How it works
One conversation to set up. Then, just the phone.
There's nothing for her to install, charge or learn. There's a little for you to do, once. Here's the whole journey — including the bad day, because that's the one that matters.
Before the first call
Setting it up properly.
Step 1
You tell us about her, in a conversation.
About fifteen minutes, by voice, not a form. We send a short checklist first so nothing is a surprise. We go from the easy things to the personal ones: her language and a good time to ring, her people — including the neighbour with the spare key — her shops and clinic, then her health, then the rules you want.
Step 2
You choose who to call if something's wrong.
Before anything starts, we need a crisis contact, an emergency word in her language, and a route to help outside the family in case it's ever needed. These can't be skipped.
Step 3
We ring her and ask her ourselves.
Your consent isn't permission to call her. The day before the service begins, we ring her, in her language, and tell her plainly what happens, what's shared with you, and how to stop it. If she says no, it doesn't start.
Step 4
The first call is gentle and plain.
It says it's an automated service and who arranged it. It asks nothing about her health. No tour of features, no questionnaires. It tries to be useful once, and lets her go.
A normal call
An ordinary Tuesday.
What a normal call looks like, from both ends.
- At the times they choose
- Within two minutes of the time you chose, correct through clock changes. If the first number doesn't answer, it tries the second. If she rang it an hour ago, it doesn't ring again.
- She can ring it too
- Any hour, answered within three rings. No PIN, no menu, no “press one”.
- No time limit
- She talks for as long as she likes. There are no wrap-up cues. If the line drops, it rings back within a minute.
- It never rushes her
- It lets her finish her thought, and if she talks over it, it stops and listens.
- It gets things done
- Where there's an app, it uses it. Where there isn't, it telephones the business itself and comes back to her. It checks what she meant before spending anything.
- You hear how it went
- Two or three sentences, timed for your morning, with a clip of her voice. Weekly detail if you want it. A monthly look back against three months ago.
When something's wrong
Three kinds of news, three speeds.
Most things can wait for the digest. Some can't. We sort them so you're never woken for a skipped tablet, and never find out about a fall four months later.
Now
When
A fall, sudden pain, her emergency word, clear distress, three missed calls, or her carer reporting something acute.
How you hear
Push notification, message and an automated phone call to the people she chose. If nobody acknowledges within five minutes, it goes to the next person.
Today
When
A skipped medicine, a low day, something she asked for that didn't happen.
How you hear
In the app, at most once a day. Worth knowing, not worth waking you.
This week
When
Patterns: the knee mentioned three times, sleeping worse, going out less.
How you hear
In the weekly digest, with her own words and the dates she said them.
A bad day
The morning she doesn’t answer.
This is the scenario we design around. It also shows the limit of what a phone call can do, and we’d rather you knew that now.
07:30
She doesn't answer her usual call.
07:50
It tries again. No answer.
08:30
One more try. Three missed calls is a “Now”.
08:31
It rings the neighbour with the spare key first, because she's two minutes away. Not a panic message to her daughter at 4 a.m. in another time zone.
08:41
The neighbour calls back: she's on the floor, conscious, can't get up.
08:42
Her daughter is told, and the next people in her plan are reached at the same time, not one after another.
09:15
Once she's safe, everyone who was contacted is told it's handled.
What this shows, honestly: she fell at about six. A fall sensor would have caught it then. Zika found out at 08:30 because she missed a call. That’s better than four months later, and it isn’t monitoring. If she’s at risk of falls, pair us with a device that watches.
If she wants to stop
One sentence, and it stops that day.
She can say so on any call. The outgoing calls stop, you’re told, and the number stays open in case she ever wants to ring it. She doesn’t have to give a reason.
If the payments stop
She’s never just cut off.
She hears at least 14 days ahead, in plain words. Her archive is handed over in open formats. The emergency line stays open for a grace period. A failed payment is treated as a mistake to fix, not a cancellation.