Inspo: Connecting Caregivers

The number of people living with Alzheimer’s disease is predicted to increase to 13.5 million by 2050, which would be 16% of the senior population. Plus with an estimated 21% of the United States population at least 65 years old by 2030, many people may become caregivers within the next 10 years. These numbers present one of the biggest global public health and social care challenges facing people today and, in the future. 

Because of the lack of social support systems, caregivers continue to experience an exponential increase in stress and isolation. When we realized this problem, we asked ourselves: How can caregivers be supported as the burden of the aging population continues to grow? In response, Inspo was built to support caregivers

Inspo is an AI-powered social connectivity app that provides an accessible community for caregivers. It is an online platform where caregivers can chat, meet others, share information, and most of all – feel supported. The app focuses on three key features: community, connect, and chat.

Community: enables caregivers to ask questions, search advice and share ideas across meaningful caregiving topics. The community feed leverages AI algorithms to display relevant app content for the user and enhance the process of connection. 

Connect: helps users discover other caregivers nearby who are in similar situations. Intelligent algorithms are used to match caregivers based on situation, location, and other factors.

Chat: encourages caregivers to start conversations and communicate with others in their community.

Inspo is available to download on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. 

Substantial evidence indicates the physical and emotional burden of caregiving; they have higher rates of depressive symptoms, anxiety, stress, and emotional difficulties. Evidence also suggests that caregivers have lower ratings of physical health, elevated levels of stress hormones, higher rates of chronic disease, and impaired health behaviours.

A report, Families Caring for an Aging America, by the National Academies of Sciences presents that knowledge and support can improve quality of life for caregivers and care recipients; however, a study by the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP revealed that more than 80% of caregivers have reported the need for more information on caregiving topics. Despite the integral role that family caregivers play in the care of older adults with disabilities and complex health needs, there is an evident lack of caregiver support and training systems. 

Inspo is an online social networking app where caregivers who share similar hardships can chat, ask for advice, share information, learn more, and feel supported. By providing an informative community of helpful caregivers, Inspo aims to reduce feelings of stress, loneliness, and ultimately – promote a better quality of life for caregivers.

Every member of the Inspo team works with a caregiver or is a caregiver themselves. We have first-hand experience, so we can empathize with caregivers. Our team is partnered with Stanford University, where we conduct research with world-class professors on understanding caregivers, aging, and Alzheimer's disease.

Throughout the development of Inspo, caregivers were involved with every stage of the decision-making process. We have conducted focus groups, surveys, and interviews to better understand the issues caregivers face and their needs. With every version of Inspo, we’ve followed a simple process to gain ideas and input from caregivers: we launched a minimum viable product, talked to caregivers to see how it fits their needs, and then we took their feedback and iterated. This is a cycle that will always continue with Inspo to gain the best understanding of the users we’re serving. 

At Inspo, we’re constantly trying to expand our network of experts, peers, and mentors to better understand our users and improve our product. We're a young and ambitious team who are always hungry to learn more and gain experience. Being a solver grants us exposure to a class of like-minded peers and the entire MIT Solve alumni network, as well as access to mentorship and advice from experts in the care sector. Further, being a solver brings awareness of Inspo to leading care experts in the network, which is a great opportunity for publicity and partnerships. The financial, technical, and strategic support from MIT Solve is invaluable to the development of our product.

Current approaches to the lack of caregiver support tend to fall under two categories: social media groups (ex. Facebook groups, Reddit communities) and online community forums.

The issue with social media groups is that they have a low bandwidth for communications. They are limited by the purpose, functionality, or norms of the platform. For example, Facebook groups do not use smart algorithms to connect caregivers in terms of location, similarity, and other factors; Only Inspo does this with functionality specifically designed for caregivers. Interactions are also almost never real-time and rarely one-on-one on social media groups and online community forums. Meaningful connections between caregivers are lost as a result.

Another issue with social media groups is that they’re small, fragmented, and sometimes inaccessible. Because of this, it is easy to lose out on helpful information, resources, and people as there is no central repository. Online community forums face similar issues, but they’re also limited and caregivers are unable to connect outside of a simple question and answer forum.

Inspo takes an innovative approach to support caregivers because it is a central repository and community designed specifically for caregivers. Inspo provides caregivers with their own platform to connect, instead of lumping them into different groups on social media. Additionally, Inspo uses ethical AI algorithms and other innovative technology to significantly enhance the app's utility beyond the value of other solutions. Our mission will have a broader impact on the market by bringing awareness and improvement to the lack of support systems for caregivers.

One-year objective: 50 000+ app downloads, 20 000+ daily active users, high retention rate and user lifetime value, exponentially reduce caregiver stress and loneliness 

Five-year objective: 5 000 000+ app downloads, 1 000 000+ daily active users, continued high retention rate and user lifetime value, improve caregiver quality of life

To achieve these results: 

• Continue our process of iteration to continuously improve our app: release a version, gain user feedback, make adjustments, and repeat. 

• Gain partnerships with Alzheimer's disease, the elderly, and caregiving associations/hotspots. This is another distribution system for our growth. 

• Promote presence and reputation of Inspo among caregivers locally and increase focus on marketing and user acquisition 

• Expand presence of Inspo globally and continuously engage with the community and users

• Focus on high-quality community experience for caregivers

Since Inspo is a mobile app, our performance and progress toward our impact goals depend heavily on in-app analytics and metrics. We use the following key metrics to monitor growth and gain valuable insights:

• Monthly Active Users: active users are those who launch Inspo often and perform actions in it. This number should continue to grow.

• Retention rate: the number of users who come back to your app after the first use. This metric shows Inspo’s value to caregivers.

• Churn rate: shows how many users abandon your app after using it a couple of times. This number should be kept as low as possible.

• Session length: the time during which a user performs actions in Inspo. This metric tells how long engaging Inspo is.

• Reviews and ratings: User reviews and ratings show engagement and provide valuable feedback.

• Numer of caregivers connecting: the number of connections caregivers are making per month. This metric tracks the app's user activity and growth, as well as engagement and utility.

• Number of posts: the number of posts made by caregivers per month. This metric tracks the app's user activity and growth, as well as engagement and utility. The number of questions asked vs. the number of replies to posts is also important to note. A lack of unanswered questions would show a lack of user engagement.

Inspo is an AI-powered social connectivity app that provides an accessible community for caregivers. Inspo enables caregivers to chat, meet others, share information, and most of all – feel supported on an online platform. In the short term, Inspo reduces feelings of stress and loneliness for caregivers while they learn from helpful information, resources, and people. A report, Families Caring for an Aging America, by the National Academies of Sciences presents that knowledge and support can improve the quality of life for caregivers and care recipients. Inspo aims to promote a better quality of life for caregivers and their care recipients in the long term.

Inspo is an AI-powered social mobile app that provides an accessible community for caregivers. The community feature consists of crowdsourced/user-generated content, enabling caregivers to ask questions, search advice and share ideas across meaningful caregiving topics. Inspo then uses multiple layers of machine learning models to predict content that is most relevant to the caregiver. By optimizing the feed, the content that the caregiver sees is more personalized, allowing for a better experience with support and learning. Inspo uses other smart algorithms to pair caregivers with others through geolocation, interests, and other factors that are provided by the user. This helps caregivers easily discover and connect with others in similar situations. Inspo also provides in-app communication systems for users to start conversations and communicate with other caregivers. Inspo leverages technology to transform the world into one global community where caregivers everywhere can cooperate to support one another.

Integrity in the community has always been at the heart of Inspo. Caregivers from all backgrounds--with diverse experiences, perspectives, and ideas--come together on Inspo to build a safe, inclusive, and equitable community. The Inspo team embodies the same values as our community. We believe that building a diverse, inclusive, and equitable team is crucial to understanding where we’re succeeding and where we need to improve. Our inclusive culture helps us benefit from each other's perspectives and offer the best version of Inspo--an app designed for all. 

After the success of our minimum viable product, we’re planning to implement an advertisements and freemium model to generate the revenue we need to create a sustainable business. 

Advertisements
Inspo provides a tremendous opportunity to connect caregivers with businesses that serve the community. Inspo will sometimes display sponsored content from large regional and national businesses that we believe have valuable products and services to share with caregivers. Since Inspo already consists of a niche community of caregivers, the app will never track or sell personal information. Additionally, neighbourhood businesses will be able to purchase local deals on Inspo to advertise special offers to caregivers in their area. This is made possible through the geolocational technology in our app. 

Freemium model
Under a freemium model, we will offer key services on Inspo for free, while charging for premium service with advanced functionalities to paying users. Other benefits of the charged premium service include ad-free browsing, so caregivers can use the app without interruptions.

The Inspo team is composed of students, so we currently do not have high expenses.  Since our recent launch, we’ve spent 0$ on marketing, and we’ve rapidly grown, which also reveals the market need for Inspo. Our only real expenses are the costs of back-end services right now. We plan on raising investment capital to scale further and hire engineers as we gain more traction. As Inspo grows and more focus is put into marketing, our advertisements and freemium model (explained in our business model) will cover beyond our expected expenses and generate revenue. 

We're currently financially sustainable through various coding/startup scholarship funds and awards, totalling over $14 000.