart anticipates that these services will expand as the demographics shift further toward wealthy baby boomers with technology-related expectations.

K4Advisors Chief of Staff and Managing Partner Cindy Phillips foresees that technology will help operators find ways to engage and serve older adults in more ways before they make a move to senior living. Educating prospects on the benefits of the senior living lifestyle and beginning the onboarding process into a community are options.

“In 2022, we’ll see senior living communities start serving older adults in many ways before they move in, helping to build affinity from the start,” she said. “Communities could consider wellness offerings, virtual content invites to dining or special events, a marketplace or travel club, even priority with healthcare / short-term rehab.”

Phillips also anticipates that more communities will create a position dedicated to championing resident technology.

“COVID certainly cemented that technology is here to stay, and communities need to invest in resources to support it, accelerate it and integrate into activities and wellness programming,” she said. “We see this recognition of the importance of technology and adding some structure to how it is reviewed and implemented in communities with resident technology advisory groups, IT directors and the occasional chief information officer at the operator level.”

Head to McKnight’s to read more about 2022 industry predictions from industry experts.

Top 5 PR Strategies for Senior Living Communities

Cost-effective and time-efficient strategies to leverage the value of public relations for your community.

 

By: Lindsay Hull |Director of Media, Zer0 to 5ive

December 8, 2021

Public relations is a fantastic way for senior living communities to raise their awareness in the market through the credibility that comes through the press. At the same time, tight marketing budgets and already stretched staff bandwidth can make a potential public relations campaign seem out-of-reach.

However, there are several ways senior living communities can embark on an affordable and easy-to-implement public relations plan to help generate local and regional visibility — and, most importantly, drive occupancy. We’ll dive deeper into a few of them below.

1) Develop a simple process

While there are many routes a PR campaign can take, the best strategy for a team with limited resources to take is to keep it simple. Know from the beginning what you can and can’t do — how much time you can devote to public relations (you’ll find out that it’s harder than you think) and how much you can budget towards this type of work. That will help you formulate a manageable plan, which is the most important step to success in PR.

2) Think local, local, local

Much has been stated about the decline of regional and local news media. However, there is still a vibrant audience for this type of news — and it’s an audience filled with potential prospects interested in finding a senior living community to eventually call home. 

According to Pew Research Center, an estimated 35.6 million Americans had either a print or digital subscription to a daily newspaper in 2020. A separate survey found that 24 percent of people above the age of 65 and 38 percent of those between the ages of 50-64 said they followed “local news” very closely. These findings are a good indication that local news is still alive and well and likely your greatest asset. 

3) Contacting local news

It does take effort to reach out to local news outlets. While there are services that can help you quickly find contact information for reporters, the cheapest and most effective way is to scour the names of reporters at local newspapers and TV affiliates. Most newspapers (like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution) have an easy-to-access online list of reporters, what they report about, along with their contact information. Local TV stations (like WCCO-TV in the Minneapolis/St. Paul market) also have the same kind of contact information.

Where to find contact information for local publications online:

  • Staff lists 
  • Reporter bios (often hyperlinked in articles)
  • Media or advertising kits 
  • Newsroom general contact (this contact is often the hub for disseminating information to the appropriate reporter or writer)
  • Tag news outlets or specific reporters in your social posts of local happenings at the community

However, it’s also important that you know who covers what. Research what reporters have covered the types of stories you’d like to appear in — reaching out to a sports reporter about the opening of a new community is simply wasting your time.

4) What’s a good story?

Local news outlets want news that focuses on people first. Keep that in mind when approaching reporters about a new community opening or a big happening in your community. 

It’s very possible to pitch a specific news event that impacts the lives of your residents. For example, a Raleigh TV station did a quick piece about seniors at The Cardinal at North Hills receiving 150 free Amazon Echo Dots that included video of residents opening these gifts — plus a mention of how it became the first voice-enabled senior community in the country.

Another way to attract local news is by inviting the local press to an event — like this article about a Halloween visit to an equestrian center planned by a California senior community and this segment about a tea party held at Georgia community during this past Mother’s Day. 

Examples of newsworthy community happenings:

  • Community grand openings or campus expansions
  • Promote your seasonal or unique programming; bonus if the local community can join to experience it! (new fitness programs, celebrated chef joining the dining team with a local inspired menu)
  • Tech implementations impacting resident life (how residents are using tech to create new friendships, engage in new experiences)
  • Leverage holidays to tell unique resident stories (Celebrate a resident veteran on Veterans Day, a former bakery owner on National Cookie Day)

5) Leverage Any Press Coverage

Getting coverage – placed articles or news segments – from your PR outreach is great. But what’s even better is knowing how to leverage your media coverage to drive interest in your community.

It’s certainly possible that someone might read an article or watch a local news segment about your community and decide to check it out. But it’s more likely that you’ll have to use your own efforts to translate a media appearance into occupancy.

The best way to do so is to make sure you have an “In The News” area located on your website that’s easy to find. (While this might seem simple, you’d be surprised how often this is not the case.) Those articles and segments will give visitors to your site a good idea of what to expect at your community — and if they like what they see, they may take the next step and ask you for more information about a possible move.

Also, including these appearances in any email blasts or newsletters you send out to prospects and potential residents can also have them click on a call-to-action. Newspaper articles and TV segments are almost always kept on an outlet’s website permanently, meaning you can always recycle any stories about your facility over time.