Boiseans launch online service to assist caregivers | Business | Idaho Statesman
Caring for an elderly parent or a special-needs child doesn't just demand reservoirs of emotion and energy. It also saps your available time and creates whirlwinds of medical, financial and practical information that need to be wrangled and organized.
Two Boise couples who've experienced those challenges firsthand translated that need into an online organizational tool they hope will reach thousands of caregivers nationwide.
Barbara and Dan Henderson and Carrie and Dean Hastriter launched Caregiver's Touch this past May as a Web-based program and an iPhone application. So far they have a couple of hundred subscribers and are forging deals with home-care providers, Barbara Henderson said.
All four founders have seen the frustrations of caregiving up close - the Hastriters with elderly grandparents and the Hendersons with an infant son beset by medical problems.
Their 2-year-old son, Jack, is doing fine now but spent about nine months of his infancy in and out of hospitals with conflicting opinions and dire prognoses.
"We were gasping for help," Barbara Henderson said. "We were walking around with these giant notebooks filled with information about his surgeries, about his doctors, about his last feeding. And I could answer all the questions because I never left his side.
"But I worried: If something happened to me, nobody would be able to answer those questions. And subsequently nobody would be able to help my son."
The fear and sleeplessness of that situation helped inspire the design of Caregiver's Touch, which the four longtime friends dreamed up in a long series of kitchen-table conversations about what was needed and what would work.
The couples enlisted Rocket, a Boise Web development and design company, and got their new business off the ground about eight months after they came up with the idea.
"We're very proud of the fact that we got our idea at the end of September a year ago, and then we were up and running in the middle of May," Carrie Hastriter said.
HELPING THOSE TOO BUSY TO SEEK HELP
Hastriter, who watched and helped as her parents cared for all four of her grandparents, initially thought the business would focus on elder care, serving the vast number of baby boomers who are full- or part-time caregivers for aging parents. But Caregiver's Touch can apply to any caregiving situation and is flexible for a wide variety of needs, she said.
Subscribers can create detailed profiles for up to six people, providing ready access to medical and insurance information, appointments, contacts and financial and legal records.
"We figure there's millions of caregivers out there, and if even a fraction of them find it, we'll be a success," Hastriter said.
But what started as a consumer-focused marketing model quickly shifted when the partners realized the same thing that makes their product valuable to caregivers makes it unlikely many of those people will find it on their own.
"It's hard to reach people who are in caregiver mode, because they are overwhelmed," Henderson said. "We realized the way to reach them is through the organizations that they take advantage of."
So the partners forged a deal with local home health services providers Horizon Home Health and A Caring Hand, and they are working with other organizations that each serve hundreds or thousands of caregivers.
Mike Flowers, marketing director for A Caring Hand in Boise, said Caregiver's Touch approached him about a month ago and provided the service free to all employees who wanted it.
Flowers uses it for his mother, who lives in an assisted living center, and to keep track of his children's classes, teachers and appointments.
"It's pretty nice," he said. "I have it on my iPad, and when my Mom goes to a doctor's appointment or a therapist, I can just pull up all the information they need."
Now Flowers is including Caregiver's Touch in his marketing package, providing the product as an additional service to any clients interested. So far about 20 have signed up, he said.
Danny Walker of Horizon Home Health in Meridian plans to start offering Caregiver's Touch to clients within a month. He said the program resonates with him because of his experience as father of a boy with Down syndrome.
When their son Andy was born 3Ý years ago, Walker and his wife immersed themselves in research, seeking information from a national association of support groups.
"They actually suggested buying a large stainless steel file cabinet" to hold all of the boy's medical information, he said. "We read that and wept."
INFORMATION THAT TRAVELS AND SHARES
The wealth of information users put into Caregiver's Touch profiles can go mobile, too. There's an iPhone app, and eventually the partners want to make their product available on all smartphones.
Subscribers can share their information with family and others who need the information, regardless of whether those people belong to Caregiver's Touch.
That sharing is a crucial feature, Hastriter said. She and her two sisters live in Idaho, but their parents and last surviving grandparent live in southern Oregon. When their parents aren't available to care for the grandmother, the sisters fill in. And it was consistently a hassle to convey all the necessary information.
"Instead of spending half a day writing everything out on legal pads, I knew there had to be an accessible way in this digital age," she said.
Henderson uses the program to keep track of information for her parents, who came to the Treasure Valley from Bosnia in the late 1990s, seeking political asylum. She came earlier, as a high school exchange student in 1992, then stayed with a scholarship to the College of Idaho because war in the former Yugoslavia made it dangerous for her to return home.
After her parents joined her, Henderson provided daily translation and other help acclimating to a new country. She still helps by translating bank statements and other information, and she keeps Caregiver's Touch profiles on them.
"We use it regularly to keep their appointments and their bills paid, the medications and everything else," she said.
OFFERING A MORE COMPREHENSIVE TOOL
There are other Web-based products to keep track of medical information or other specific types of data, Henderson said. What makes Caregiver's Touch different is the breadth of its application.
The program includes sections for general information; medications; contacts; emergency information; financial, legal, military and asset records; insurance information; medical history; and an appointment calendar.
"It's anything one's life consists of," Henderson said.
The four partners bring diverse backgrounds to the project. Dan Henderson studied finance and worked with software engineering companies, Barbara Henderson worked in biochemical research, Carrie Hastriter is a teacher, and she and her husband, Dean, ran a construction company.
The recent economic doldrums hit the construction business hard, and the Hastriters were looking for another source of income when they brainstormed with their friends to come up with Caregiver's Touch.
"It's going pretty well," Carrie Hastriter said. "Conservatively, we've been gaining about 30 subscribers a month.
"We hope to be sustaining a livelihood for our two families by the end of the year."
Kristin Rodine: 377-6447
This is a great way to see centralized databases used, in my opinion.
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