ATU763 – GrandCare with Laura Mitchell

Hi, this is Laura Mitchell and I’m the CEO of GrandCare Systems, and this is your Assistive Technology Update.

Hello, and welcome to your Assistive Technology Update, a weekly dose of information that keeps you up to date on the latest developments in the field of technology designed to assist individuals with disabilities and special needs. I’m your host, Josh Anderson, with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. Welcome to episode 763 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on January 9th, 2026. On today’s show, we’re super excited to welcome Laura Mitchell from GrandCare to the show, and let’s go ahead and get into the interview. Independence is one of the main goals of AT of all kinds, and our guest today is Laura Mitchell, CEO of GrandCare Systems, and she’s here to tell us how GrandCare can make independence possible for individuals, and we are excited to learn all about it. Laura, welcome to the show.

Hi, thanks for having me.

Yeah, I’m excited to get into talking about GrandCare, but before we do that, could you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

Sure. I’m Laura Mitchell. I am a co-founder and CEO of GrandCare Systems. I’ve been with GrandCare since the very beginning, which is a little over 20 years. We were, to say a little bit early would be an understatement. We started in 2005 to build a platform to help individuals stay more independent. And at that time, we kind of had a little bit more of a target for the aging and older adults population. And we’ve always had individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities that have come and said, “This platform’s great for us.” And in 2019, we sort of made a hard pivot into IDD space because it’s much more needed and there’s a longer future for individuals that need this kind of independence.

Oh, definitely, definitely. And I know you said it’s been around for 20 years. I guess what was the original idea that spawned GrandCare?

So the founder, Charlie Hillman, came up with the idea in the ’90s when he was taking care of his grandmother and he was looking for something to help her remain independent and to ensure that she was safe and happy in her own home and there was really nothing out there like it. And so he just basically wanted to know, did she get out of bed? Is everything okay? And it was really sparked by the fact that in the ’90s, she had called him one day to say, “It’s really cold in my home.” And this is in Wisconsin in January, so not that surprising. She lived on a little cottage on his property and he went over to her home and it was cold because all the windows were open and all the windows were open because there was actually smoke kind of billowing from the basement. It’s not a basement, it was a little crawl space.

And so he went down into the little crawl space and he found that the furnace was literally on fire. And so he turned it off and then subsequently sort of investigated what happened. And turns out, “Oh, there’s these been these huge temperature swings for the last couple of weeks. There was this beeping sound that was going on. I did not know what that was, but that finally stopped. And it smelled and we heard all these sounds from the basement.” And he’s like, “Well, why would you not tell me this? ” She would come over for breakfast every single day because she would walk over to his place. And she was like, “Oh, you’re so busy. I didn’t want to bother you. I figured it was nothing.” And he thought, “Wow, I see this woman every single day. There’s got to be a better way that not only I can monitor her, but also monitor her living environment.” And that’s where he came up with the idea.

This was before the internet, and so he was going to try to set it up with modems and things like that. And then the internet came and finally in 2005 was when four of us came together and decided to really launch this thing and try to set it up to help individuals stay independent, but also proactively be able to monitor someone’s living environment.

Most certainly be able to stay independent, but also stay safe at the same time. Let’s start with the tablet. What all information can be relayed on this device and how does it work in the system?

Sure. So at GrandCare, we are a little different from other competitors in this space in that we feel that the engagement piece is really important. If we can’t get the individual to love the tablet, the engagement piece, we don’t feel like it’s as successful. So the GrandCare touchscreen is the heart of GrandCare. It offers daily tasks, schedules, to dos, reminders, medication events, also instructional videos. So if some individuals may have trouble with sequencing of events, it helps them walk through how to do their laundry, how to wash the dishes, how to shave, all of those things so that they can actually walk alongside a video of that action being taken. And it can sometimes be the individual themselves performing that task that they’re doing it along with themselves. And it also offers a two-way HIPAA-compliant video chat with either family, friends, or remote supports and secure messaging.

And perhaps the most fun part, we’re not only about eating our vegetables at GrandCare, we like to have a little fun too. So we also customize it for them with their favorite videos and photos and games and music. And so if someone’s really into, for example, wrestling or sharks or sea turtles, we add YouTube videos to the system, but they’re locked down. So they can only visit those specific YouTube videos and we’ll add hundreds of videos in different categories so that they can watch all sorts of things and it’s always changing. There’s always new videos being added. But we definitely want to make it a fun experience because the more they go to engage with that touchscreen, the more they’re going to comply also with the to do tasks and reminders and also be able to request support if needed.

Oh, and I like how you make it personalized, not so much just to their needs, but to them. You actually do make it their kind of device. And I really like what you said there, and you do do it a lot differently because it’s not the, I don’t know, the Big Brother monitoring kind of thing. It’s allowing the individual to not just be independent, but be involved in the entire process of everything.

Yep. They’re at the center of everything.

No, that’s really great. So you talked about being able to add videos for leisure, videos for video modeling and things like that. Can a family member or the provider set those different things up?

Absolutely, yep. We train them on how to do that. So typically we work with agencies or disability support agencies or societies or alliances. Sometimes it’s parent groups, but sometimes it’s just an individual and their family that come to us that want to get this to not only learn to become more independent, but the touchscreen helps them to self-direct and self-support. And so they’ll come to us and want to do this and we’ll customize it to begin with, but we also train them on how to do it. It’s very simple. The caregiver doesn’t need to have any equipment.

They don’t have to have a GrandCare touchscreen or anything. They just have to have any internet connected device, whether it’s a computer, a tablet, or a phone, so that they can log into the GrandCare dashboard. And then they can not only assess all of the different sensors that they may have in place that I can talk about in a minute, but they can also add those communications. So they can send messages, they can add calendar events, they can add to do task items with emojis if they want. They can add surveys that they want people to be able to answer questionnaires and also add that fun content and video chat there.

Nice, nice. And since you kind of brought it up, let’s talk about the sensors. What all kind of sensors can be implemented? And I guess what kinds of things could be monitored by them?

Sure. So we like to say we’re a no news is good news system. We are not a system where somebody watches sensor data on the dashboard. So it’s really set up to notify someone if an abnormal event occurs. So we’ve got a variety of sensors. We’ve got motion sensors, door sensors, flood detection sensors, we’ve got optional cameras that you can use if you want to. And then we have telehealth devices like blood pressure, weight, pulse ox, and glucose that are Bluetooth devices. Now these devices are all wireless, they’re all super easy to set up, and we advise people through how to do this. And then the thing is that we set up rule sets to notify a caregiver if something is amiss. So let’s say somebody has to go to work in the morning, Joe lives independently, Joe needs to go to work in the morning. We know that if Joe does not get out on his front porch at 8:00 A.M., the transit is going to leave, they’re not going to wait for him.

So I need to make sure as Joe’s friend and guardian, I need to make sure that Joe is out on his porch by 7:45. So I’m going to set up a sensor alert that says, if that front door does not open by 7:45, I’m going to then send an alert to Joe’s touchscreen in the kitchen and tell him, “Joe, you got to get out there. You’re going to miss your ride.” And if he still isn’t opening the door by 7:50, then I’m going to call him.

And so that’s just an example of an activity of daily living. There are other ones where, I want to know if he didn’t get out of bed. I want to know if he’s in the kitchen in the middle of the night. I want to know if the front door was left open for some reason. So you can set up all sorts of different rules based on activities of daily living. Or I want to know if Joe didn’t say that he took his medication on his touchscreen. There’s also check-in buttons that you can add to the touchscreen that says, “I just want him to check in at these times.” It’ll notify him on the touchscreen and I’ll be alerted if he does not check in.

And I really like that because you’re not getting alert every time the front door opens or every time somebody walks by a sensor or something like that, you’re getting those alerts, I mean, I guess any way that you want to set them up, but I like that you’re getting it if they haven’t been to the kitchen all day, if they haven’t done this or if they’ve been going 25 times that day, you get those kind of alerts. So I love that you can set that up because it’s just a much more passive monitoring, I guess, but still making sure folks are safe and being able to be as independent as they can.

Absolutely. And one thing to note as well is that GrandCare doesn’t have any staff that are looking at this information at all. We are a technology company that provides a vehicle for caregivers to be able to better provide remote supports and amplified care. So we aren’t checking any of that. There’s no third-party monitoring center in another state or country looking at this information. It is just the family, the guardians, and/or the remote support staff that that individual has set up.

Oh, that’s awesome. Because I know with data and with everything else these days, that’s a really great feeling, to know that information’s between you, your loved one, and maybe a care team, but that’s it, not with a tech developer that may not actually need that kind of data set.

Yeah. There’s no tech billionaires analyzing your information.

Seeing how many times Joe went to the kitchen. Yeah, exactly.

Yes, exactly.

That’s really, really good to know. Well, I know we talked about individuals with IDD, we talked about older adults. Whom else could really benefit from GrandCare?

Yeah, so we’ve been around 20 years. We’ve got lots of different clients in all sorts of different spaces. So we have individuals that live independently in their own homes that use the GrandCare system and then notify other guardians and/or remote supports if additional support is needed. We have individuals that still live with mom and dad that are just trying to learn to be more independent so that they can start self-directing, start self-supporting more so that they can learn to become more independent and maybe move out soon. And maybe that’s next door, maybe that’s just in an ADU, anything that is going to be a little bit more independent.

We’ve got older adults that are in senior housing communities where they use it with the senior housing staff. And then we’ve got a lot of folks dealing with mental health issues where they’ll use it to be able to access support when needed and/or be able to use it for relaxation or agitation management or to use their coping skills. And the GrandCare Touchscreen can sort of remind them of what those coping skills are and maybe have some videos that are supporting those needs.

Laura, I know you have tons of these just because, like you said, GrandCare has been around for 20 years, but could you tell me a story or two about someone’s experience using GrandCare? Maybe a few that stand out to you. I know, again, you probably got hundreds, we could fill a whole day, but just a couple that really stick out.

Yeah. I think there’s a couple that are pretty remarkable. One of them is one of our first customers that we had in 2006, and she had petite mal seizures. And by the way, we’ve been cleared to share her story. Her name is Jean and her daughter is Carol, and she had petite mal seizures and doctors told her that she needed to go into assisted living because when she would have these petite mal seizures, she would not know that she was having them and she would wander around, maybe wander out of the apartment. And everybody was very concerned about this, particularly her daughter. And so the doctor said, “Assisted living is the only thing you can do.” And Jean at the time was in her early 70s. She baked bread, she grew orchids in her kitchen. She would swim every day. She was a very active and capable woman, and she did not want to do that.

And so she’s the one who found us and said, “I really want to try this. And mostly I want to try this because my daughter, Carol, calls me about 50 times a day to find out if I’m okay.” And she said, “I want Carol to be able to live her own life and I want her to stop calling me so much.” And so we were just in the earliest phases. So we’re like, “All right, you’re going to be one of our pilot customers.” And so it was February. And at the time, I’m in San Diego now, but I lived in Wisconsin at the time and they were in Daytona Beach and it was February. So I was like, I’ll go and install that. And so we headed down and we installed the system and she ended up… So we set up alerts to notify Carol if wandering motion occurred.

And really we had to figure out kind of like your sleep number, what that meant for Jean. And so she would wander around before and after these petite mal seizures. And so she would hit a sensor and then another sensor and then another sensor in a room. We found that she didn’t wander in the bathroom, so we only would do the kitchen, the living room, the bedroom, and we figured out what that looked like for her. And then it would call Carol when wandering motion was detected and Carol would call her mom saying, “What’s up?” And if Jean said, “Nothing, I’m just doing a crossword puzzle.” Carol would be like, “Okay, I’ll be right over.” And so it allowed her to stay independent for another 10 years in her house.

Nice.

So not only is that remarkable and great, but along the way, Jean developed some, as one does, developed some chronic conditions that she needs to do as she was aging. And so she decided to get the blood pressure device and some other things. And she at one point went to the doctor and Carol said, “I think my mom has sundowners because she’s agitated, she’s not sleeping, and when I look at her motion now at night, she used to be… We’re pretty routine animals, and when I look at her motion at night, I’m noticing that she used to get up once a night to go to the bathroom, and now she’s getting up four or five times. She’s falling asleep during the day, she’s upset, she’s not remembering things.” All these things that were happening. And so the typical response to that would be a doctor would say, “Oh yeah, it’s right age. She probably has sundowners. I’m going to prescribe this medication and that medication and here’s what we’re going to do.”

But the doctor said, “Do you know when this started?” And Carol was like, “I know exactly when it started, here.” And she pointed out in the graph and he said, “Wow, that’s so interesting because that’s when I changed her blood pressure medication.” And so they changed her blood medication to something different and it stopped. And so when you think about that, you think he or she would’ve just prescribed a medication to cover a symptom which wasn’t that. And so it really improved their lives and she was able to remain independent, I think three or four years after that.

Nice.

So it was really, just really wonderful for their family. And it was just wonderful to see how a little bit of a technology, just support can really change your life.

Oh yeah, definitely, definitely. And Laura, you said you might have one more. We got enough time.

Sure. And this one is a little shorter.

Oh, that’s fine.

So basically there was a guy that was living with three other folks in Ohio and they were living in a co-housing scenario. So they had the GrandCare systems and GrandCare touchscreens are placed throughout the home. So you kind of think about them like a smart home assistant. So they’re placed in various rooms to support you in that room. They’re not designed for you to carry them around with you. They support you in the room you’re in. So the kitchen one may have recipes and your support staff and how to do the dishes. And the bathroom one may have how to brush your teeth and grooming things and hygiene related things. And then there might be workout videos on the living room one. So all of them are a little different.

So one of the individuals had a sleep-related eating disorder. So he would get out of bed and sort of sleepwalk to the kitchen and then eat everything that’s in the fridge, including things that were not edible, and he would eat until he either choked or threw up. And so clearly this is a problem. And so the problem was he didn’t do it every night. So they were hiring staff to sleep over and be alerted when he went into the kitchen and so that they could go and say, “Hey, it’s like 3:00 in the morning, you need to go back to bed.” Or if he really is hungry, “Okay, let me suggest a healthy option and then go back to bed.” And so that we don’t fall into that same, well, dangerous situation. But oftentimes that staff was sleeping and he got really good at sneaking around the staff even and not waking them up.

And so what we did was we installed GrandCare and we had it set up so that when he got out of bed, a remote support staff was notified. And so they would know that he had gotten out of bed. Now, if he doesn’t go into the kitchen, there’s no problem. But if we then see motion in the kitchen, then that support staff would drop in on the kitchen video chat on the touchscreen and be able to relay that information. And that was all he needed, he needed a prompt to just go back to bed.

Nice, nice.

And so that was just a huge cost savings, not to mention that this individual was very independent and did not want someone living with him. He did not want a caregiver there. He lived with three other gentlemen and they all were very independent and did not want a caregiver there.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, just that feeling of independence. Laura, what does installation look like? So let’s say that I decide my brother, cousin, whomever, a family member or something would really benefit from GrandCare, so I kind of get ahold of everybody. What does the process and installation look like?

Sure. So I think of it more like consulting where you reach out to us and we assess the situation together. So we say, okay, what are our concerns? What are we looking for? What are our interests? What are our hobbies? What makes this individual happy? What makes them sad? All the things. And oftentimes we’ll have the individual on the phone too because we want to hear from them, what are their goals? And then we together determine, okay, you know what? This isn’t a security system. So usually we’ll just have maybe three to four motion sensors, tops in a place and maybe a door sensor on the front door, maybe one on the back door, depending on what we’re looking at. Oftentimes people don’t have cameras at all unless there’s some specific reason why they want to have a camera in some sort of public area.

But oftentimes they’ll just have that, maybe a flood sensor if that’s a concern. And then if they have any comorbidities or chronic conditions that we’ll recommend, okay, maybe the blood pressure device or the weight scale so that they can just take their readings and then those are automatically track, trend and recorded and notifying somebody. But so we decide what those devices are. We get together a quote for them, and then once they approve the quote, we start customizing the system. So we help them to set up the appropriate rule sets of when they want to be notified, who should be notified, and when. And then we customize it with all their interests and hobbies and to dos and schedule and stuff. And we have a whole form that an individual and their families can fill out and then we ship it. And when it arrives, one of our installation support experts will make a phone call.

It’s pretty plug and play. It’s basically like you would set up an iPad, except you plug it in and you connect it to your internet connection. And that’s really it. And then with the sensors, we tell you exactly where they go. They come with sticky tape and we tell you exactly where to place them. It’s pretty easy, no electrician involved or anything like that. And then once it’s set up, then it just works and known news is good news. And we keep checking in initially to make sure that the rules are right. If someone’s getting called too much, we know that that rule is too tight, so we need to relax the rule a little bit. For example, sometimes people will say, “Oh, my mom gets up by 8:00 in the morning, so I want to know if she’s not out of bed by 8:00.” And then turns out mom doesn’t get up until 9:00. So if I’m getting a call every single morning, I know that that’s not the right rule.

Nice. I love how it’s so customizable and also so plug and play. I mean, you can really do a lot of it on your own once you go through the whole process. So I love that it’s so customizable for folks. What do they really want to find out? What do they really need and how can they do the most help with being the least amount intrusive at the same time?

The least restrictive environment as possible. And I should point out, oftentimes there are scenarios where they don’t need any sensors at all and they just have touchscreens. And you can let the system grow with you. So if you suddenly develop congestive heart failure and need a blood pressure device and a weight scale, those can be added on at anytime.

Very cool. Laura, if our listeners want to go and find out more about GrandCare, what’s a good way for them to do that?

I think the best way would be to go to our website, which is just grandcare.com, or you can find us on all the social media platforms as well. You can certainly give us a call at 262-338-6147 or email sales@grandcare.com.

All right. We will put all that information down in the show notes so that our listeners can go and check it all out. Well, Laura, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us all about GrandCare and just what a great kind of accommodation for folks and just being able to help individuals be more independent, meet the goals they’re trying to meet, and also give peace of mind to the family and caregivers that may worry a little bit about them and just be able to make sure that they’re safe and reaching those goals.

One of the things that we really pride ourselves at GrandCare is that we’re a very mission and purpose-driven company. So all four of our founders are still with the organization. Most of our staff have been with the organization for many years. And we kind of like to say, especially since this space is becoming more saturated right now, I think a lot of people are seeing that there is an opportunity in this space, particularly with reimbursements in technology. And one thing that we like to remind individuals is that we’ve been in this for a long time because we feel really passionate and we’re people first, profit second.

Awesome. So thanks again for coming on.

Well, thanks so much for having me.

Do you have a question about assistive technology? Do you have a suggestion for someone we should interview on an assistive technology update? If so, call our listener line at (317) 721-7124. Send us an email at tech@eastersealscrossroads.org or shoot us a note on Twitter @indataproject. Our captions and transcripts for the show are sponsored by the Indiana Telephone Relay Access Corporation or InTRAC. You can find out more about InTRAC at relayindiana.com. A special thanks to Nikol Prieto for scheduling our amazing guests and making a mess of my schedule. Today’s show was produced, edited, hosted, and fraught over by yours truly. The opinions expressed by our guests are their own and may or may not reflect those of the INDATA Project, Easterseals Crossroads, our supporting partners, or this host. This was your Assistive Technology Update. And I’m Josh Anderson with the INDATA Project at Easterseals Crossroads in beautiful Indianapolis, Indiana. We look forward to seeing you next time. Bye-bye.