Zemplee Podcast : Episode 3

The conversation covers the practical applications of AI in senior living and home care, from fall prevention and gait monitoring to HR screening and referral management. Majd emphasizes that technology should augment—not replace—human caregivers, providing the data and insights needed to predict and prevent adverse events.

Guest: Majd Alwan, PhD

Majd Alwan is the Founder and CEO of Alwan AI Vantage, where he helps aging service providers evaluate and implement AI solutions that improve care quality, operational efficiency, and workforce stability. An engineer by training and former Senior Vice President of Technology and Business Strategy at LeadingAge, he has spent his career advancing aging services technologies and guiding providers through innovation in senior care.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to AI-powered caregiving, a new weekly podcast sharing stories, insights, and challenges from the front lines of age tech innovation.

My name is Ishanya Anthapur, and I'm your intrepid host from Zemplee. At Zemplee, we're building AI-powered remote monitoring solutions designed to help caregivers stay connected to older adults and powered with AI insights. Our main goal is to make sure care teams stay proactive, families feel reassured, and most of all, that aging happens with dignity.

Today, I'm really excited to introduce and welcome Majd Alwan, founder and CEO of Alwan AI Vantage. Majd has a storied career at the intersection of digital health, technology, and aging services and health care innovation. His work has focused on helping senior living, home care industries, and aging services adopt AI strategically. What I really appreciate about Majd's perspective and what I'm excited to dive into today is his perspective on innovation in the aging services industry.

He's seen firsthand exactly how technology can change lives, change the lives of elder adults, change the lives of caregivers, and change the lives of operators in the aging services industry. Through Alwan AI Vantage, he works with providers and companies that serve them to integrate AI in ways that are ethical, cost-effective, and grounded in real operational realities and benefits.

Thanks for being on the podcast today, Majd.

MAJD: Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure for me to be here with you, Ishanya, and with your audience.

ISHANYA: Awesome. Could you start with a little introduction about yourself and why you chose to found your company, Alwan AI Vantage?

MAJD: Well, I'm an electronics engineer by training, and I have a master's degree in control engineering and a PhD in robotics, mobile robotics in particular. So I know a little bit about AI to be dangerous through my master's and my PhD work. But I have always been intrigued by applications that are aimed to help biomedical applications and applications that help the vulnerable populations, the older adults, as well as the disabled population individuals, because I am the youngest of ten children and I've seen how my mother actually declined quickly after the passing of my father. And I also had an older brother who sustained a spinal cord injury and became wheelchair bound. So I've always been interested in applying engineering to solve these kinds of societal problems.

I started my journey into aging services technologies back in the year 2002 at the University of Virginia, where I was an assistant professor. And I started developing robotic wheelchairs, robotic walkers, walkers that are instrumented to evaluate balance and gait of walking characteristics of the individuals that needed them, as well as monitoring functional as well as health status using sensors embedded in the environment and AI algorithms.

In the end of 2006, I co-founded a company and I was recruited to LeadingAge National, which is a national association of aging service providers, primarily not for profit aging service providers. And I led their center for aging services technologies. And my mission was to help aging service providers better understand, plan for, select, implement, evaluate, and share their experiences with a wide array of aging services technologies so that they would not sort of waste their limited resources and without necessarily having to hire a chief technology officer or a chief information officer, which at the time they couldn't afford.

So in 2024, I co-founded or founded Alwan AI Vantage because I saw a similar revolution of AI and an explosion of applications coming on the market. And I saw how aging service providers had very little wherewithal to sift through and find which applications are real, which applications are suited for which care level or care setting, and which ones are actually producing meaningful impact and bringing a return on investment.

ISHANYA: I want to touch on a few things that you brought up. One, the first being the sort of personal connection that you have to not only robotics, but to health, aging, wellness, and injury. I think as we dive into this, as we talk to more people, it's just such a universal experience. We all become caregivers in our lifetime. We all are going to need care in our lifetime, whether it happens at age sixty-five or at age twenty-five or at age five. Right. And I think that's what's very interesting about the future of technology. I see it just being applied in more ethical ways to solve more of these, as you said, biometric problems down the line.

MAJD: Yep. And as there's a saying that goes as this, we have been care recipients as babies and children. We became caregivers for both our children and our parents or grandparents. And at some point we're gonna need to receive care. So caregiving is an integral sort of string through wave through all phases of the life fabric.

ISHANYA: What do you think the balance is between caregiving being such an integral part of the human experience, meaning that it's very human centered, human oriented, and then contrasting that with sort of the role of technology and people will mostly imagine technology or even robots to be cold and mechanical. Do you think there is a happy medium between human centered care and technology enabled care?

MAJD: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that happy medium is, again, goes into getting as much data and as much information to inform and provide insights for us as caregivers, whether we are professional caregivers or family caregivers, to make the right decisions, to be able to predict things. And when you predict, you may be able to prevent an adverse event or a catastrophic outcome, like, for example, falls.

So if we monitor somebody's gait, right, their ability to perform activities of daily living and walk simply, and we measure their average walking velocity, which is known to be, through research, as a very good predictor of falls. Because when we are at higher risk of falling, we start to take shorter steps. We walk slower. So that's our brain's mechanism of slowing us down for self-preservation and protection, right? And that could be an indicator that tells us, hey, this individual is at a higher risk of falling. And then we can do a more formal assessment to see why is this happening? Is it because of weakness of muscles? Is it because of lack of physical activity? And we can prescribe the appropriate preventive interventions proactively to preserve lower extremity strength, for example, and restore the person's ability to walk faster and reduce the risk of fall.

ISHANYA: So let me dive a little bit further into the example that we're talking about here, which is falls and how technology can help with that. It's kind of like, from what I'm hearing, it's like, instead of if I'm a caregiver, I simply have to sort of notice over time someone, my patient, or my loved one's gait changing. Now with technology, it'll be able to sort of alert us to these changes in gait that kind of takes that burden off of me. But I'm still involved in the process as a human caregiver in the actual delivery of the care, in helping maybe with the muscle strengthening exercises, et cetera, et cetera. But some of that burden is lifted off of me. Does that sound about right?

MAJD: Absolutely. So again, it's a burden, but it's also at the same time, sometimes you're unable to notice it because, again, the sensor is able to watch that gait and notice the subtle differences on a continuous basis. Whereas you, even as a daughter, right, visiting, even if you're visiting on a daily basis, you're not spending enough time to watch your loved one walk back and forth, right? And it's even less intuitive or less noticeable for a professional caregiver visiting maybe once a week or a family medicine doctor, right? Seeing your mother once a year at a physical exam, if you see what I mean.

ISHANYA: Completely. Absolutely. I totally get it. Yes, there are definitely things that technology is better and faster at doing than humans. And I think that's the goal of ethical technology is to sort of add to what the human can do, not replace.

MAJD: Absolutely. Augment our ability to perceive, decision-make, and take preventive or proactive steps.

ISHANYA: Yeah, I'm glad we're aligned on that. Okay, I'll move on to a new question. I do want to get your take on something I find very interesting. I want to ground this in the reality of what you're doing at Alwan AI Vantage, which is sort of recommending solutions to home care service providers, senior living providers, aging service industry providers. What do you think a well-run senior living or home care org in 2026 is going to look like and where do you see technology really coming into play? What are the different areas that technology can come into play or technology at large even?

MAJD: Sure. So again, to be ready for AI, you need to start with uniform data and clean data, right? Because as the adage goes, garbage in, garbage out when it comes to data analytics in general and data modeling and predictive analytics and so on and so forth. So I believe that they need to unify their data structure, data collection forms, and digitize it, have it digitized, have everything in a digital form. Because that's what enables us to take that data and then apply data manipulation tools, build predictive models, preventive decision support systems, preventive interventions, recommendations, and so on. So that would be number one.

Number two, of course, data security, ensuring that their infrastructure is protected and or if they're working with a cloud-based provider, that they have the right sort of SOC 2 at least security standards and have virtual private networks and so on and so forth. So that's number two.

Number three is ensuring that their caregivers, especially for the home care, which is a mobile and distributed workforce, ensure that they have mobile devices and are able to access data from wherever they are. And the third thing, again, related to the data security, to have those devices be remotely managed by the organization just in case one of them forgets or a device is lost or stolen so that it can be locked, wiped remotely, and so on and so forth.

ISHANYA: Are these things, these four points you mentioned, things that Alwan AI Vantage could help an organization learn how to implement and start implementing?

MAJD: Absolutely. We can help them sort of at least guide them and connect even if it's bigger than Alwan AI Vantage, we can refer them to trusted resources and other sort of managed IT service providers and other vendors who not only have worked within the long-term post-acute care and know it like the back of their hands, but also have a track record and a lot of recommendations from other providers from the same space.

ISHANYA: Great. Okay, great. We'll refer them to you and you'll refer them on.

I want to bring up something we've seen at Zemplee, which is I really believe that the nurses could benefit a lot from transitioning from having a laptop open to having a mobile phone with, as you said, a regulated mobile phone with privacy measures installed and regulations installed. But I think that's going to be really key in the home care space, but also even in the senior living space, instead of having to lug around your laptop and key in data that way, scanning things, pictures from the camera, quick access to apps, I feel like is really going to improve the efficiency of these on the ground care workers. And that's actually what we've seen with Zemplee. We've allowed some of our customers to get mobile phones and subscribe to alerts and have access to our app. And we've seen that I think also the generation of who is an on-the-ground care provider is someone familiar with a mobile phone already and used to having the mobile phone in their everyday life. So I like that you touched on the sort of importance of flexibility and mobility in the job of caregiving itself and the role technology will play with that.

MAJD: Absolutely, absolutely. Today, you cannot be good at your job frankly, any job, but especially caregiving, unless you are a connected worker. We are in the age of the connected worker.

ISHANYA: Definitely. Speaking of connected workers, what are AI tools that you think have actually progressed out of the pilot stage? I know there's a lot in many industries, but especially in the age tech and aging services industries, a lot of tools that sort of end up in the pilot stage. Are there any that you think are really viable and implementable today?

MAJD: Sure. There's a lot of AI power tools that are helping retirement communities and home care communities with their marketing, targeting and identifying individuals and families who are actively searching and looking for either a home care provider or an assisted living or a nursing home for their loved ones, right? So that's commonly used these days. It's not quite there. The majority of aging service providers are not quite taking advantage of that now, but they'restarting to be aware of it.

The second is referral management tools that uses AI to match patients that are being discharged from hospitals, either for short-term rehabilitation or long-term care with a community or a skilled nursing facility. Again, each facility or each community has its own criteria in terms of who to accept in terms of insurance, in terms of their condition and their capacity to take care of that patient appropriately. Like, for example, if they needed a feeding tube, infusion therapy, physical therapy, and so on and so forth. So that is growing exponentially.

We're starting to see some of the aging service providers utilizing HR-related tools for screening applicants quickly and identifying those that are better fit for not only the job, but also better fit in terms of sort of working well with their future managers to increase their likelihood of longer term retention. Because again, as the adage goes, people do not quit jobs, they quit managers if they're butting heads all the time, right? And the chemistry is not there. So that increases retention, reduces turnover, which again is costly. And especially that we have a... This sector is known for high rates of turnover as well as we have a shortage of professional caregivers that we're competing for.

Again, lastly, the fall detection and fall prevention is actually starting to become, that is powered by AI, is starting to take hold, especially ones that uses cameras and record the circumstances that led to the actual fall so that the caregivers can make the right environmental changes and prevent future falls.

ISHANYA: That's fascinating. I think it's great that AI technology can be used to help so many different aspects of the entire industry, what you said from marketing, to keeping people to attracting patients, making that whole pipeline much easier. I think that's really, really useful and very interesting to know about.

I am curious about what's your take since you're a robotics expert? What is your real life take on these sort of in-home caregiving robots? Are they viable within the next twelve months? Yes or no?

MAJD: Well, again, it depends on the application. I'm a proponent of service robots, right? Like the vacuum cleaner, the Roomba or similar, the Shark, especially ones that can empty themselves and go back and charge themselves if they run out of a charge. So I'm guilty. I have two cats and I travel a lot and I have a shark vacuum cleaner and I have two robotic solid food dispensers for my cats. I actually trained my cats to use the bathroom and I have an auto flusher that is triggered by a motion sensor. And Alexa flushes the toilet for them after they use it. So I am a full nerd when it comes to automation and robotics. And again, I think there is a room for that absolutely in everybody's life.

ISHANYA: Yeah, you're already living the automated life. So definitely viable. I've been hearing some really interesting things about, I don't know if you've heard of Lemmy. It's a Korean company, but they basically have, it's a little robot and it goes around. It's supposed to do health management, daily life support, things like that, but it hasn't been like widely deployed. It's not consumer ready. It's just like in their initial stages, you know, research.

MAJD: Yeah, well again, I'm a robotics guy but I firmly believe in technology for the sake of solving a problem as opposed to technology for the sake of technology. Sometimes we engineers have a solution in search of a problem instead of understanding the problem and finding a solution, right? So a lot of social engagement robots are mobile platforms and they're ultra expensive, right? Whereas you can have a similar sort of type of engagement using a tablet with an avatar, right? Or even a voice device companion based on Alexa or Google Home or a similar device, if you see what I mean. So again, yes, I'm a technologist, but I look for solutions that are specific to the problem as opposed to bringing, as the saying goes, a bulldozer to crack a nut.

ISHANYA: We actually have an Alexa integration as part of Zemplee.

MAJD: Excellent. Excellent. I agree. I think the voice-first technology is really interesting for some of these things like campaigns. It's a lot easier. I have an Alexa and a Google Home on every level of my house. And my kids used to play, actually have a conversation between each other, and that was very funny.

ISHANYA: That's awesome. That's amazing. Well, thank you, Majd. I think with that, we're going to jump into a few quick final questions.

MAJD: Sure.

ISHANYA: So if you could wave a magic wand and change aging in America, change what it looks like, change the outcomes, what's one thing that you would really want to see changed?

MAJD: I want everybody to live the successful aging. And the successful aging starts with, in my opinion, staying physically and cognitively active, having a purpose, and that will delay both functional as well as cognitive decline significantly. That's number one.

And number two, I would like to see, and we have to start early right, thirties, forties, fifties, and I would like to see the government a lot more proactive and a lot more in tune with the sign of times and more willing to cover technology enabled interventions.

I was disheartened to see that we did not extend the exemptions for, or the exceptions for the telehealth in the US. I think that is way overdue and we have seen through the pandemic that the use of these technologies could have a significant impact.

ISHANYA: Thank you for speaking to that. I think that telehealth, I'm a huge fan of it because I feel like it increases health equity in a big way, especially with the population we're talking about where not everyone can get in their car, get a ride every single time they need something. It's much easier to facilitate telehealth.

MAJD: Exactly. Exactly.

ISHANYA: What are some hobbies that you have to stay physically and cognitively active?

MAJD: Well, I do karate. I have a black belt in one style of karate. I'm a green belt and pursuing a black belt in another style of karate. I also am a green belt. I do kendo, which is the samurai sword martial art from Japan. And I do swim and I do the exercise of the lazy, which is sitting in the hot tub and sort of massaging my body with the jets and in the hot water. Because also, actually, there are studies that show that sitting in the hot tub for a period of time is equivalent to exercising for that same amount of time because it raises your heart rate, you perspire, you sweat. So I'm an addict when it comes to hot tubs.

ISHANYA: Oh my God, that's fascinating. Everything you said just now was fascinating from multiple belts to samurai training to hot tub equals exercise. That's great.

And my final question would be, where could people find you if they want to learn more about you or about Alwan AI Vantage or more about using the hot tub?

MAJD: For using the hot tub, they can see me in my local gym at ACAC. But on a more serious note, I'm on LinkedIn, Majd Alwan, M-A-J-I-D A-L-W-A-N. And my website is www.alloneaivantage.com.

ISHANYA: Perfect. And we'll put everything that you just mentioned in our show notes as well for listeners or viewers to go and find. Once again, Majd, I want to thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your wonderful insights. And we're excited to see what happens with 2026 and what happens with the future of aging technology.

MAJD: The future is going to be bright if we approach it and sort of shed our sort of unfounded and unjustified concerns about technology and AI and use them appropriately. I really think that we will have, AI is going to create, we've all heard about the haves and have nots gap. Right. I firmly believe that we will have a gap between those who use AI appropriately and those that do not. So I would encourage everyone to, again, explore how they can benefit from all of these technologies and AI tools sooner rather than later.

ISHANYA: That's wonderful. And you can definitely do that by reaching out to Majd and his team at alloneaivantage.com. Thank you, everyone.

MAJD: Thank you, Ishanya.