Necessity compels Innovation
In 1991 the University of Cambridge created the first webcam. But why? Well, to monitor the coffee pot and check who was drinking all the coffee in the office. You know, important stuff.
A friend who is a caregiver has innovated by contacting a few friends to help her with expense tracking. A customized Excel spreadsheet now tracks food expenses vs household vs medical supplements vs home care services, so reimbursement from the POA person can happen on schedule.
Type ‘caregiver + innovation’ into a search engine (DuckDuckGo is safest) and see the range of responses. We’re all figuring this caregiver thing out and because everyone’s patient is different, innovation abounds! A recent article tallied the UK’s caregiver population at 6.5 million. An informal caregiver workforce larger than the UK’s National Health Service.
How do we innovate?
- We identify our particular problem.
- We shop around for a suitable solution that will work for us.
- We find one and customize if possible so it works for us.
- Or, we build what we need and realize lots of other caregivers need the same thing!
Simplify Caring did the last two. We first customized other project management/organizer platforms and then tossed those and built our own. Our latest iteration is in it’s final stages of development. My hope is we launch this fall.
Many of you have asked; “how soon??” and we have definitely not been rushing. We want to get this right. A strong, secure server environment, seamless sign-ups for those you invite to join you on your team, dead-easy intuitive organizing of your documents, the internal conversation, your critical contacts and the reliable to-do calendar.
Thank you for being more patient than me!
Photo source: blendhub
