ATU782 – SimplyHome with Jason Ray

Hi, this is Jason Ray. I’m the CEO of SimplyHome, 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 782 of Assistive Technology Update. It is scheduled to be released on May 22nd, 2026. Today, we welcome Jason Ray from SimplyHome to the show, so let’s go ahead and get on with the interview.

Listeners, today, we welcome Jason Ray from SimplyHome to Assistive Technology Update to tell us about SimplyHome, and I am looking forward to learning all about remote supports technology, and so many other great things. Jason, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me. Great to be here, Josh.

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

Yeah. So as you mentioned earlier, I’m Jason Ray. I’m the CEO at SimplyHome. I’ve been with SimplyHome really since our inception about 20 years ago. I’ve been here for 18 years. And over that time, have really focused on growing SimplyHome nationally. I’m a certified aging-in-place specialist. I have actually been featured on multiple episodes of Extreme Makeover Home Edition and have had the opportunity to speak across the country about not just what SimplyHome does, but about assistive and enabling technology and remote support solutions in general, and actually doing that later this week at the ANCORP Conference. I know this will be airing after that happens, but yeah, that’s a little bit about who I am and what we do.

Very cool. Very cool. Well, just to dig in a little bit, I guess you said you’ve been there pretty much since the inception, but why was SimplyHome started? Where did the idea kind of come from?

So SimplyHome really grew out of being a provider ourselves. So it actually started with my parents and they had founded a provider organization back in the 1980s, and by the early 2000s, the vast majority of people that they were supporting had transitioned to living in a community. And as a part of that transition and how they were supporting people, the thought about how we could use technology and remote teams really came about in that timeframe. So it was early to mid 2000s where this really started developing. And the reason why we were really headed down that path is very similar to a lot of the challenges that providers are facing today. We had a lot of staffing challenges. We were supporting people in a lot of remote locations and just getting people to those locations was challenging enough and trying to provide services 24/7.

And so there were some operational things as an organization that we were looking at, but also from the perspective of the people that we were supporting, we saw many opportunities where they could be more independent if there was just a little bit more support there and available. And so we just felt that technology and having remote teams available when they were truly needed, as opposed to just being in the home all the time in case there was a need, was a way that we could help make both of those things possible, create new efficiencies for us as an organization, but also help the people that we were supporting to be more independent. And that’s really how SimplyHome was born.

Awesome. Awesome. And we’re going to get into talking about the technology. Now, I will not make you talk about what the technology was 20 years ago, because I’m sure it has probably progressed as most of those things have in this time. But Jason, I guess, start off by telling me about the SimplyHome system.

You got it. And I’ll just make one quick note. Our very first version had an opportunity to page people. That gives you any idea of how long ago that was.

I am sure we have listeners that don’t even know what that device is, nor could they possibly figure out how it could work. Yeah, that’s perfectly fine. I know these days, my older kids are amazed by the thought of the phone stayed home and people couldn’t reach you. So who knows? Maybe some of that’ll come back. But anyway, go ahead.

Yeah. So with the SimplyHome system, we are an in home sensor-based system. And the basic idea that we first started with 20 years ago and is still the basic premise behind what we do today is wanting to know that certain things have happened or not happened in someone’s home without having to physically be there so that we could respond right when that need arises, as I mentioned earlier, instead of being there all the time just in case. So the types of things that we’re looking out for are very common concerns or goals that a person may have that we’re supporting. And so it’s things like cooking safety. So we have a sensor that goes on the stove that knows if the stove is on, how long it’s been on for, if there’s someone not in the kitchen area for an extended period of time while the stove is on.

Things like issues during the overnight time, knowing that somebody got up, maybe they potentially had a fall. Maybe we need to give them a reminder that it’s time to put their CPAP on when they get into bed or in the morning time, ensuring that someone is up by a certain time of day because they need to get to their job on time. Has someone accessed their medications at the right time? Has someone left or arrived at the house at a really odd time of day? So a lot of the types of activities of daily living that we support with in-person staff, we want to know with that technology has this thing happened, has it not happened so that we can either prompt and redirect that person with the technologies. That’s one of the unique things that we have with our technology is that it’s not always about getting that information to a remote staff person.

Sometimes it’s just that we need to provide a reminder or prompt right to that person supported so that if I need to go and address the fact that I left my stove on, I have the opportunity to manage that first. We can build that kind of solution in. Obviously we can bring in our remote caregiving team, use two-way audio video communication if that need arises, but then we can also integrate different smart devices. So we have dozens of off-the-shelf smart technologies, things like Ring video doorbells and smart thermostats and smart lights and door locks and all these kinds of technologies that are becoming more ubiquitous in all of our homes. We can integrate those right into our technology platform so that they can also potentially generate responses for that person, send out notifications to that person’s support team, or just be controlled in a way that’s more accessible for that person.

Because one of the things we find with some of those great smart technologies is while they are tremendously powerful, a lot of times they’re not accessible for the individuals that we work with. Maybe that person doesn’t have the ability to read, maybe they don’t have the fine motor skills to access the app that comes with it. So we really want to flip the script a little bit and understand what the needs and preferences are of that person and make sure that we can still leverage those great technologies, but put it in a format that’s going to be more accessible for them. So I know that’s a lot, but there’s just a lot that we bring to the table with different technology resources.

Oh, definitely. And I love how you bring in the consumer goods as well. So they’re off the shelf and just integrate them into the system to make it more accessible for the folks that you’re working with. In looking through, I saw that you also had a couple of other, just because we are a technology, so just a few other pieces of technology before we dig a little bit deeper into some other things, but I saw you had a BoundaryCare watch. Can you tell me what this kind of solution is?

You got it. So BoundaryCare is one of the great partnerships that we have. We believe heavily in interoperability and partnerships with what we do and BoundaryCare is a completely separate entity to SimplyHome. They’re one of our great partners and BoundaryCare, along with a few other technology vendors in this space, have partnered with us so that we can, as you were just describing, Josh, really bring all of those things into one place. And so the BoundaryCare Watch is actually an application that runs on an Apple Watch. So it’s a cool piece of tech already and then overlaid with the BoundaryCare software makes it even more powerful because what the software can do is actually tap into all of the great data and resources coming from the Apple Watch and now we can generate notifications and as I was mentioned earlier, provide additional prompts and queues to the individuals that we support based off of the data we get from the Apple Watch.

So things like GPS location, heart rate, all of those kinds of things that we’re getting from the Apple Watch now can go into the BoundaryCare system and they can also flow into the SimplyHome platform. Because when we think about supporting someone remotely, if they have three or four different technologies that would otherwise be these disparate systems, it’s kind of cumbersome to try and manage those in these different silos and platforms. So we can actually stream those alerts and notifications right into the SimplyHome platform so that that person’s support team who’s doing the remote support can see all of that data in one place and have a consistent workflow in process to engage with those things.

Nice. So my information, my data, all the information needed to help support me, making sure that I’m staying on track, being as independent as I can and kind of reaching my goals, all is going to one place.

That’s right.

It’s not going to 12 different places and not talking to each other. That’s awesome. That’s going to make it easier for everybody.

That’s right. Yeah.

Very good, very good. And I know that, and we’re probably not going to get to everything, but I know there’s also a medication dispenser and a way to be able to help folks with that. How does that work?

Exactly. And just like I was describing with BoundaryCare, the medication dispensing side, that’s not actually a product that we make, but it’s a product we integrate with. And so when we think about access to medications, there’s a spectrum, like with anything, on how we need to engage and how we need to provide support for that particular thing. And so it could just be as simple as we need to give someone a reminder when it’s time for them to take their medication, or it may be up to the point where we need to provide a medication dispensing device. So those devices are prefilled. There’s something that you can have a pharmacy work with you to have already ready to go out of the box where those things are going to generate a notification when it is time for that person to take their medication, and then it’s going to dispense the right medications at the right time.

So for individuals who have the ability to take their own medications, it’s a great tool to ensure that those medications are being accessed and they’re being accessed on time and it’s the right medications at the right time. And then there’s also tracking for that as well on the back end, just like with everything else so that you know when those medications were taken or that alerts can be generated to notify that person’s team if they haven’t accessed them in the right time to provide that engagement in real time as well.

Awesome. And Jason, I know sometimes the support team isn’t just the remote supports. It could be a caregiver, a loved one, something like that. What does this information look like from that side of things? What kind of information is shared with the caregiver or how is that kind of information relayed?

You got it. And you’re exactly right. We have families who come to us directly who we work with, obviously, and then we have entire enterprise organizations who we work with as well. And so from an information standpoint, one of the things that could be really challenging and something that we’ve really spent a lot of time focusing on is to try and really simplify the information that is presented because if you think about having to try and parse through sensor data and all of the information that could be collected and sent in through our platform, that would be a lot to try and find what is meaningful in here. So one of the things that we really try and emphasize with our technology platform is, we talked a lot about interoperability and all of these things that we can flow into the platform, but it needs to be easy to discern what is an issue, what is something that I need to give attention to, and then having reporting tools that can really help us understand, is this technology and remote support solution, providing the outcomes that we hope to have and hope to achieve as a part of that person’s plan.

So we do that with a really simple color coding system. So any of the exceptions of things that we expect to happen that aren’t happening in the way that we expect them to happen, those things are going to be flagged. Notifications are automatically going to be sent along with that process to that person’s support team, regardless of who that is. And then there’s a pretty clear and simple workflow in what you need to do to pick that up, acknowledge that message, and then take the appropriate steps that have already been built out in that person’s care plan so that you have that consistency with what is being done for that person. So that’s all driven through our web portal, and obviously we have a HIPAA-compliant web platform and we want to understand who’s in that person’s care team, what level of access do they need, and all that sort of thing is a part of the planning process as we’re getting things up and running.

Nice. Nice. Very cool. And as we talk about the goals and everything somebody’s trying to achieve, I guess, what does the process look like to come up with a plan, to come up with what technology’s implemented and then actually implement that? Can you walk me through what that looks like? I mean, maybe not completely, it’s not that long of a show, but just how that process looks for an individual.

You got it. I’ll give you the CliffsNote version. So there’s a really well-defined process. I mean, we’ve been doing this for a few decades now because we want to align the processes and the integration of the technology supports into that person’s overall person-centered plan. And like with anything else that you’re going to do in support of a person, that starts with an assessment. And so we have a team of trained people who work right with either that provider agency or with that family. They have training in both person-centered planning and also technology. They have various certifications and things they have to go through to get onto this team. And a lot of the assessment questions and focus are going to be very similar to most assessments that are completed for that person, however, we’re looking at it through the lens of the application of technology and how do we integrate remote support, similar to what most assistive enabling technology assessments are doing.

And so it’s not just about identifying the right technologies, it’s about what do you expect the outcomes of integrating those technologies to be? And then what is the response going to be if those expected outcomes don’t happen? So it’s not just about saying, “Well, you need seven of these and two of these and everything’s going to be okay.” It’s now, as I was referring to earlier, “What are we going to do with that sensor in the stove? Is it going to engage that person and provide reminders if they left the stove on for an hour? Is it going to notify that person’s remote support team or is it going to flash a light in house to provide a reminder? What exactly is this technology going to do?” Because for one person and the next person, that same piece of technology and the way that’s applied could be completely different.

So just matching the right technology is really just the first step. The application of that technology is the second step and then the response and what is the backup plan and all of those things if remote support is being provided, is really the third phase. So that’s how we kind of break it down into high level anyway.

Awesome. No, that’s perfect. And I love how it’s tailored. That was actually going to be one of my next questions is when we talk about prompting and queuing and reminders, what are the different ways that it could be? But it sounds like it really just depends on the person, depends on that need, depends on what it is that the reminder is for.

Absolutely. Yeah. We have individuals we work with who maybe they’re hard of hearing and we need to use a shaker in their bed or we need color coded lights that provide some initial prompting and queuing. Other individuals may want a text because that’s the preferred way that they like to communicate. And then another person may prefer an audible announcement. So we can actually have smart speakers in the home that provide those prompts and cues that are completely customized and that provide reminders in that way. So we really try and take a person-centered approach and again, match the different pieces of technology to the preferences and abilities of each person.

I know for some folks, especially if I’m a family member or maybe a provider, the norm has always been to have a person there. It’s just been the way that it was done for a long time. So I guess we’ve talked about the reminders, the things like that, but let’s say something does go wrong or a fall is detected or God forbid, something worse. What does the remote support part look like from the other side? Does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And I’ll take a little bit of a step back and I want to address one piece of the process that’s really important after the planning phase, because it really hits at the core part of your question. And that is, how do we ensure that the integration of technology and the fading in of remote support is done in a thoughtful way? So we have a couple of phases as we are implementing and rolling out remote support for someone that we want to make sure that we hit certain milestones at each one of those phases before we move to the next phase. So training is the first phase where we want to ensure that that person and their support team understands and knows what the technology is going to do, why it’s being used and all of that sort of thing.

The next phase is what we call the overlap phase, and it’s really an extension of the training phase, but before anything else changes in the way that that person is receiving support, we want to ensure that they’re comfortable with what that’s going to look like from a remote support standpoint or from a technology and prompting standpoint. So I’ll give you just one quick example. We were supporting a gentleman who needed some assistance with getting up in the morning, but that was his goal, was to get up independently in the morning. And the way it was being supported previously was he had staff that would provide a reminder to him if he wasn’t up by a certain time. And then it was all the things in his morning routine that needed to happen that were all being prompted by staff.

So we started taking a few of those things off and using technology as the system to provide that prompting and cueing and we would use things like a sensor in his bed to know if he was in or out of bed in the morning to only provide that prompting in the exception times when he hadn’t gotten out of bed on time. And before we actually changed anything with his staff, what we did was change and say, “Instead of you going into that person’s room when they’re not up by a certain time, let’s let the technology engage so that they can get comfortable with how that’s going to feel before anything else changes,” because we don’t want someone to have a moment of anxiety or concern about how the technology is working or, “I didn’t expect it to sound like this,” or whatever when they don’t have that support there.

So it’s really important to go through that and really have some remote support time while that in-person staff is still there to just help mitigate any issues or concerns there. And then we look at what do we need to do to fade remote support in and start to fade some of that in person support out. For some people, that whole process is really quick because that’s what’s best for them and other people, it’s a little more deliberate. And so again, getting back to the person-centered nature of how these things are done, that’s a really key component. And then to answer your other part of your question, again, we try and fit the remote support engagement to the preferences of that person. So a lot of people we do live two-way audio video support. That could be check-ins, it could be in response to different situations that we pick up with the technology.

And so it’s a live direct support staff. So these are people that are trained to the same level that an in person direct support staff is, and this is all they do. So they’re not answering IT questions for Dell computers or anything, just SimplyHome remote support, and this is all they do. And in many instances, we can have some consistency with those caregivers as well, as much as possible, with those people supported so there isn’t a new person you’re seeing every time you’re having that check-in or whatever the case may be. But last thing I’ll say on that is that there are instances where things like two-way audio video aren’t the preference of the person that we’re supporting. They may want a text to check in, they may want a, “Phone call to my cell,” or whatever and so again, we really try and not just fit people into a certain way of doing things and really make sure that we are supporting them in the way that is most beneficial for them.

Awesome. I love the way that it’s kind of, for folks who need it, a slow role of service, just to make sure that it doesn’t become just another barrier or something that’s hard to take. Keep what they already are used to, slowly implement until it just works out. That’s perfect. Jason, tell me a story. I know you’ve probably got a lot of these. You’ve been doing this a long time. Do you got a story of someone’s success using SimplyHome, maybe that really sticks out with you and stays with you that you could share with us?

Oh yeah. I’ve got a ton of stories. One that just jumps to mind real quick, and it kind of builds off of what you were actually just saying about the slow role. We had a gentleman named Steve. Steve’s a gentleman who lives in upstate New York, someone that we started working with a number of years ago, and Steve was being supported originally in a 24/7 staffed home. And he’s someone who had come to his support team and said, “I want to live in my own place one day.” But there was a lot of hesitation from Steve’s family and from his paid support team about how they could make that possible because he just needed so much prompting to be successful in various things in his day. And there was generally a lot of different behaviors that were triggered during those interventions and support times with staff.

But come to find out, a lot of that was actually driven by a feeling that he was being nagged about all these different things and he really wanted to own more of the things he needed to do more independently. And so as I was just describing in one of the early examples, we started using the technology as a prompting tool for Steve, but it was right in the home where he was, and nothing else really changed in terms of Steve’s supports and in terms of the staff being present and that sort of thing. He still stayed in the same home, all of that sort of thing. And it was really about 18 months before everyone felt comfortable for Steve to transition to a more independent environment, and it was something that a lot of people on the support team thought would never be possible.

Actually, we’d shot a video on this a little while back and one of his staff members had actually moved and gone to another home and came back about two years later and Steve was no longer there. And she was like, “Well, where’s Steve?” And they said, “Well, Steve lives in his own apartment now and he has this technology and this sort of thing.” And she was like, “Steve, who? The Steve here? He did that?” She couldn’t believe it. And so it was just one of those great stories of what is possible when we create the opportunity for people to really show what they’re capable of. And again, it was done in a way that was very thoughtful and deliberate. It wasn’t something that happened overnight. It was a 18-month timeframe. So Steve is one of our great successes.

Nice. That is awesome. Jason, if our listeners want to find out more, what’s a good way for him to do that?

Obviously our website is a great tool. Encourage you to go to our website at simply-home.com. We have a lot of great resources on there and stories and also it’s best way to get in contact with us. So if you just go into the top right corner, there’s a little dropdown box where you can contact us. We’re also on various social media platforms, Facebook, LinkedIn, that sort of thing. If you want to find us online and other places, do that there. We have an extensive YouTube channel of stories and things like that, that can help give you just a deeper look into all the types of things that we do.

And we’d invite anyone to just reach out and have a conversation. So if there is a person that you are interested in supporting, or if you’re an organization that is interested about learning more about technology and remote support, if there’s something that you want to do as an organization, or if you want us to do that, there’s no obligation, no charge. Our assessments are free. So if you just want to see what the process looks like and that sort of thing, just reach out and our team would be more than happy to get that started for you.

Awesome. We will put all that down in the show notes so that folks can easily find it. Well, Jason, thank you so much for coming on today for telling us about SimplyHome and the way it could really just support individuals with becoming more independent and getting to accomplish the goals and the things that they’re looking to do.

It was my pleasure, Josh. Thanks for the time.

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 Nichole 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. 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.