upBed's Story
upBed started a few years ago as an interesting side project. We are engineers, with backgrounds in industrial manufacturing and IT, and back then we caught wind of an international competition (hackathon) centered around applying wearables (think fitbit) to manufacturing.
We submitted a project that measured the pressure on a factory floor workers feet, and told them when it was time to take a break. We didn’t think much of it, but it was fun. And then we won.
From there we were told that what we had built could be applied to nursing homes, and help them prevent falls. We knew nothing about nursing homes, so we started asking around. We quickly found out that falls are a huge problem. So we kept going. We modified the design and started trialing it in local communities. It wasn’t a slam dunk. We went through a lot of iterations and learned a lot along the way. But somewhere along this journey we met Jim (we’ll call him Jim anyway).
Jim had late stage dementia, and he was falling 12 times a month. If you’re new to the space, that’s a lot of falls. We made improvements and put upBed to work. After a few months in trial, Jim had no falls. This was great because we’d finally designed something that worked. This is what engineers do, build things that work. It felt great. But then something changed.
I walked in one day to work on upBed, and a women came up and gave me a huge hug. I’d never met her, and I wasn’t sure who she was. It turns out she was Jim’s wife. That hug changed everything. upBed wasn’t some cool engineering project. It was directly improving the quality of peoples lives. People that are in unbelievably hard situations as is, never mind fearing a call in the middle of the night because their loved one is hurt. I quit my day job within the month, and we’ve been on upBed ever since. We’re using our engineering skills to help people, and that feels really good. It’s inspiring.
upBed is helping more people now, and growing. Now that we’re in the space we see all kinds opportunities to use technology to not only help care for older adults, but inspire and empower them. We’re committed and driven by this. upBed is a big start, and just the start.
We submitted a project that measured the pressure on a factory floor workers feet, and told them when it was time to take a break. We didn’t think much of it, but it was fun. And then we won.
From there we were told that what we had built could be applied to nursing homes, and help them prevent falls. We knew nothing about nursing homes, so we started asking around. We quickly found out that falls are a huge problem. So we kept going. We modified the design and started trialing it in local communities. It wasn’t a slam dunk. We went through a lot of iterations and learned a lot along the way. But somewhere along this journey we met Jim (we’ll call him Jim anyway).
Jim had late stage dementia, and he was falling 12 times a month. If you’re new to the space, that’s a lot of falls. We made improvements and put upBed to work. After a few months in trial, Jim had no falls. This was great because we’d finally designed something that worked. This is what engineers do, build things that work. It felt great. But then something changed.
I walked in one day to work on upBed, and a women came up and gave me a huge hug. I’d never met her, and I wasn’t sure who she was. It turns out she was Jim’s wife. That hug changed everything. upBed wasn’t some cool engineering project. It was directly improving the quality of peoples lives. People that are in unbelievably hard situations as is, never mind fearing a call in the middle of the night because their loved one is hurt. I quit my day job within the month, and we’ve been on upBed ever since. We’re using our engineering skills to help people, and that feels really good. It’s inspiring.
upBed is helping more people now, and growing. Now that we’re in the space we see all kinds opportunities to use technology to not only help care for older adults, but inspire and empower them. We’re committed and driven by this. upBed is a big start, and just the start.
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Aron Semle, Co-Founder @ upByte
aron@upbed.io |