The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Linda Buscemi PhD, Founder of Ella by TapRoot at SXSW 2023

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

TapRootElla.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. So, as you know, we've been covering South by Southwest. We've been talking a lot of different booths and the people that are exhibiting and promoting themselves at South by Southwest 2023. Today we're talking with Dr. Linda Buscemi. She's the co-founder and clinical officer for a

company called Taproot Interventions and Solutions Incorporated and their new digital assistant thing that they have built called Ella. Welcome to the show. How are you? Thank you. We're doing fantastic. It's great to have you, Linda. Thanks for coming on the show. How are you? Thank you. We're doing fantastic. It's great to have you, Linda. Thanks for coming on the show. Give us a.com or wherever the website is or place where people can get to know what you guys are doing there better. Yeah, absolutely. It's taprootella.com. So taproot is, you know, basically you tap into the long-term memory of someone. So T-A-P-R-O-O-T and then Ella, as we mentioned, Elevate Caregiving. So taprootella.com.

There you go. And so you guys have been part of this showcase that's been done by South by Southwest Pitch, formerly known as the South by Southwest Accelerator. And this is the festival's 15th annual pitch system. Tell us about what you guys have created there and why you created it. Yeah. So we created a digital assistant to help caregivers really understand how to approach and better intervene when folks with cognitive deficits, such as dementia or Alzheimer's, and how to prevent or reduce the escalation of their behavioral expressions. We actually

call them reactions. Oh, wow. Now, this is a big deal that's going on with our aging population. Even my sister has MS, an onset of dementia. She's in the care center right now, sadly, but she needs help. So this gives people that are suffering from some of these ailments a better chance to get help. Yeah, I'm sorry to hear that. And you're right. I mean, first of all, the caregiver shortage, there is a caregiver shortage. It's very, very difficult. And I would tell you with the silver tsunami, I mean, someone's diagnosed with a dementia of some sort every three seconds. And so we're talking about, you know, when people think dementia, it's like saying that you have cancer. Well, the question is, what kind of cancer?

What kind of dementia? Where is it coming from? Because it affects a different part of the brain. And why that's important is because the reaction is different. So if someone has vascular dementia, as an example, they have problems thinking as far as sequential learning and processing. And so if someone has Alzheimer's, then their memory is the first thing that goes. And so the reaction of a situation of, let's say, I don't want to take a shower today. Well, is it because they forgot how to take one or they don't understand when you say take a shower, think about the processing that our

brain goes through. You have to get clothes before you get it. You have to get in the shower to turn the water on. You have to make sure you have soap. You have to make sure you have a razor. I mean, there's so many step-by-step processes that they, and they don't say, dear, I don't remember how to do that. They just get angry and they're like, I'm not doing that. And they push you. I mean, so it becomes, it can become, not all the time, but it can become aggressive, unfortunately, because the way that we approach someone inadvertently, you know, we, as a caregiver could be causing the situation. And so Ella can actually give you those tools to prevent and reduce that escalation.

And I love this sort of idea. The, you know, the caregiver issue is really hard. We, at the care centers that my sisters have been in and it's gotten really worse lately. It's hard for them to hire employees. They keep bringing in tech agencies. There's a lot of people don't want to work in the space kova didn't help at all and uh getting her the care and you're right i mean these these folks sadly you know that's an issue you know my mom will call and uh stays on

her uh taking she advocates for my sister a lot but she'll call my sister did you take your bath today did you take a shower um you know it requires two or three caregivers to shower her. Um, and, uh, it, it, she, you know, did you eat today? Did you have your thing? And sometimes she doesn't know. And it's because of the dementia, you know, she doesn't know if she took her shower or, or if she's asked for the shower, where the caregivers are. And so I think this is really important because people in these States, you're right, they get angry, they get upset because they're confused and they don't understand what's going on sometimes because they're kind of disappearing from reality.

Does this really help people maybe not, you know, slow the burn into dementia and different issues they're having? Well, it's something that we want to show because we do believe that when you can engage someone from a better place, that we would never claim that we can help the escalation or the, this is a progressive disease. So it is going to progress. It just is going to, unfortunately. But if we can help provide a better quality of life, unfortunately, right now, if someone's, you know, having some of those behavioral expressions, unfortunately, because caregivers are not necessarily astute on how to utilize non-pharmaceutical interventions, what happens is they push a PRN, which is an as-needed medication of a lorazepam or a risperdal or Depakot. So they're giving these psychotropic medications to manage these, you know, they call them behaviors. And really it's because they don't know how to, they don't know how to do otherwise, because there's a lot of, you know, I like to call folks that care for people with cognitive deficits, almost like a

dementia detective. You've got to figure out why they're reacting the way that they're reacting, because they can't tell you. If they could tell you, they would. They can't. And so Ella actually takes that guessing out and it looks at the type of diagnosis, what the person did for a living, all these different questions that we would ask that could be causing that reaction. Ella does that work for you. And what it does is it then gives you a personalized intervention for that particular reaction for that particular person. There you go. So who are the main users that you're trying to target with this app? So right now we are in assisted living, long-term care communities, assisted living, nursing communities, and home care. So folks that

go into homes, we want to try and keep people at home, right? That's what we really want to do. But in doing that, we need help as well. And so the folks that go in to help folks stay there, manage their medications, things like that, they would use Ella, as well as the family member. And so it can help a family member like my mother who advocates for my sister, help her monitor what's going on. Because like one of the issues my mother will have as a caregiver is she'll, you know, she'll be calling over there. She's trying to get someone to help. My sister's confused. And, you know, my mom doesn't know if, you know, sometimes my sister is showered and sometimes she's at her food, but she forgets.

And that's part of the disease, sadly. But, you know, she doesn't know. So this makes it so she can have a good understanding what's going on with the patient. Yeah. And the family members can understand what the approaches that the caregivers are using. So that way your mom may know something very specific about obviously her daughter. And when she does X, let's say, if she refuses medication, as an example, your mom may know that she's always had trouble swallowing. Even as a little kid, I always had to give her liquid

because she couldn't swallow a pill, let's say. And so when we know that information, again, a caregiver doesn't necessarily know that information, but when the family members put in the information to Ella, because we have a link that goes to the family members to fill out everything you possibly, we ask all the questions that we know about that person. That again, helps us personalize and tailor that intervention. So the caregiver would say, you know, Ella would say, don't give Janie pills. Make sure, you know, you get a doctor order to have either crushed or liquid form or something like that, because we know that information that's personalizing it.

But to your point, you had said, Chris, around the caregiver, I mean, there is such a shortage that when we did have COVID, I was getting so many phone calls around. I can't get ahold of the community. No one's answering the phone. The caregivers are not there. There were so many shortages that they had to hire temp agencies to come in. And Ella was able to help because now, look, I'm just someone that's coming in for 24 hours. I don't know any of these people. And so I'm just doing my best. Well, now they could look at Ella and say, oh, Mrs. Jones, okay, when I shower her, make sure that I do X, Y, or Z, or she's going to hit me. So Ella is actually able to tell you immediately what to do, whether you know that person and have a long history

of working with that person or not. There you go. There you go. Now, there's a lot of talk about AI powered technologies right now, chat GPT and other different things. I mean, it's really hot right now. You guys are basically an AI powered digital assistant. Is that correct? We are. Yes. Our software is, it's learning, machine learning right now. The more we enter into it, the more Ella's getting smarter and smarter and saying, wow, a person that has Lewy body's dementia also has hypertension, diabetes, all these different things. This is all this different background information that we know about that person.

And then, again, it'll personalize that intervention based on all the information. Just think about a practitioner, right? As a psychologist or those medical doctors that are out there, when someone comes to you with an issue, you ask them a series of questions. That's the best way that we can do that reasoning of, okay, based on what you've told me, here's the treatment. Here's the intervention. Ella's doing the exact same thing. That's awesome. And so does it work on an app, on the computer, on the phone?

How does it play? It does. We are an app, so our iOS or Android, anybody that can get an app, a tablet, an iPad, you can utilize that. We do have our desktop version, which is where all the analytics are stored. So this is where we're showing that we can see that there's a decrease in psychotropic medications. We can keep people out of the hospital. We can lower their frequency of the reactions because Ella's supporting that. And one of our big ones that we want to show is that caregiver engagement. We're

actually getting caregivers wanting to see Ella because they feel more successful as they're going in and helping someone that they don't, they feel more successful as they're going in and helping someone that they don't, they have problems thinking that they can tell you that their stomach hurts and actually it doesn't, they might be hungry. And so again, they can't necessarily gauge that because they're, unfortunately their brain is eroding and they're not able to, to process what, what they need to process. And therefore the caregiver stuck on, oh my gosh, what do I do? How do I, how do I deal with this? Well, now they have the answer. Yeah. And that goes on with my mom almost daily. I mean, she'll get a call from my sister and my sister will be having some sort

of emergency. And sadly, she just doesn't remember that she was showered or fed or sometimes she wasn't. We've seen really bad things from these temp agencies. And I'm not, I'm not saying all temp agencies is bad or temp agency employees are bad. I'm just saying we've seen some, some bad things, uh, where they come and they don't understand my sister. You know,

my mother's put giant signs in, in her thing. Uh, and, and people need to advocate. You know, I, I tell people constantly,

I've heard a lot of horror stories. My sister has been involved in some in the five or six different care center she's been in. And I think it probably can not only help the care center do better at providing care, but also my sister get better care and other people that are in that same condition. I don't want to make this all about my sister. I'm just using her example. But I've seen the challenge that you're talking about, that you're trying to resolve with this application. And I think it's brilliant because if we can make this whole system work better and give more comfort to our loved ones, that makes all the difference in the world. Definitely. I mean, I think about, thank goodness that your sister has your mother because unfortunately as we age

and maybe we don't have a mother or sister or brother that can actually help us. And so these folks are there by themselves and they can't advocate to your point themselves. And again, I agree. I don't think people are malicious. I don't think they want to do badly. I think what happens is when we don't know what to do, we become frustrated. And caregiving for people that can't tell you what they want. It's like a child.

I mean, I'm not comparing an elderly person or someone with dementia as a child, but I'm saying the process of not being able to express what you're wanting can become very frustrating. And as a caregiver, and you don't know what they want, sometimes we'll throw our hands up and say, well, they just refuse showering. Well, maybe they didn't necessarily refuse it. Or maybe they're not eating. You know, eating is another one. Well, they're not hungry. Well, maybe they couldn't necessarily refuse it or maybe they're not eating. You know, eating is another one where they're not hungry. Well, maybe they couldn't see the food.

Maybe they didn't understand that. What how to use a fork. So the intervention would be give them finger foods. And this is these are all real world examples. When we did that. Well, she's not eating. And I'm like, well, let's the intervention is deconstruct the food. First of all, don't put you're putting way too many things on the plate.

Just literally put the hamburger and cut it up. remove the silverware, and let's see what happens. This woman ate two patties. Wow. And she hadn't eaten in a week because they're like, well, she's not hungry. I'm like, no. Again, she's sitting at the table. There's a reason why she's not eating, and we just need to figure out why that is. And again, Ellis supports that. That's awesome. Great solution-based stuff. So at South by Southwest, are you looking to meet up and find people that are healthcare providers? I know there's a lot of chains that have national chains or interstate chains that have kind of bought each other and stuff. Are you looking to work with those, meet those companies and talk to them about utilizing your service?

We are. I mean, fortunately, we finished our seed round, so we're not looking for any money right now, which is great. That's a great place to be in. We're always looking. I'm sure there always will need more, but we're really now wanting some partners and getting into these communities. We're in four different states. We're in about 70 different units really deploying it, and it's just getting it out there and getting people these communities. We're in four different states. We're in about 70 different units, really deploying it. And it's just getting it out there and getting people to use it

and really seeing what a difference they can make in the quality of their residence life, of their client's life. And keep that person there, lowest level of care. If we can keep them in their home longer, fantastic. If we can keep them in assisted living longer, great. If we can keep them, you know, yeah, we want to decrease medication, of course, a psychotropic medication. So we're working with provider groups on using Ella. Let's use non-pharmaceutical interventions first. There is a place for psychotropic medications, but let's make sure we're using it in the right way and not as a chemical restraint. There you go. There you go. I love this idea and concept. If someone like my mom, who's a caregiver, they can probably suggest this to the caregiver service that's out there or the place, the home, et cetera, et cetera.

Absolutely. Yep. And we'd be happy to do a demo. It's very rare that we do a demo that people don't get it. And they're like, oh, my gosh, we need this. Our staff needs this. people don't get it. And they're like, oh my gosh, we need this. Our staff needs this. And I totally get it. Like I said, the rest homes, or not rest homes, but the homes that my sister has been in,

I mean, the care center is really struggling to hire the people. And they usually don't have enough people. That's why my mom spends a lot of time there. And I advocate for people to go visit their loved ones in these places and make sure they're being cared for. I've, you know, seen horror stories and my sister's gone through a few and it can help liability issues for companies too, I think, where, you know, they can know what's going on with the care of their people and have a record. Well, exactly. I mean, I think, you know, one thing that we see, especially with people that have, you know, cognitive issues they have an increase in fall risk, especially, again, when we're giving them sedative medications like eryspidol, Depakote, things like that to manage their behaviors, which really isn't managing it. Now we're increasing even more so the fall risk, which is a huge liability.

There's numbers, staggering numbers around what communities have to pay in insurance because of that. And again, when we can lower the use of these psychotropic medications, we're reducing the falls. When we look at where the falls are happening, because that's one of the most common, a common reaction, again, of someone that has a dementia of some sort, you know, there are things that we can do. If they're getting up in the bedroom, shut the closet doors, make sure there are no rugs. I mean, there's so many interventions that we can deploy to reduce that fall risk. And that's one thing that we're doing out of the 27 most commonly known dementia reactions. And we have another 30 of mental illness, people that have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder. We are doing the same concept for mental health as well. There you go. Well, this is awesome. And I definitely can

see a huge need for it from my experience and what I know about the business. Anything more we need to tease out on your app before we go? I think that wraps it up. I mean, I think that if people go ahead and take a look, if they want to request a demo, we're happy to show them and really, you know, giving caregivers a tool. We've got to figure out how to use technology to elevate caregiving. There's not enough of them. They're trying their best, and I think it's time we give them tools to really support this industry that is really seeking how to help people

as we continue to grow our population and our aging population. Yeah, and our aging population is going to grow, and we're going to need more and more resources and more and more tools to make sure that they're comfortable, that they're healthy, they're safe and, and they can enjoy, you know, the golden years of their life. So thank you very much, Linda. We really appreciate coming on the show and sharing all this with us. Yeah.

I appreciate you having me on the show, Chris. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Give us your dot coms or website where people can find you guys on the interwebs, please. Yeah. It's taprootella.com T-A-P-R-O-O-T-E-L-L-A There you go.

And check them out, guys, at South by Southwest. Check out their website and everything they're doing there. I love the whole AI future of where we're going and how this is being utilized for purposes to help make people's lives better. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, Fortune says Chris Voss, youtube.com, Fortune says Chris Voss, andreads.com, Fortune's Chris Voss, youtube.com, Fortune's Chris Voss,

and linkedin.com, Fortune's Chris Voss. Be sure to see all our continuing ongoing coverage of South by Southwest 2023. Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe, and we'll see you guys next time.