Israeli startup Intuition Robotics recently announced an expansion of ElliQ, an AI-driven that provides care and companionship to older adults in their homes. 

Part of the expansion will involve a pilot alliance with Family Doctors, a Mass General Brigham affiliated practice in Swampscott, MA, with the overall goal of  increasing patient engagement and improving the overall patient experience, while offering primary care providers continuous actionable data and insights for early detection and intervention. 

According to the company, primary care providers encounter two major challenges in engaging older adult patients that ElliQ is designed to address. “The first is lack of visibility on the accurate state of their patient in between touchpoints. Leading primary care providers have ~1 touchpoint a month with each patient, but most have less than ~1 touchpoint a year, meaning that the day-to-day changes in older adults' clinical conditions are largely unknown. The second challenge is consistent and timely communication and engagement with patients. The combination of early detection when changes in clinical conditions occur, along with effective communication that strengthen the doctor-patient relationship, can increase the quality of care and help reduce avoidable emergency department visits and hospitalizations.”

The company says ElliQ, an empathetic digital companion robot designed to help curb loneliness and social isolation among older adults, has spent over 30,000 days in older adults' homes over the past two years. On average, each older adult completed ~150 successful goal-oriented interactions with ElliQ per month.

"ElliQ has proven to be an invaluable resource for our older adult users, who often choose to share something personal with the companion robot on a daily basis,” said Dor Skuler, CEO and Co-Founder of Intuition Robotics. “While our original focus for ElliQ was to promote independent living and aging in place by combating isolation and loneliness, we realized that they were mere components of the bigger picture: helping to holistically improve care for older adults. Working with healthcare professionals over the last year, we now see that ElliQ has the potential to support the full spectrum of care, physically, mentally, and socially."

As described by the company, ElliQ proactively engages the patient in conversations and activities throughout the day, collects self-reported data, and, with the patient's consent, shares data with the primary care team. Primary care providers can adjust the type and frequency of self-reported data that ElliQ collects on a per patient basis, as well as communicate with patients seamlessly through the robot.

Intuition Robotics is planning on expanding its partnership with additional value-based care physician groups, primary care providers, and health plans who serve older adults in the United States.

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