Aparna Pujar: Most older adults want to stay in their homes as they age. But in rural communities, that can mean going days without anyone checking in. And when the fall happens, help might be an hour away. This is AI-Powered Caregiving, a podcast about how artificial intelligence and technology is changing the way we age in the United States, produced by Zemplee. I'm Aparna Pujar, today's host and the founder and CEO of Zemplee.

Aparna Pujar: Today we're talking to Jackie Hess. She spent 15 years in elder care and hospice in mid-Michigan. She's a certified home safety inspector and she's the founder of Stay Home Solutions, a service that uses AI-powered remote monitoring to help seniors age in place safely, even when the family is not around or right down the road. We'll get into why she built a fully managed service instead of just selling gadgets, what it took to bring this technology to rural Michigan, and the one thing she wants every family to check in their parents' home this week. Welcome, Jackie. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast today. Tell us about yourself.

Jackie Hess: Thank you, Aparna, for having me on today. I greatly appreciate it. So I have spent a good majority of my career working in the elder care community, various different roles over the years, but a lot of time was spent in hospice. I wanted to branch out and do something on my own, and that led me to the creation of the Michigan Senior Care Specialists Stay Home Solutions program.

Aparna Pujar: Congratulations on starting a new venture. This must be an exciting journey for you. Just out of curiosity, what were you seeing repeatedly that made you realize that the traditional model — in-home care or facility placement — wasn't enough for some families?

Jackie Hess: Repeatedly throughout my career I have seen families and individuals struggle with not really wanting to be placed in a facility. They're needing some extra support and oversight at home and the family's just too far away. They possibly can't afford the move to assisted living and it's just not right for them. So that is one of the biggest challenges I've seen over the years — figuring out how to work with families and get people into a safe space so they can either stay home or transition to a facility.

Aparna Pujar: That is so real, and I can speak to that because I personally was a caregiver for my aging parents. They were struggling to find the right type of setting for themselves and almost always preferred being at home. So I think you're addressing a really great need that our aging elderly people in this country have.

Aparna Pujar: You are very active on Instagram. Your posts often talk about falls and what it takes to make them preventable. When did you start thinking about technology as part of the prevention strategy, and not just grab bars and home modifications?

Jackie Hess: There have been technologies available for many years — not really preventing falls, but alerting family, or not necessarily families but companies, of a fall. And I guess the biggest thing for me was realizing that a lot of times those systems just fail. They don't work, they malfunction, or people just don't want to wear them. They want to be independent. They don't want to wear a necklace around their neck. Or they do have a fall and it's nowhere near them when they've had the fall.

Jackie Hess: I actually experienced that with an extended family member in my own life. She did not want to wear a pendant and she would repeatedly have falls, and being a caregiver for her, it was a lot on me. That led me to start researching and figuring out a way to make it better. And that's when I found Zemplee and I was like, this might be an option for what I'm looking for.

Aparna Pujar: I'm so glad you and I connected and partnered on this. Just out of curiosity, what were you looking for in a tech partner? And what made you say yes, not just to technology, but to AI-powered remote monitoring specifically?

Jackie Hess: We're seeing a lot of innovation with AI and there are so many great capabilities coming forth. It's ever-evolving, and I think it definitely has its place. This is one of the great uses of AI — that we can utilize it to help ensure people's safety. And speaking to you about your experiences as a caregiver and why you founded Zemplee, it really spoke to me. I felt a connection to you, and that you understood what it was that I was trying to create. That really made me want to partner with Zemplee. I did talk to a lot of other companies that are out there, and there's just nothing like Zemplee on the market.

Aparna Pujar: Thank you so much for that. We like to work with people like you who are out there in the field addressing what I call the last-mile problem. As a technology company we feel like we're one step separated from that, but working with partners who believe in the vision and mission — not just for Zemplee, but for where we want the aging market to be 10, 20 years from now — I think it's a problem that we collectively as a society have to solve.

Aparna Pujar: Your website says you didn't add Stay Home Solutions as a product line — you added it because families kept asking the same question. I'm curious what that question is, and what happened when you finally had an answer.

Jackie Hess: The number one question I've heard over the years is — families have made a promise to their parents saying, I will never put you in a home. So how do we stop that? How do we prevent that? That is part of the basis of Stay Home Solutions: if we can get interventions in place early enough and know what is going on in the home, while protecting that individual's privacy and promoting their safety, we can help honor those promises that children have made to their parents.

Aparna Pujar: That is so profound, and thank you for sharing that. I can completely relate. My parents were like that — we're never going to move out of this home. And they say necessity is the mother of invention. So as a caregiver, what do you do? You try to make it work and make sure they are happy and contented and living the life they designed for themselves.

Aparna Pujar: As an entrepreneur, you're onto something really new and different — bringing AI and sensor technology to a rural senior population in Michigan. What's been the hardest part of getting seniors or their adult children to trust the technology?

Jackie Hess: I think everyone is a little leery of new technologies at first. But once I sit down and meet with a family and really explain how everything works — I think the biggest misconception is that people think there's video or audio recording. Once I explain that I'm not listening or watching them, and that the sensors are simply picking up data points that the AI turns into useful information for us to know what's going on, I think they're more comfortable. It's really getting over that "somebody's watching me" mentality. And once they get to know me and my team, they're usually much more comfortable.

Aparna Pujar: In your experience, do you feel like having someone like you as an advisor goes a long way in helping them accept or address their fears about adopting a technology solution?

Jackie Hess: Yes, I do. There are different programs and things people can order online, and they may not really understand exactly how the technology works — and they're doing all of the information themselves. I've seen families install home surveillance cameras in the home and things like that. They try to do it themselves. But at that point they're losing their privacy. I think it's really important that we understand there are technologies available to help people, and they don't have to be intrusive in our daily lives.

Aparna Pujar: You bring up a great point. Surveillance technology, especially video monitoring, is just not okay — on two levels. As a society we have to decide what it is we want to delegate to AI systems, and the privacy angle comes in really big. And not just privacy but dignity. That becomes so critical in how you design solutions. Today there is technology available that overcomes the need for video-based monitoring. There have been so many advances in sensing technologies.

Aparna Pujar: We're all excited about it at Zemplee because that was the exact problem I was trying to solve for my parents. They did not want a camera in their home. And neither did I, because I wasn't going to sit and keep watching them. So going passive and exception-based was how we designed it.

Aparna Pujar: So where do you see Michigan Senior Care Specialists or Stay Home Solutions in the next three to five years? What are your dreams, and what do you hope to do in terms of impact for the community you're serving?

Jackie Hess: My goal is to really get the word out and be able to provide services to as many seniors across the state of Michigan as need it, and help them stay home safely. With my background as a certified senior safety inspector, I can go into their home and give them ideas, and pair it with the passive monitoring system to give the families insights. I'd love to continue to grow Stay Home Solutions. We've started here in the state of Michigan and then expand to other areas — in three to five years, hopefully we're in a couple more states, or maybe nationwide. Who knows.

Aparna Pujar: We're here to support you in your journey. If you could leave our listeners — many of whom are senior care professionals or family caregivers — with one thing they should do this week to make an older adult's home safer, what would that be?

Jackie Hess: One thing that I often see overlooked when I'm doing a home safety inspection is actually lighting in the senior's home. Most people know to look for trip hazards and things like that, but having adequate night lighting specifically — and sometimes making some small changes to have motion-activated lights in your parents' home — that way if they do get up in the middle of the night they're able to easily see and not fumble around looking for light switches. Lighting, especially in stairwells and doorways, is a huge thing.

Aparna Pujar: That is so true, and we hear that from a lot of our customers as well. What we do know is there is no one-size-fits-all solution for every elderly person out there. Everyone's needs are unique, everyone's conditions are unique, everyone's home is unique. So you pretty much have to design a solution that's customized for their lifestyle and their needs. And someone like Stay Home Solutions can be that intermediary to guide them on what's right for them. The goal is that they age in place, but safety and reliability become an important part of it — lighting included.

Aparna Pujar: If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about aging in America, what would that be and why?

Jackie Hess: My magic wand. I think a lot of people have misconceptions about aging in America and they don't properly plan for it. My suggestion would be to plan — and what is that plan going to look like? Plan early, get interventions in place early. Because many people, when they have a lot of issues and then start looking into solutions like moving to assisted living, are unaware of all of the costs associated with that. You plan for retirement; well, part of your retirement planning should also be looking at what am I going to do as I age? How can I make my home safe? Or do I plan on going to an assisted living? What are your goals and your wishes? I think that would be a huge thing to help our aging population, because our aging population is going to continue to grow tremendously over the next 10 years.

Aparna Pujar: That's right. And it applies to all of us — even those of us who are looking at being in that spot 10 to 15 years out. I didn't used to think about my own aging, but having been with Zemplee now, I'm proactively thinking about planning for my old age. Call it part of the side job of running Zemplee as CEO.

Aparna Pujar: So just for fun, as we move into our next section — what do you do for fun, Jackie? What are your hobbies?

Jackie Hess: I actually love to garden. I grow a lot of herbs and vegetables. My grandmothers on both sides of my family canned and preserved food, so it's something I learned at a young age and it's one of my hobbies now. I absolutely enjoy it. And this week here in Michigan green beans are coming into harvest, so my plan is that I will hopefully be canning a lot of green beans and putting those up, because my family and friends really enjoy those.

Aparna Pujar: How nice. Do you have a favorite green bean recipe you'd like to share with our audience — something healthy and quick?

Jackie Hess: You know what, we just eat them right out of the jar. I don't have the recipes — I just follow a Ball canning recipe to make them. But yes, they turn out great.

Aparna Pujar: As we come close to the end of our show — how do people find out about you? How can we tell them about Stay Home Solutions?

Jackie Hess: They can visit my website. There is one specifically designed for Stay Home Solutions, and that is stayhomesolutions.org. It is also a page on my michiganseniorcarespecialists.com page as well, so two different ways. They can also reach me at info@mi-seniorcare.com, or I'm available via phone call at 989-721-5826.

Aparna Pujar: Thank you. And with that we come to the end of our show. It was a pleasure having you on, Jackie, and I'm personally very excited to see how your journey goes from this point onwards. We are here to support you in your venture. I see you as a fellow entrepreneur who is pushing the boundaries and facing all the challenges this industry presents — whether it's in-person care, technology, housing design, what have you. And I feel like you have come up with the right way to address the problem. So best of luck to you, and we're very happy to be partnered with you.

Jackie Hess: Thank you so much, Aparna. I am so excited to be partnered with Zemplee and to be walking this journey with my Stay Home Solutions with Zemplee by my side.

Aparna Pujar: So if you're in Michigan and you want someone to walk through your parents' home with fresh eyes, or you're ready to learn more about AI-powered monitoring that does not require your mom or dad to wear a single thing, reach out to Jackie. Start at michiganseniorcarespecialists.com for home safety assessments, or head to stayhomesolutions.org to see how the remote monitoring works. Thank you all for listening, and thank you Jackie for being on the show.