Designing a Medical Alert People Actually Wear | with Jean Anne Booth, UnaliWear

0:03One of the biggest ones is, will you wear it? And that comes back to that stigma question, right? Go up to any older adult and say, hey, how do you feel about wearing a garage door opener around your neck? And they're going to go, oh, well, that's, you know, I have always been waiting to be there. Not. And, you know, there's this belief, which is very mistaken, among younger people that old people know they're old and they don't mind anything that's ugly because they know they're old and it doesn't matter anymore. And, of course, nothing could be further from the truth, right? Because when you look at yourself in the mirror, you see a younger you.

0:53Gina M. Booth, CEO and founder of Unaliware. Thanks for joining me here at Startup Health. Thank you for having me, Logan. Talking to you reminds me of the benefit of working with folks at Startup Health over many years and getting to watch your journey unfold, go from an idea to a great product to really market validation and acceptance. It's exciting to get this update, but I want to start for folks who are watching this who maybe haven't been on that journey. Get us up to speed on what Unali Wear is, what your Kanega watch does, and what makes it special in 2026. So the Unali Wear, let me just start with what our name is.

1:33So Unali is Cherokee for friend. And Kanega, which is our watch brand, is Cherokee for speak. So here is the friend who speaks to you. And that was a completely different thought about anything for older people, you know, designing products back in 2013 when I actually started the company. What was so unique about it? What were you seeing in the market that you were like, this is not working? And what was your connection to that market? it? Yeah. So in my background, I'd already built and sold two semiconductor companies. I'm an electrical engineer and I was retired and I was working as a dive master on a liveaboard dive boat.

2:16It was quite awesome. And then my mom turned 80 and my mom was a model. She was absolutely drop dead for just just stunningly stylish and everything else. And when she turned lady you know i showed up at her place i had a little spreadsheet you know here's all the things that are on the market you know you can get a blue button or a pink button or a yellow button and she looked at me and she goes don't you get that for me i'm not wearing it and i was like whoa okay and and actually realized you know i mean i'm a nerd i am totally a nerd and i wouldn't wear one of those garage door openers around my neck.

2:59So, you know, the thought of my mom, the model wearing a garage door opener around her neck, it just wasn't going to happen. So I came back to her a couple of weeks later and I said, okay, mom, how about I make you a watch? You talk to it, it talks to you, can help you out. What do you think? And my mom goes, put the window. I said, fine, mom, you're hired. And she was our senior user experience advisor. And she personally weighed in on everything user facing that we did during design with focus groups with over 400 people across the US. So what I'm hearing is like stigma was really the launch point, this idea that I don't want this clunky piece of technology on me.

3:42Like I care about what I'm wearing, just like everybody else does. Just because I'm over a certain age doesn't mean all of a sudden I want this silly button hanging around my neck. But then it grew into so much more than just something more stylish. So kind of walk me through a little bit of that journey of saying, you know, how can we actually improve on this technology that exists? Yeah. So really, the thing that actually made me come out of retirement to build Unaliware and the Kanega Watch was actually when we came up with our battery system in the band. So we have a patented battery system that means you never take it off to charge so that it's there to help you with falls in the bathroom at night.

4:22And people kind of underscope the importance of falls in older adults. But the truth of the matter is that's the number one cause of injury, death. And so the question is, what happens when you fall? Because it's not going to be a question of, are you going to fall? The answer is yes. So then the question is, what happens when you do fall? Can you get help? Does anybody know you fell? How long do you lay on the ground? Are you conscious? So with the battery system and the band, what we were able to do was to actually give my mom something that she could wear 24-7 period across the board. And that meant if she didn't take it off to charge, then it was there to help her with falls, including when she was in the bathroom at night.

5:08And that's where a lot of the issues happen. Obviously, most of our listeners are probably not currently shopping for a life alert, you know, a medical alert system. Sort of help educate our listeners about the things they need to know about maybe caring for their parents or just thinking ahead about these kinds of purchases. So there's a couple of things for us. A medical alert is not covered by Medicare, right? Medicare is fee-for-service. And so medical alerts are a private pay decision. That was one of the first things that I understood with my work with Step Health. And so it's a decision that either the individual makes or perhaps they make in conjunction with their family or caregivers.

5:52And so the number one mistake that people make is they wait until it's a crisis purchase. And then they have a whole lot of things to learn. Because it's not like anybody wakes up in the morning and goes, I'm going to go shop for a medical alert today. It doesn't happen. So instead, you know, it's a conversation that, you know, if there are loved ones in your life who are older, it's a conversation that you want to have when they're younger. I mean, my mom was still very, very capable at 80. So we had time to get prototypes of Kanega watches and the first generation Kanega watch on her before she passed so that it could help her.

6:34And so it was only because we were having that conversation earlier. And so, you know, there's all kinds of things that you have to think about when you're thinking about what's going to help me be able to age. One of the biggest ones is, will you wear it? And that comes back to that stigma question, right? Go up to any older adult and say, hey, how do you feel about wearing a garage door opener around your neck? And they're going to go, oh, well, that's, you know, I have always been waiting to be there. Not. What I hear you saying is that it's for grownups who have parents who are thinking about, it's a conversation that you need to start thinking about having earlier because it's a process.

7:16It's not simply a purchase. It's a conversation. It's a process. Now, on that note, I think a lot of our listeners are going to be thinking, why don't I just buy them an Apple Watch and call it a day? So talk us through that. Yeah, Apple Watch. So just for those who don't know, we had cellular and Wi-Fi in a smartwatch before Apple did. Well, Apple and the Apple Watch, it's an extraordinary product. I have enormous respect for what they've accomplished, but they're designed for entirely different things. The Kanega Watch was designed explicitly to extend independence with dignity for vulnerable populations.

7:52So there's all kinds of things in the Kanega Watch specifically designed to keep our population safe. Number one, that battery system in the band. Number two, from the get-go and no extra charge, automatic fault attention on the wrist. And we are, you can see here, it's a very, very bright white on black display so that if you have macular degeneration or glaucoma, you can still see the Kanega watch. It's a super loud speaker, very, very much louder than an Apple watch so that those who have hearing issues can still hear it. And also important, but people don't think about this, is the fact that a Konega watch or any medical alert is actually a class two device.

8:38And so it's allowed to directly dispatch help for somebody. What that means is that if my Konega watch right now said, hey, I need help, then it would directly contact the medical alarm operators who could then directly dispatch the closest emergency responders to me. And when they did so, they'd go, hey, you guys, you're going to see Jean Ann. She has diabetes. She's allergic to aspirin. And there's a safety key under the planner to the left of the door. You can't get that out of an Apple Watch. That's built into the Canego Watch platform? Yep. Is that personal profile? Is that personal profile.

9:19Wow. And anybody who goes to 911 can't get that because 911 dispatches only on a GPS address. Okay. Very interesting. Let's drill down on that fall detection piece for a second because I know Apple Watches have accelerometers. There's accelerometers throughout different wearables. Kind of where are we at in fall detection technology and is this a dip for you? Yes, it is very much a differentiator for me, for Unaliware. When we started, the one thing that everybody said was, you can't do fall detection on the wrist. It can't be done. Everybody thinks that this is just what's a high G, a high acceleration event.

10:02And it's not simple, right? Clapping, putting pillows in the pillowcase, all of these things are things that are high G events. And the challenge with fall detection, even when it was fall detection in the garage door opener around your neck, is that when you get a lot of false positives, when you didn't actually fall, then you quit wearing it. And if you quit wearing it, then it can't save you, right? So what we actually do is something called real fall. We actually learn the wearer's lifestyle and we take the population of real falls from a true older adult audience and use that to identify what is likely to be a fall, what could possibly be a fall, and what is definitely a fall.

10:49And that way we don't deal with one of the issues, especially for the pendants, is, you know, people who sit down really hard on the chair. You know how a lot of times you have an older person, they take one hand behind them and they put it down on the chair and then they kind of flop down. We call those ploppers and floppers. If you do that with a pendant, fall detection is going to go off. And of course, if you're a flopper and plopper, it's partly because you're not really strong enough to just sit. It doesn't take very many of those before you quit wearing it. Yes. And that's before you even worry about charging it and all the other kind of concerns.

11:24Exactly. Just to switch gears for a minute, your previous career was in semiconductors, and now you're in a technical field, but you built this to help your own mother and probably your mother's friends. And it brought you in contact with all of these people who had real everyday needs, fears. What's it been like to be part of that community, to have people that you are delivering something really helpful to? I wonder if any stories come to mind of people who you have been involved with and what that's meant for you more personally. It's been a journey that I wouldn't replace. Now, I will say it's been a harder journey than even my semiconductor companies were.

12:06And that was when semiconductors were not popular. So they're popular now. Starting one now would be a great thing. But back then, it was definitely not a popular thing to do in the United States. Mom was with us for five years as our senior user experience advisor. And getting to work with mom and having that perspective of what it's really like to be 80 and 82 and 85 with macular degeneration, with hearing challenges, with all of the things that come with aging was just so wonderful. I would not trade that for anything in the world. And here today, we're coming up on thousands of people whose lives we've saved.

12:53We've been in market with our product market fit. The one that I'm showing you here in the video is actually been in market since, well, the pandemic. And thousands of people wearing it all across the United States, tens of thousands. And it's a wonderful thing. We listen to every emergency call. And I don't want to talk about any of them. But it really does feel great when you get to hear that somebody is going to be okay only because you were there and you caught it. Yeah. I was talking to a founder who was working in the age tech space. And then they aged themselves into the market for their product.

13:35And they had this paradigm shift. That would be me too. It comes for us all. Percent. and she went from having a mentality of the value of aging in place to then when she became of age, she said, I don't want to be in place. I want to thrive as I age. And it just had a change in mentality as she experienced it for herself. And I'm curious if you've just had any paradigm shifts about what aging looks like and what it means after having done this work. I think the thing that has really come down for us, when we did those focus groups with over 400 people across the U.S. as we were in design, the things that we learned, you kind of alluded before to that emotional piece about products for the older population.

14:24And there's this belief, which is very mistaken, among younger people that old people know they're old and they don't mind anything that's ugly because they know they're old and it doesn't matter anymore. And of course, nothing could be further than from the truth, right? Because when you look at yourself in the mirror, you see a younger you. You don't see the person that everybody else sees. You see you as you were and you think that your buddy is old and you guys went to high school or college together or whatever, but you're not old. They need help, but not you. And that's, it is such a, I call it the fallacy of the human condition.

15:07That is just something that we all do. Yeah. I mean, it's sort of a blessing and a curse because we're in our own lives, we're able to sort of see ourselves as a more vibrant version. And maybe that helps us a little bit. I think that's exactly where the no stigma piece comes in, right? Why we call it independence with dignity. Because the right way to look at a medical alert is to look at it the same way that you look as putting on your seatbelt when you get in the car. You don't put on your seatbelt because you're so likely to have a crash. You put on your seatbelt because the consequences are severe.

15:46And for an older adult, false consequences can be very severe. And that's why you wear that medical alert. It's not because you need to run around shouting to everybody, I'm old, because you aren't inside. Let's talk about Wirecutter. You have the distinction of having been promoted by Wirecutter as the top medical alert system. I don't know exactly what the leveling was, but four consecutive years, huge honor. Tell us kind of what that has meant for you and has that changed your approach? Has that changed kind of how you think about marketing? honestly for the audience in case you don't know wire cutter is the only reviewer site that is not pay to play in other words you don't get listed first because you're paying them a whole lot of money for any conversions any purchases that people make they actually came to us the first time with a secret shopper we had no idea at all and then they contacted us and said okay we're writing our article and we have a couple of questions about things in your policies.

16:50I was like, what? And that was the first year of the four. It is very, very meaningful because of course, with a medical alert, you're trusting somebody with your life. So trust really matters. And honestly, I think that's why Wirecutter really matters because they're not doing it for the money. They're doing it for the review. And the thing that I love the most about it is the things that they give us kudos for are the things that we obsessed over from the beginning. Being able to keep the watch on while you're charting. You can contact only real people. You don't have to do anything to set it up.

17:27It just works right out of the box. We have the best customer service. Just check our Trustpilot scores. And fall detection out of the box, fall detection on the wrist. That's all the things that we intended to do. And, you know, Wirecutter said, wow, that's great. You know, you're in an area of, you are direct to consumer, correct? That's correct. Yes. That puts you in a very unique specific category in the world of health tech. A lot of folks are not direct to consumer, which has allowed you to probably test out and hone different types of marketing channels and experiment with different things to see like, how do you know that everything from organic content to thought leadership.

18:08What have been some of the things you've tried? What's worked? Maybe you can even share something that didn't work in terms of direct-to-consumer marketing. Yeah, the interesting thing, I mean, this is not true for all private pay health tech, right? So private pay is not covered by insurance and medical alerts are private pay. but you know there are a lot of people who say things like oh you know you guys need to be selling at a senior community you need to sell nursing homes that's one of the ones we get all the time and it's like actually we're for the independent population not the dependent population the truth of the matter is making a decision about a medical alert is a very personal one, right?

18:54And so you kind of got to run down your own list of, you know, is it a wearable? Is it a pendant? Is it something that is in my house because I don't ever leave my house, right? But do I leave my house all the time? Do I still have an active life? Can it play tennis with me? Can it play golf with me? You know, all of that stuff are the decisions that you kind of need to go through. And so direct to consumer, what we've learned is how better to tell those stories about, here's how we're different. We really are 24-7. We don't just say we're 24-7 except for the every three days when you take it off for five hours to charge, right?

19:39We really are 24-7. And it's interesting because of course, direct to consumer, there's always lots of noise, but that's where things like Wirecutter come in. All right, just to wrap this up, what's a final message you wanna leave with folks who are listening to this? One interesting thing about this product is that it could impact absolutely every single person. If you yourself are gonna get older or you know someone who is older, all of us, this is something that applies to us. And so with that in mind, what would be like a parting message to the listener? I think when it comes to your loved ones, the parting message is pretty simple.

20:18Talk to them before it becomes a crisis sale. Okay? Think about it like a seatbelt. And if it's for you, you're going to have to not look in the mirror and talk to yourself before it's a crisis, right? And make a decision about what's right for you because not every product is right for every person. But make sure that you do actually look at is fall detection going to matter for you? I'll give you that answer. The answer is yes. Are you going to leave your house? Boy, I sure hope so, right? All of those things go into making the decision. And the real question is, are you looking to be independent?

20:59And if so, is your dignity important to you? That's where we come into play. But there are other choices, and they're all fine too. Well, we won't go that far, but Jean-Anne, I appreciate you giving us the update. It's been a pleasure to watch your journey over these many years. Exciting to see the validation from Wirecutter, which through the New York Times, huge, huge validation. Anyone would love to get that. And so I do hope that that helps get this into more hands and on more wrists. And saving more lives. That's the best thing about this job. I get to save lives for a living. Jean-Anne, thanks for the update.

21:38And we'll be watching over the next year. All righty. Thanks.

21:46And finally, an invitation to all of the extraordinary health transformers. Whether you are a startup, someone building the future of health, or whether you are an investor, funder, or buyer of the solutions out there in the marketplace, this is an invitation to you to join the Startup Health member community. Learn more at startuphhealth.com. Look forward to hopefully seeing you soon.