Through our partnership, we can bring K4Community Hotline, an effective and simple tool for critical senior living communications during COVID-19 and beyond, across the nation.

June 17, 2020

RALEIGH — K4Connect is teaming up with software communications firm Bandwidth to deliver a newly enhanced “hotline” for its staff and residents.

The Raleigh startup, which creates technology solutions for older adults and individuals with disabilities, is leveraging the Bandwidth API and telecom platform to build and manage its K4Community Hotline.

The recorded phone message keeps residents, their families, and community staff constantly updated with the latest, including safety protocols, visitation policies, and other information like dining menus and virtual or socially-distanced activities.

Since the feature’s initial release this past March 20, K4Connect said the hotlines are averaging over 280 calls per day.

“This is how K4Community Hotline was created and we’re glad to see communities valuing it,” said K4Connect CEO and co-founder Scott Moody, in a statement.

“This solution enables us to continue supporting the industry with an incredibly efficient and easy-to-use tool as it prepares for the anticipated second wave of COVID-19 impact in the fall,” Carl Tarbell, executive director of Masonic Village at Burlington, said the hotline has been a “lifeline” to families, residents, and staff members. “It has given our team the ability to update each group with daily updates and critical information. The impact has been immeasurable,” he said.

RALEIGH NATIVES COLLABORATING

In recent years, K4Connect has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the Triangle. It currently serves tens of thousands of residents at over 800 continuing care, independent living, assisted living and memory care communities across the nation.

Bandwidth is also a big success story from the Triangle. Founded in 1999 by attorney-turned-entrepreneur David Morken in a Raleigh spare bedroom more, the firm went public in 2017 valued at around $300 million. Last year, it hit the $2 billion mark. Companies like Google, Microsoft, Rover and Zoom use Bandwidth’s APIs to easily embed voice, messaging and 911 access into software and applications.

“Given that they are also Raleigh natives, we were eager to find a way to work together,” said Adam Covati, vice president of Research & Development at Bandwidth. “We’d been in talks previously, and after K4Connect built the prototype for the hotline, partnering with Bandwidth emerged as a natural choice. Their communities’ need for local numbers made our national coverage incredibly appealing. Plus, they needed a long-term provider they could trust as they continue to grow, and our customer-focused team helped them find the easiest way to get the K4Community Hotline up and running.”

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Read the article from WRAL TechWire, here!

When K4Connect added information about Covid-19 to its support center, in-app guides were deployed through Pendo to point users toward them, ensuring they wouldn’t be missed.

By: Pendo

June 4, 2020

With senior living communities under strict lockdowns due to Covid-19, maintaining communication has become more difficult, yet more critical than ever.

K4Connect’s platform empowers residents and staff at the communities with technology to improve communication and connectedness, automate their lives, and entertain themselves. The company has experienced rapid growth that reflects the demand for a tool to address isolation and loneliness during this time. It’s now serving 800 communities, up from 125 two months ago.

K4Connect’s training and customer support traditionally includes a hands-on approach in addition to digital tools and resources, visiting communities in person to help get them up and running on the platform. But the restrictions have made that impossible. Over the last few months, they’ve found an entirely new use case for Pendo—automated in-app onboarding and support.

“Where we used to be boots-on-the-ground and able to go into a community and do training and onboard new residents and staff, we’re really having to think through how we do that differently,” says Diana Gore, a product manager on the caregiver experience team. Gore says Pendo’s in-app messaging capabilities allow K4Connect to offer the same level of support and communication they always have, but in a touchless format.

Improving onboarding and driving feature adoption

Pendo guides are proving to be the perfect, low-friction solution for onboarding busier-than-ever caregivers to K4Connect’s platform and introducing new capabilities.

When the team adds new features—like an updated dashboard, an enhanced “Family and Friends” communication tools, or a content library— step-by-step walkthroughs help teach the staff how to use them. The K4Connect team also highlights upcoming webinars using Pendo guides, and recently developed an onboarding guide in the Pendo Resource Center that provides a self-service avenue for community staff to learn how to use K4Connect’s key functionality.

 

 

That all takes the place of an in-person visit without sacrificing the quality of instruction or increasing the risk of spreading the coronavirus to an especially vulnerable population.

“In the past, our customer success managers would have tried to set up a call with them to really walk through the updates or they would have had a webinar,” Gore said. “Now, we’re really thinking through how we get that information to people so they can consume it in a way that works for their schedule.”

K4Connect also plans to roll out guides and walkthroughs for residents, teaching them how to use features of the app that let them control the temperature of their room or video chat with their families.

Already, they’re using in-app messaging to share K4Connect’s own response to Covid-19. When K4Connect added information about Covid-19 to its support center, in-app guides were deployed through Pendo to point users toward them, ensuring they wouldn’t be missed.

“We’re hitting them in the places where we know that they’re active to make sure that they stay up-to-date on what’s new,” says Natalie Jones, director of marketing and communications.

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Read more of our Customer Story on Pendo’s website, here!

The Echo Dots will integrate with K4Community, K4Connect’s enterprise solution that provides “smart” products and features for residents and staff of senior living communities.

By: Kimberly Bonvissuto

June 3, 2020

K4Connect, a Raleigh, NC-based technology company, and Amazon are partnering to distribute more than 8,000 Echo Dots to more than 40 West Coast independent and assisted living communities affected by COVID-19. 

The Echo Dots will integrate with K4Community, K4Connect’s enterprise solution that provides “smart” products and features for residents and staff of senior living communities. The devices will provide access to all of the benefits of Amazon Alexa, as well as content preloaded to the K4 online dashboard, including a community’s activity calendar, menus and community announcements. Residents also can use the device to call their families or the front desk of their community.

Senior living companies participating in the program include Eskaton, MBK Senior Living and Front Porch in California, as well as Era Living, Horizon House and Bayview in Washington. 

“We found it a fantastic way to utilize technology to better serve residents and provide them with technology to enhance their lives and, ultimately, turn individual units into smart homes with features to turn on the lights or adjust the temperature,” Fischer said of the 2019 partnership with K4Connect. “The very first thing that attracted me to it was the ability to do a morning check-in to make sure our residents were up and safe.”

Fischer said all residences have a pendant or a pull cord for emergencies, but the Echo Dots provide an enhancement to safety protocols.

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Visit McKnight’s Senior Living to read the full piece, here!

K4Connect will distribute more than 8,000 Echo Dots programmed with K4Community to help meet the demand for more social interaction in senior living during the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

By: Seth Thomas Gulledge

May 29, 2020

A Triangle tech company already seeing a massive spike in demand during the pandemic has a new initiative alongside a global tech giant to roll out its product to thousands more seniors.

This week, Raleigh-based K4Connect, announced a new initiative supported by Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) to distribute more than 8,000 Echo Dots – Amazon’s smart speaker – to independent and assisted living centers along the West Coast that have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.

The devices will be loaded with the company’s K4Community program designed for residents and staff of senior-living communities.

“The opportunity to work with Amazon to serve older adults through this donation effort was obvious for us,” said the company’s CEO and founder Scott Moody in a prepared statement. “Covid-19 has quickly magnified areas where voice technology can help, and fast . . . people need relief now.”

The devices will go to more than 40 senior-living communities, adding to the already more than 800 communities the company is serving.

It also come during a massive spike in demand for the company. Late last month, Moody said the company had grown nearly 500 percent during the year, due mostly to its product going from a “nice to have” to a “we have to have this.”

According to the company, the devices were donated by Amazon as part of a $5 million device-donations program created in response to the pandemic.

The company had previously integrated its platform into Amazon’s Alexa program, giving their customers access to a variety of social, educational and informational programs.

“Our enterprise solution allows us to deploy, manage and support these devices at scale and fully remote, meaning residents get the relief they need quickly and community staff teams are not burdened by installing or managing the technology,” Moody said.

Moody says the company’s goal during the pandemic is to use its technology to help fight isolation and loneliness for its customers – mostly older adults securely in the high-risk population being affected by the virus.

Earlier this year, the company expedited the release of its newest programming to encourage personal engagement with other users such as communicating and singing up for activities with each other.

Moody has previously stated the company is in conversations about how to incorporate telemedicine applications into the platform.

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Read the story here from the Triangle Business Journal

Covid-19 has been difficult for everyone, but particularly for people over the age of 65 who may spend months shut away from loved ones and the outside world.

 

By: Carla Heyworth

May 28, 2020

To help combat this, K4Connect and Amazon have announced an initiative to provide more support to senior living residents during the outbreak. The two companies will distribute more than 8,000 Echo Dots to independent living communities across the West Coast of the USA, which has been one of the worst hit regions in the USA.

Longevity.Technology: Health and social care have long had a push/pull attitude to one another. The impact on both the physical and mental health of Covid-19 patients could prove to be almost as bad as the virus itself. 

The deployment will allow residents to use voice tech to stay more connected in isolation. They expect the program to help more than 40 senior living communities across the region.

The Dot devices will connect with K4Connect’s enterprise solution for staff and residents of communities. According to the company, which aims to create a smart OS for senior living with a single interface for all technologies, this means that homes can get started quickly; all they have to do is plug in the new Echo Dot devices and Amazon’s Alexa will be at their service along with a host of functions from K4Connect including their Call-My-Neighbor feature and voice dialling.

Derek Holt, EVP of Development & COO of K4Connect said “We are excited to bring the power of voice technology to thousands of older adults with Amazon and our community partners, especially during this time when keeping residents connected, entertained and inspired is so important … It’s truly an exciting initiative and we’re thrilled to help make an impact during these challenging times.”

K4Connect has been making great headway over the last few years as it seeks to give older people better access to technology which can improve their quality of life and boost independence.

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Back in March, founder F Scott Moody, former CEO of AuthenTec which was acquired by Apple in 2012, explained how the platform grew into an operating system for senior living communities, designed to combine all sorts of different health services and applications into a single system.

“Our mission is to make their lives better, right? We do that,” he said. “And we do it for a demographic that is generally very, very underserved by technology. We provide utility in their lives, whether it’s home automation, whether it’s communication, whether it’s engagement.”

At the best of times isolation is a challenge for the older generations. During the current crisis, the problem is even worse with studies suggesting people can struggle with relapsed symptoms and heightened anxiety [1].

Technology has enormous potential to improve the lives of people in supported living environments. However, it has struggled to take hold for two reasons: organisations often have limited IT departments which makes it difficult to successfully adopt technology, and users are put off by poor software.

Back in December 2019, Apple, Google, Amazon, and the Zigbee Alliance announced that they had decided to “play nice” by working together in a bid to make home technology devices compatible with different smartphones and voice assistants – we continue to see this as a growing opportunity; combating loneliness is a key challenge. King’s College’s Richard Siow told us that he sees AI as being a major contributor to addressing this growing issue.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7166027/

 

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Read the article on Longevity Technology, here!

“COVID-19 has quickly magnified areas where voice technology can help, and fast – people need relief now,” said K4Connect CEO and co-founder Scott Moody, in a statement.

By: WRAL TechWire

May 27, 2020

RALEIGH — Older adults are one of the most vulnerable and isolated populations during this pandemic. But one local startup is stepping up to make sure that they’re safe.

K4Connect, which creates technology solutions centered to help older adults and individuals with disabilities, has teamed up with Amazon to distribute over 8,000 Echo Dots to more than 40 independent and assisted living communities in West Coast regions highly affected by COVID-19.

Those residents will now be able to use voice technology to stay more connected, while also gaining access to K4Connect’s flagship solution called K4Community. It brings together all the aspects of a senior living community: menus, event calendars, smart home automation, community management and analytics in an application that can be accessed on mobile devices or desktop computers.

“The opportunity to work with Amazon to serve older adults through this donation effort was obvious for us. COVID-19 has quickly magnified areas where voice technology can help, and fast – people need relief now,” said K4Connect CEO and co-founder Scott Moody, in a statement. “Our enterprise solution allows us to deploy, manage, and support these devices at scale and fully remote, meaning residents get the relief they need quickly and community staff teams are not burdened by installing or managing the technology.”

With the K4Community Voice integration with Amazon Alexa, residents can access information (announcements, daily menus), create new means of connection through voice-dialing with K4Community’s “Call My Neighbor” feature, and even reimage daily activities with socially distanced or virtual events like Hallway Sing-a-Longs with Alexa.

K4Connect also recently released the K4Community Hotline, a recorded phone message feature that allows community staff to keep residents and families constantly updated while relieving high inbound call volumes. This feature is also easily accessible for residents via voice through Amazon Alexa.

Amazon, meanwhile, donated the devices as part of its $5 million device donations program created in response to COVID-19.

The program will reach over 40 senior living communities, including Eskaton, MBK Senior Living (MBK), and Front Porch headquartered in California, as well as Era Living, Horizon House, and Bayview in Washington.

In late 2019, MBK teamed with K4Connect to lead its technology transformation through the K4Community solution which will support 3,400 residents and staff.

“Bringing K4Connect on as our technology partner allows us to uniquely deliver on our mission of providing quality programming and outstanding care for our residents,” MBK president Jeff Fischer said. “Our K4Community Voice pilots in 2019 were so successful that we immediately jumped at the opportunity to accelerate and extend that resource during COVID-19 and beyond.”

In recent years, K4Connect has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the Triangle.

It currently serves tens of thousands of residents at over 800 continuing care, independent living, assisted living and memory care communities across the nation.

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Read the article on WRAL Tech Wire, here!

As part of its $5 million pandemic response, Amazon is placing more than 8,000 of its Echo Dot devices across dozens of senior-living facilities in parts of California and Washington state hit hard by the pandemic.

 

By: Dave Pearson

May 27, 2020

The Big Tech giant has donated the smart speakers as part of a partnership with K4Connect, an elder-care tech company, to help COVID-isolated residents feel more connected via Alexa voice-command capabilities.

Along with supplying standard Alexa voice-command capabilities, the devices will dispense community information, facility-specific communications and access to onsite services.

In announcing the program, K4Connect says the experience is designed to let residents take to the experience with little involvement from staff.

The company’s CEO and co-founder, Scott Moody, comments that the chance to work with Amazon in helping older adults “was obvious for us. COVID-19 has quickly magnified areas where voice technology can help, and fast—people need relief now.”

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Read the full story on AI in Healthcare, here!

K4Community Plus resident application integrates key features into an application specifically designed for seniors.

By: Kate Marselas

April 29, 2020

K4Connect last week debuted its K4Community Plus resident application, which integrates key features of popular social media platforms into an application specifically designed for seniors.

Key K4Community Plus capabilities include:

• Community Social Feed, providing communities a variety of curated content and important information in the style of a social media feed. Residents can securely browse community updates and information, view external content including news articles, and engage with community activities and events.

• Dynamic Communications & Voice, which spans the ability to message and call fellow residents as well as voice-activated options for resident-to-resident communication with the “Alexa, Call My Neighbor” feature. Voice features also include ways to communicate with staff whether using Alexa to call the front desk or get the latest community updates through our voice-activated Hotline feature.

• Friends & Family Experience, which allows loved ones to stay connected to residents and the community with constant access to important community information and updates — a particularly critical tool as communities continue to navigate COVID-19 — and direct communication with resident family members through the only native video calling social feature in senior living, as well as messaging and photo-sharing.

• Customized Smart Home, allowing residents to control and customize smart living environments, such as temperature and lighting settings, from a mobile device.

K4Community Plus is now available to all existing K4Connect senior living community partners, as well as new partners. In response to the continued impact of the COVID-19 on the senior living industry, K4Connect is offering fully remote installation of K4Community Plus at no cost for the coming months.

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Read more on McKnight‘s Senior Living, here!

Our K4Community technology is meeting the demands for more social interaction while high-risk senior populations will be facing increased isolation during the coronavirus pandemic.

By: Seth Gulledge

April 23, 2020

For the duration of the coronavirus pandemic, high-risk senior populations will be facing increased isolation – a problem that a Triangle tech company is looking to solve.

And now, its business is exploding like never before.

Raleigh-based K4Connect has been developing a suite of senior-living solutions for years, including its K4Community Platform – which integrates the latest smart home and health technologies into a user interface designed for senior living residents and staff.

It started 2020 with big expectations, believing it could double the users on its platform for the second consecutive year due to demand growing for at-home technology solutions for seniors.

And that was before Covid-19 forced the world into home isolation and lockdown – especially for older populations that are most at risk to the virus.

According to CEO Scott Moody – formerly credited for the TouchID technology bought out by Apple – the company has gone from serving about 125 communities two months ago to more than 800 now. It has also increased its staff by about 10 percent to accommodate for the new growth.

 

Moody says that while the company was steadily growing and its value-proposition was always clear to those in the Industry, the sudden change in reality has made their value much more apparent and urgent.

“It’s all the sudden much more of a necessity,” Moody says. “We went from a ‘nice to have’ … to now understanding ‘wait a minute we have to have this.'”

Looking to cater to the demand for service to combat isolation and loneliness caused by the pandemic – which Moody notes has been shown to be as negative of a factor for health as smoking – the company has now also rolled out a new application “taking the best experiences of today’s popular social media platforms and integrating them into a sophisticated application.”

“It came from this whole thesis around engagement and combating isolation and loneliness, which is a big issue,” he says.

He says their platform differs from many popular social media models in so much that instead of driving engagement on the app – in order to sell advertising – the platform is designed to encourage personal engagement with other users, such as communicating and signing up for activities with each other.

The new software was already being developed by the company, but was expedited to serve customers during the pandemic.

“Isolation is one of the more significant challenges they’re facing today,” Moody says. “Which is why our expediting and releasing K4Community Plus now to better support them was incredibly important to us.”

He says they are in conversations about how to incorporate some telemedicine applications into their technology, seeing the company’s platform as an existing video and health integration opportunity that other telemedicine companies could plug into.

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Read the story on Triangle Business Journal, here!

K4Connect is determined to redefine the digital experience for older adults in senior living, especially now during COVID-19.

By: WRAL TechWire

April 23, 2020

K4Connect is determined to redefine the digital experience for older adults in senior living, especially now during COVID-19. And it’s offering technology to senior centers right now free of charge in the firm’s latest effort targeting the impact of the pandemic.

Senior and assisted living centers have emerged as one of the most damaging “hot spots” for COVID-19 with access to residents often limited by restrictions on visitors.

K4Community Plus, its new resident app launched this week that takes some of what it considers the “best experiences” of today’s popular social media platforms and integrating them into a sophisticated application specifically designed for them.

“Our company exists to serve older adults through technology that adds value to their lives. This mission has never been more important than right now as older adults – and the senior living communities serving them – are turning to technology solutions to help manage the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic,” says K4Connect CEO and Co-Founder, F. Scott Moody.

 

 

“K4Community Plus brings material present day utility to senior living, enabling communities and their residents to truly connect, communicate and engage in secure, meaningful ways both in and outside of the communities they live in. Isolation is one of the more significant challenges they’re facing today, which is why our expediting and releasing K4Community Plus now to better support them was incredibly important to us.”

The Raleigh-based company creates technology solutions centered to help older adults and individuals with disabilities. It currently serves tens of thousands of senior living residents at 800 premier continuing care, independent living, assisted living and memory care communities across the nation.

The app allows community residents to connect with family and friends, engage and socialize with their community and fellow residents, as well as control their smart living environments all from their personal devices.

Several senior living communities beta tested the new application. As one White Horse Village resident observed: “This technology is the future!”

To help seniors and centers, K4Connect is offering remote installation of K4Community Plus to any senior living community at no cost for the coming months.

Recently K4Connect also launched additional entertainment options for its users.

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Read the story on WRAL TechWire, here!