Our Project
Our team has been working with Carers Australia to understand how this technology can support carers. We’ve come to the ING Dreamstarter community to raise money so that we can empower a group of Young Carers and Working Carers to continue delivering care, even while they’re at work or school, through the Umps Health system. The funding we raise will allow us to provide our service free of charge to 20 families, and at the same time, collect the data we need to optimise our analytics platform in preparation for our commercial launch next year.
Our Story
Last year, my 93 year-old grandpa fell at home and was hospitalised. He wanted to stay in the home he’d lived in for 60 years, and we wanted to support him in his independence. However, this required juggling daily caregiving responsibilities with full-time work.
I looked to technology to help my family, but found that the only thing available was a pendant worn around his neck. The problem with these is that you only find out about something after it’s happened. My grandpa has a pendant, but like 70% of other people that have them, he wasn’t wearing it when he fell.
So our team got together and set out to build something that doesn’t just detect when a fall occurs, but prevents them in first place. Something that operated in the background, and preserved his privacy and dignity.
How it works
Umps Health uses a small plug to measure when an older person switches on their appliance, like the kettle, TV, microwave and fridge. Our system learns what behaviour is normal and sends a text message to family members when something is unusual. Abnormalities in these types of activities of daily living (cooking, cleaning, eating, sleeping) are strong indicators of an incident, so knowing when they change helps families to intervene early and prevent an incident occurring.
Knowing that the Umps Health technology is always ‘digitally there’ provided us with a lot of comfort, and supported my family and I to deliver care while we were at work.
While our story is personal, it is not unique. There are 2.8 million people caring for a loved one in Australia. That’s 1 in 8 people. They deliver 1.9 billion hours of care per year looking after older people and people with disabilities, but we do a poor job at looking after them.
- 44% of primary carers in Australia having opted out of the workforce
- The prevalence of depression increases by 70% for people delivering more than 40 hours of care per week compared to the general population, primarily due to social isolation
- 39% of carers have put off medical treatment to fulfil their caring responsibilities.
Our Partners
Our crowdfunding campaign is being run in partnership with Carers Australia and Carers Victoria.
"At Intrinsic, we aim to raise the benchmark of how business is done. Holding values such as quality and authenticity without compromising personal or company integrity, we do whatever it takes to be the best we can be and give the best we can give."
Intrinsic have provided us with a range of beautifully designed, inspirational giftware and stationary that make the perfect gift for Christmas. For more details, see www.intrinsiconline.com.
Umps Health is a participant in the Melbourne Accelerator Program 2017 cohort, a world-leading accelerator program operated by the University of Melbourne.
Umps Health is participant in the Foundation for Young Australians 2017 Young Social Pioneers program, supporting young people to scale up initiatives that have the potential to create positive impact on society.
