How EverFriends.ai uses empathic AI for eldercare

How EverFriends.ai uses empathic AI for eldercare

Loneliness and cognitive decline among older adults are significant challenges in modern healthcare. With 5.7 million people in the US currently suffering from dementia and projections reaching 16 million by 2030, the strain on both healthcare systems and families is immense (source). Additionally, 43% of adults over 60 report challenges with loneliness (source), while 24% of adults over 65 are considered socially isolated (source). Many families are desperately seeking solutions, as the rising costs of hiring professional companions for elderly family members have become prohibitive.

Recognizing these challenges, EverFriends.ai set out to leverage recent advances in empathic AI to reduce loneliness in elderly care with companionship. Their mobile app uses AI to create compassionate, responsive companions that foster emotional well-being, provide reliable support to individuals with dementia and older adults experiencing loneliness – ultimately enhancing their users’ quality of life. This AI companionship is available 24/7 at a fraction of the cost of traditional care. helping combat loneliness and support cognitive function through engaging conversations. 

To truly connect with users and provide a natural, empathic experience, EverFriends.ai needed an AI solution capable of understanding and responding to emotional cues. They found their answer in Hume's Empathic Voice Interface (EVI). EVI merges generative language and voice into a single model trained specifically for emotional intelligence, enabling it to emphasize the right words, laugh or sigh at appropriate times, and much more, guided by language prompting to suit any particular use case.

Hume's emotionally intelligent AI for personalized elderly care

EverFriends.ai integrated Hume's EVI into their digital application to facilitate more natural and empathic conversations between users and their AI companions. Regarding technical integration, Daniel Hungerford, EverFriends.ai CEO, comments that: "We were able to implement EVI fairly easily into our app. The team at Hume was very helpful with whatever we needed and with suggestions when we needed further guidance."

Hume’s EVI enabled EverFriends.ai to deliver four key capabilities in their application: 

1. Adaptive and personalized: The app starts with an initial questionnaire about the user’s feelings and challenges. Then, EVI adjusts its communication style and pace to each user's needs, whether that means speaking slower, waiting longer for responses, or refining its emotional responses over time.

2. Emotional support: EverFriends.ai’s customized EVI excels at emotional validation and support, accurately recognizing user emotions and providing context-appropriate encouragement like "this is normal" or "you can do this."

3. Cognitive exercises and memory support: EVI helps maintain cognitive function by assisting with story recall, tracking previously mentioned people and events, and maintaining consistency in memories and personal narratives. Preliminary research suggests these exercises may help slow cognitive decline (source).

4. Daily routine reminders: The platform delivers reminders with an empathic approach, ensuring that daily tasks and routines are communicated in a supportive and understanding tone of voice manner that respects each user's cognitive capabilities.

Impact of Hume's Empathic Voice Interface

While still in early stages, integrating Hume's EVI into EverFriends.ai has shown promising results:

1. Increased mental stimulation: 88% of pilot participants reported increased mental stimulation through brief 15-minute digital sessions.

2. Reduced loneliness: In the same pilot program, an impressive 90% of users reported decreased feelings of loneliness during the initial five-week trial, with positive effects emerging within the first 3-5 sessions.

The CEO of EverFriends.ai believes these metrics are largely driven by the voice-based element of interaction, which creates an easy-to-use, impactful experience for their elderly user base. When talking about one particular 77-year-old user, he mentions that “She found companionship through our app during those quiet evening hours when loneliness felt most acute. Many elderly users struggle with traditional text-based interfaces - speaking out loud is not just more natural, it's more accessible for those with vision impairments, arthritis, or limited technology experience. The natural flow of conversation and EVI's dynamic questions made the platform surprisingly easy to embrace.”

Future of empathic AI in elderly care

EverFriends.ai plans to expand their use case in 2025 to users with other forms of cognitive differences, including autism, closed head injuries, and mild cognitive impairment. The company sees a bright future for conversational AI in eldercare and support for individuals with cognitive challenges.

As EverFriends.ai continues to grow, they anticipate expanding their partnership with Hume. "As Hume grows its model and offers more features, e.g., multi-language options, we will continue to use each other as sources of feedback and improvement to make both of our missions as effective and impactful as possible for those we serve," the company states.

By leveraging Hume's EVI, EverFriends.ai is at the forefront of a new wave of digital health solutions, offering personalized, emotionally intelligent care to those who need it most. This innovative approach not only improves the quality of life for users but also has the potential to significantly reduce the burden on healthcare systems and caregivers.