CRYSTAL GALLO: Innerhive -Technology with a Heart of Gold For Caregivers

If you’ve ever left a doctor’s appointment wondering what was said—or wished your siblings understood how much you’re doing—this conversation is a must-listen.

In episode 112, Susie and Don sit down with Crystal Gallo, founder of innerhive—a groundbreaking app using AI to help caregivers capture, organize, and share vital information while staying present for the people they love.

From preventing burnout to improving family communication, Crystal shares how Innerhive was born from her own caregiving experience and designed to bring clarity and connection to one of life’s most chaotic and emotional journeys. Together, they explore how technology can enhance humanity—not replace it—and why wellness, empathy, and smarter tools are key to transforming the caregiving experience.

Email: hello@innerhive.com, crystal@innerhive.com 

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Chapters

• 0:00 Opening And Documentary Update
• 2:45 Why Ratings And Reviews Matter
• 4:24 Reintroducing Guest Crystal Gallo
• 5:10 Crystal’s Caregiving Origin And Mission
• 9:55 Defining Innerhive’s Core Problem: Overload
• 12:05 How The App Works In Real Appointments
• 17:12 Sharing, Summaries, And Family Alignment
• 21:45 Journaling, Trends, And Caregiver Wellness
• 25:40 Roles, Access, And Trust In Families
• 28:45 From Notes To Action: Coordination Tools
• 32:30 Using AI “Bee” For Language And Framing
• 37:10 Medical Communication And Error Reduction
• 42:05 Staffing Gaps, Records, And Safety
• 46:10 Closing Reflections And Calls To Support

Transcript

Don Priess: 0:00

When the world has got you down, Alzheimer's sucks. It's an equal opportunity disease that chips away at everything we hold dear. And to date, there's no cure. So until there is, we continue to fight with the most powerful tool in our arsenal, love. This is Love conquers all's a real and really positive podcast that takes a deep dive into everything, Alzheimer's, The Good, The Bad and everything in between. And now here are your hosts, Suzy singer Carter and me. Don Priess,

Susie Singer Carter: 0:41

hello everybody. It's Susie singer, Carter,

Don Priess: 0:44

and I'm Don Priess, and this is Love conquers alls Hello Susan. We're

Susie Singer Carter: 0:48

back. It's been a while. We are we have been so inconsistent. But thank you for everybody who is hanging in there with us, because we really appreciate it. We love talking to you, and we love we love doing this show so much, and it's very important to us, and because we love speaking to the people that we have on our guests and so but the documentary has definitely side sidelined us a bit, and but the good news is we launched on August 1 on on Amazon, and now we're on available on hoopla and also on Tubi. And we are very happy. We're getting excellent response, and it's stirring the pot, and that's what we were trying to do. And so happy. We're happy, and we would love everybody that's out there too. If you haven't watched it, watch it, please. It's three, it's three parts. So you can take your you can take a break, and I will, I'll say it's not an easy watch, but it's an important watch, and it's also, it's an educational watch as well, and you'll learn a lot that you need to know, because all of us are facing some kind of caregiving situation, and usually it's a crisis kind of situation. So if we can mitigate all those, any kind of issue that you know that's possible, why not? Doesn't that sound better? And then you don't have to, if you're

Don Priess: 2:21

listening to this right now, you're probably into that. If you're listening right now, you're probably in a position where you are either caregiving or in need of caregiving. And so this directly relates to everyone who's that's

Susie Singer Carter: 2:33

so true. I didn't think about that, Don I didn't think about that, because otherwise you'd be listening to like Amy Poehler in good hang Exactly. Because although we're kind of like Amy Poehler and good hang, we're just, you know, in the caregiving world, well, I'm like Amy Poehler, you are. You're more like Amy Poehler, similar. Yeah, you look a lot like her, that's for sure. Except they think you were thinking of Amy Schumer. No, I was thinking of Amy Poehler. Oh, okay, in this case, yeah, the good hang, that's my favorite podcast. It's so fun.

Don Priess: 3:01

Yeah, all the Amy's, all

Susie Singer Carter: 3:03

the Amy's, and one Susie, that's name of my book, all the Amy's, and one Susie Amy's, and one season, uh huh, so and if you do, I'm just gonna let me just finish my commercial for a second, which is a good commercial. I'm not make. We don't make money off of this at all. I just want to say that, you know our the what we get out of it is, is impact and change. And so if you would be so kind to watch this and go to either Amazon, if you get it through Amazon and please rate and review, because that could that connects to their algorithm, and that out, and then that tells them, tells Amazon that we're important enough to keep pushing it out there and not bury us somewhere where you have to type in the name and find us and then, and if you don't, if you get it for free on to be then please, please, just go to IMDb, which is the Internet Movie Database. If you're not in the industry, you might have to, I think you do have to sign up. It's free, but it is for a good cause, you guys. I'm not, you know, I'm not asking you to put out any money. Just write it, review it, because it will help us get it out past our echo chamber. So that's super important. And thank you.

Don Priess: 4:16

Share it with everyone you know, because, yeah, so there's our commercial.

Susie Singer Carter: 4:22

We did it, done and done. And so today we're doing it. We're doing a take two. As they say in our business of filmmaking, we're doing a take two with someone that we that we had such a great conversation. And, you know, things happen, I and and it doesn't matter, it's but whatever it is, we're back, and we're going to be talking to this amazing woman and and she's kind enough to, like, cut us a break for whatever we put we did something. I don't remember what it was, but something happened and she came back to us. It was a technical difficulty, if you will. Yeah, so here we are, and I feel grateful for that. At and so let's, let's just jump in. Don give her the best yes introduction ever.

Don Priess: 5:07

Let me give it a whirl. Okay, after 15 years building teams and growing high impact technology companies, Crystal Gallo discovered her true calling in the most unexpected way, through caregiving. When her own family faced dementia and cancer, she experienced firsthand how isolating and overwhelming the caregiver journey can be. Inspired by her own path and countless others she met navigating similar challenges, she founded inner hive, a company dedicated to ending caregiver burnout and helping us all show up better for ourselves and the people we love, and to find out more about this wonderful innovation, let's say hello to Crystal. Gallo, hello crystal. Hi Chris, good.

Susie Singer Carter: 5:55

Thank you for coming back and joining us again. So first, how are you doing? On a personal note,

Crystal Gallo: 6:01

I'm good. I feel like probably not as wild of a ride as what you guys are going through right now. I think it's pretty rad that you finally were able to get the documentary launched. Have some phenomenal conversation rolling. So it's exciting to kind of see those things happening in the Eco you know out there. Thank you. Grateful to be here to support

Susie Singer Carter: 6:21

you. Oh, thank you so much so. But okay, enough about me, but give us some more. Give us some background on Crystal Gallow first and how you got into this, this arena, this community of caregiving. Because I think, I think everyone understands that there's some reason why we all end up here?

Crystal Gallo: 6:43

Yeah, I mean the juicy background, I just I can get into all sorts of fun stuff that I love to do in my spare time, but mostly as it relates to this, I've spent a lot of time and kind of grown up in technology, so I worked really hard to kind of earn the influence and opportunities that I had, and was fortunate to be at companies that were high growth, all with successful exits, but I never really had the privilege of being able to work on something personal, something that I could hold deeply, something that was an experience that I went through and I held strong conviction around and, you know, a lot of people that know me know my curiosity kind of runs deep. I hold a great affection around continued learning, and there's just an energy that I get from being able to explore and connect and grow. And I knew at some point I was going to find my way back to, you know, wellness has always been at the core of all my decisions and kind of my growth, and it's my passion. I just I didn't expect that that path back home, so to speak, would be, you know, maybe how it unfolded. Some say it was wake up call. Some maybe say it's healthy perspective. Others say it's crazy. But in any case, I feel like inner hive started from a deeply personal, rooted place that I found myself in an unexpected kind of caregiving situation, but after being able to connect with others and feeling inspired by their willingness to be open and raw and recognizing that we share a common understanding. We've been there. We've we've been in the, you know, the trenches, navigating the chaos. We felt completely overwhelmed and alone, and we've, you know, the impact that that has in terms of burnout creeping in and feeling like your own wellness is being negatively, you know, not in a good space. And so despite the risk and the challenge that comes with pursuing new territory, I think my intuition told me I really had to pursue this path. This was it was really important. It was meaningful. There was there was great personal purpose, and being able to kind of have this common denominator, the shared experience among others, was the inspiration behind inner hive.

Susie Singer Carter: 8:46

I love it because that's I think, like I said, Everybody comes to this community with with a story, right? And something that motivates you, and then and then you we all look at what's our strengths to hopefully make it an easier space based on our experience being a filmmaker. I do it that way, and you come from a tech background, which is phenomenal and also scary as hell, because it changes constantly, and I don't know how you keep

Crystal Gallo: 9:11

up. We're not a tech company trying to sell something to caregivers. We're actually caregivers who were in it, who had that breakdown, who felt it, who made an intentional pivot. We just happen to know tech. So I think being able to think about, how do we solve complex problems and something that's so personal, and how can we leverage tech to be able to enhance the humanity side, to be able to, like, give a space, to be present, that was our mission. Like we want to do that and make sure that it stays human. US people, the connection at the core, because you can't use technology to solve these things. It's, I don't know, you know, there's different opinions out there, but emotions have all sorts of colors, so there's a huge spectrum to that. And yeah, this is a deeply emotional space, and so being able to leverage that technology is good, but it will never replace Yeah.

Don Priess: 10:00

Yeah. So what is the, what is the elevator pitch? Basically on how inner hive works. What is I mean, just so for somebody who has no idea, how do you tell them? This is what we do and this is how it works,

Crystal Gallo: 10:13

yeah, so I guess I'll start you off. But we really rallied around we had the opportunity to connect with hundreds of families, and we just wanted to ground ourselves to make sure that our personal bias and so our team collectively has had experience in care, you know, but from different perspectives. So it might be caring for a parent or someone that you know is aging. It might be caring for a child with medical complexity. It could be caring for a partner, you know, mental health. There's been a whole spectrum. So we wanted to kind of remove what we felt and connect with families. And the biggest challenge that we kept hearing is information overload in the very beginning, like the greatest pain point people have is I had an accident or I had a situation or fall or new diagnosis, and then what happens next? Everyone's calling each other. You have conversations that are happening, you have appointments that you're going to right trying to just process all of it, and it's so overwhelming, and so we wanted to make it really easy with just a couple of clicks. How can we help capture, summarize and make it easy to share that information? Because it lets you stay present. It brings others into the fold. And when you can use the information as a source of connection, you've got the ability where other people don't feel like they're boxed out, they're sharing that care load, and it's just really important context. It really helps when you can process that flood of information and you can bring clarity to where do I focus? What's next? It changes outcomes. It provides a better quality of life when you've got that caliber of organization and connection in your support community. So how

Don Priess: 11:40

does, what does what does that look like? How does that I mean, for just an example of

Susie Singer Carter: 11:44

maybe this, I could frame it this way. So there's a lot of support groups right out on Facebook. Say, What does inner hive offer that is different from a forum?

Crystal Gallo: 11:54

I love that we'll put a pin in the forum piece, because that's been a great point of feedback. So let me just paint a picture. If you guys have any siblings, or if you've, you know, I know, given the experience you've been in, let's just say your mom has an accident. You get a call. You're generally her primary, like, go to whether that's legally or just that just happens to be, she's going to call you, and it kicks off this telephone chain. So you get a call, Hey, I have early onset Alzheimer's. I need to go. I need to connect with the doctor. I need to learn a little bit more about what that looks like, what I can do. You're like, great. I'll go. I'll be with you. I'll support you. So you go to this conversation with your mom, and by the time dinner rolls around, she's completely forgotten everything that had happened in the conversation. It felt like she was present. She had questions. She was capturing it. Everything felt good. And then you get to the dinner table, and you're you're trying to share, and you're trying to bring your siblings and her partner in the loop, and it's gone. All of a sudden, she doesn't even remember the conversation happened. And so instantly, me, as her daughter feels, what am I going to do? Like, should I have taken notes during the appointment? I don't want mom to feel like I'm kind of micromanaging, or she's a case study. Do I record and not tell her that doesn't feel good? I feel completely guilty, like I should have been capturing that information. I just thought she seemed like she was in a good place, where we had it covered, and now I don't even know what to say, like I instantly had this flush of emotion, and I'm overwhelmed and I can't answer the questions. So we made it super easy. If you were to go and download our app, you can use it on your phone. So you can get it in Google Play, you can get an app store. You can go use it on iPad, desktop. But in a couple clicks, you say, hey, you know, I really just want to capture some notes. Are you okay with that? Great. You let technology run in the background. Don't worry about if you can read your notes, scribbling, keeping up trying to understand the medical jargon. Don't worry about trying to ask all the right questions. Just be there for your mom. Be present in her company, there to support her. It's such an emotional journey to go through these conversations. Then when that meeting, that appointment, ends, you've got that. You have the entire transcription. So if you want to go back and listen to it or read it, you've got all the details, but mostly you have a summary. Here's what we discussed. Here's next steps. I need to schedule this appointment. I need to, you know, up this medication, and that's so easy to share. So then six months later, when, when your mom's condition has progressed and she maybe isn't in a place where she can advocate for herself anymore, you have that recording. You have her own words, what she you know, you have that appointment, you have the conversation that could have happened after, where she got to express, hey, here's my preference. Here's what's meaningful to me, what matters. And so that takes the weight off of you. You're no longer in a situation, right? Having to think, wow, what do I do? It's like, Hey, Mom, do you remember when we went to this appointment? Let's talk about this. And do you remember when we had this conversation after, and we kind of captured our discussion of what your preferences were, it's a phenomenal way of just providing a voice. It's keeping a record. It's

Susie Singer Carter: 14:49

a record. Yeah, yeah. So it's this is incorporating AI,

Crystal Gallo: 14:55

yeah, exactly. We're using AI to help summarize, so that that you can be proud.

Don Priess: 15:00

Isn't that technology when you have a doctor's Yeah, when you have a doctor's appointment, or you're talking with your siblings and you're trying to decide who's doing what, and all those things, all those, all of that can the same technology can be used for those conversations, especially with the doctors. Because doctors every, I mean, in normal situations, you go to the doctor, they tell you something, and the second you walk out that door, you have, you can't remember what they said, you know. So I assume it can be used for all can it be used over the phone, and if you have with phone conversations, or how would that work? And just in person, if

Crystal Gallo: 15:33

you have someone on speaker, it can absolutely be used. So if you have someone on speaker and you're sitting there and you have your phone active, you can use it. Then we've had families that have had, you know, again, the care preference. So you have someone, maybe with cognitive decline, and when they're still lucid, you get to capture some of those cool moments and preferences. We have another family, it's really sweet. Had the opportunity to meet with him recently, and he was sharing some tidbits about their journey. And his mom is nonverbal now, and so he's had to learn how to kind of understand her vocalizations and what that means, and how to interpret and how is she expressing emotion? Well, that's so difficult to be able to articulate and share with your family. If they're not there, it's not it's not easy to explain, it's not easy to replicate. He was able to use this, this note taking, scribe and record it and send it to his siblings. And so you can use it in medical appointments. You can use it in home care conversations. We have families that are talking to each other, and they just want to summarize and have a record of the discussions of like, Hey, Mom, what's your preference? How you feeling? We people use it every day for journaling. Mom is doing great today. She just had hip surgery. She's still using a walker. You know, Fast forward four days. Mom's letting go of the walker. She's feeling independent. She's doing her gates looking better. We have people that use it as just a memory log. Think about a digital scrapbook, where you can piece all these together, and over time, you get to be able to go back and reflect. And there's something special about that. I have a voicemail from tonight. I think I've shared with you my grandparents helped raise me, and so when I lost my grandfather, that was kind of like the first I had gone through loss in my life, but that was the first one that hit home very differently, and I was so thankful. We always checked in, and we talked every day. And after I had moved it became a little harder with the time zone, so he would call super early. They're on East Coast, on West Coast. And sometimes, if he didn't get me, he'd leave a voicemail. And he had left this voicemail one morning, and it was unexpected when he had passed the next week, but that voicemail has been my gold every year I've been able to listen to it. I've been able to share it. Whenever I bring it up with my mom and a grandmother. You know it it just you can see the emotion and the energy and the feeling that comes back. It's like listening to a song that brings up nostalgic memories. That's what this offers. It's just a really great way of taking a lot of information, capturing it, summarizing it, making it super easy to share. And yeah, like you said, you can use it in so many different ways. Does it? Catalog it as well? So you'll have a complete note file. You can filter and just say, show me all my notes. Show me the notes with recording, you have the option when you share it out you know what level of detail, it gives you explicit action items that you can engage with. So if you're managing care with others, for example, we have a family and long distance. The daughter happens to live and is caring for her mom and her brother is not, and they were running into a little bit of family dysfunction. She was feeling like she was carrying the low burning out. What?

Susie Singer Carter: 18:22

That's crazy. I've never heard that before. I know that's so real,

Crystal Gallo: 18:32

but it's you do. You get stuck in this like awful cycle of exhaustion and guilt, and then you start to build resentment. And it's like people have good intention and they want to help, but they just don't have the tools, and they don't know how. And so in this case, the frustration was kind of growing, and she was then able to, we had the opportunity to meet, and she started using inner hub to capture the conversations. So then it made it easy, because now when she's sharing it with her brother, Mark's not just getting, you know, her interpretation, he's getting the raw at the source. He can hear, you know, what the conversation look like. He can hear the response. So they've got that baseline, and they're operating from the same jump off, which makes it super easy. So now they can collaborate, and they can both go, Oh, hey, I listened to that. I'm going to do this research. You do that research. Let's come back together and we can make a decision together, versus her feeling like this is all on me. And also, right? You know, here's what I heard. And half the time you walk away like you said. You're overwhelmed. You're like, Wait, shoot, what do I need to do? What was that?

Susie Singer Carter: 19:29

Yeah, okay, right? Just for that, it's worth everything, because if you have no seriously, if, because this, these kinds of caregiving issues, can bring up so much contentious kind of relationships that were maybe were brewing in the background, but then all of a sudden, you know all when you're in crisis, or when there's crisis, plus money involved, and all kinds of things that make people different than you ever expected, you have a record. It's not on you just to say, no, no, this actually happened. You can show it.

Crystal Gallo: 20:05

It's funny. You say that. So family, family dynamics is a really big part of extending care. It it people don't realize it escalates fast, and communication, when communication is broken down like it could be either powerful and insights to help inform, make good decisions and bring you together. It's like the bridge, or can do exactly the opposite. And I had the opportunity to work with this family and same thing. So there's three siblings, and they're caring for their dad, and they've all decided they, you know, have a super busy life. Each person wants to care for a very specific part, so they have a care plan. They've had the conversation in generally, they felt like we're in a good spot. We're prepared. We know what to do, like, we've talked about it, right? Had a situation recently where they reached out and they're like, we just have to share with you how this was really valuable to us, because we almost went on each other's throats because basically their dad had called one of the siblings, and basically it said, I've seen so many doctors this week. I don't even remember what I'm supposed to be doing. Do you know what I'm supposed to be taking for meds? I know it changed, but I don't changed, but I don't know. And his son instantly was like, Oh my gosh, is he is this like a emergency? Is this a Did something happen? Do I need to call 911, right? They're managing from a distance. And so anyway, you go through the telephone chain, you call your siblings, and then before you know it, you're like, oh well, it's because he took the neurology appointment, his sister took the primary doctor, and then his other sister took the other doctor. So they didn't realize that their dad was accurate. He was very overwhelmed, because he had been through so many, you know, appointments that week, right? But the problem was they were all managing it in a siloed approach, and so now they use inner hive, and they're able to put all the information in there. They can post a note and pushes out. You can see it. You've got a reference, you know, all the people, places involved. And so it's like, okay, when these situations happen, you don't need to go into crisis. It's dad did have three appointments this week. Here's what's happening. Like, he is pretty overwhelmed, but you can totally avoid that crisis just through information sharing.

Don Priess: 22:01

So is there a video component to it, or is it all audio?

Crystal Gallo: 22:05

It's all audio, right now, that's interesting. So when you, when you talk about video, like to be able to have the ability to record and keep keep logged, because right now people can upload so you can take your phone and you can record a video on your phone, you can take a picture on your phone and you can upload that to inner hive. Yeah. Enter hive. So we have a place to store all documents, whether it's documents like that and it's, you know, observations, reflections, progress, it could be documents like insurance. It could be documents

Susie Singer Carter: 22:34

like Power of Attorney. That's what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's so important because, yeah, go ahead, like anything that's anything that is, you know, that affects that family, the unit as a whole, that that is so important because it takes any of the suspicion out or the mistrust, or if it's there to begin with, and and it mitigates all Those problems right there and then. So let me just clarify one more time. So when, when it's recording, is it actually recording an audio file? So you have that

Crystal Gallo: 23:12

perfect, perfect, yeah, yeah. And most people don't want to go back and listen to that full transcription, but they have it as a reference that they want.

Susie Singer Carter: 23:19

No, but it's important if you have it like the nut, yes,

Don Priess: 23:24

with, with dealing with like, like, my mother right now, who has Parkinson's dementia, and she's to a point where she basically all her speech is just sounds. It's not words. Yet she thinks she's actually speaking. You can tell she's talking as if she was talking, but there's, it's just sounds, but behaviors that you can show her physician, things like that. That's why I was thinking about the video component. Also, you know, that you can engage when you're with the person you're care caring for. Now, you can shoot that on your phone, that's a different thing, and then upload it. But I didn't know. That's why I was just asking about the video component as far as if it would be, you know, melded within the transcripts and all those things, you know, I don't know, but yeah, no,

Crystal Gallo: 24:07

that's great. It's great feedback. We definitely wanted to start with, like families that said, there's so much chaos. Please, just help us find clarity, and then help us remember to find connection. Because in that stress, it's really easy to box people out or to get frustrated or let the emotions take over. So we wanted to not ask them to do anything. We're like, Hey, we're gonna meet with you where you're at. We don't want to add to your your list. We're actually gonna take from you couple clicks. Let this record. We'll give you a summary you can easily share. You've got a reference point. We'll give you like very specific tasks. You can interact. It feels so good to check stuff off that list. Share that care with others. Then we designed it so that as they go through, which is where you're kind of jumping to, we want to be able to grow with that care journey. A lot of times, if there is a shift and it's a chronic condition or something changing, progressing over time, it's really important that we're taking some sort of record and journal of that every day. And so we do have the ability in our daily journal, which. Tax. How are you feeling, you know, what did you get today? For movement? What did you get for sleep? What about nutrition? Where's your energy level at? As the person extending care, how much time did you get to spend on yourself? And what are the care events that you extended? You know, did you spend most of it with meal prep, or maybe it was running to the appointments, or possibly it was medication management, and you can even put in, you know, the amount of time on average, maybe it was 15 hours today. So it's really great because it tracks every single day in less than a minute, you're taking information, you're giving yourself insight. You can share it with others. You can see and understand, wow, on average, this week, I had a good week. I was actually happy most days. I saw my sentiment, and I was able to get an hour to myself, you know, I was able to help with some meal prep. We had some appointments, but it wasn't terrible. Mom was great. And you can record some of those things and capture that, and then maybe the week before it was you can look back and you go, wow, I was not in a good place for those days. What happened? And you can see the pattern of, oh, it was because mom was not wanting to take the medication. I was having to negotiate a little bit more, and that was taking more energy, and we were exhausted. Exhausting more trying to get that. And the, you know, the nutrition components balanced, but it brings awareness. So then you can start to understand, what am I doing, how am I feeling, what am I extending for care? Where is my wellness at? And eventually we want to be able to then offer suggestions. So when we see that trend and something maybe is not great for a week, we want to be able to reach out to your inner circle and say, hey, you know, Susie could really use your support this week. Maybe you want to consider dropping off some food. She's been spending a lot of time on meal prep. Or, you know, here's an exercise that you can do that's going to help you. 30 seconds do this. It will help bring you and the frustration with your mom down because she's not not understanding what you're asking her to do, we're going to help you reframe it. Or here's a tip. Here's what other caregivers have found that has been successful in terms of, you know, being able to help with movement, or if they don't want to do physical therapy exercises, get creative. Stop thinking about stepping up the stairs. Think about, let's go to the park where there's flowers to pick, which has stairs which focused on, let's go and get those beautiful flowers over there. We're gonna have to walk those two steps to get there, but let's go get those flowers.

Susie Singer Carter: 27:10

I love it. Do you have an AI that goes, Hey, your sister's doing all the work. What's your problem? Kidding? Maybe. Where? Have you been? No, I'm kidding.

Don Priess: 27:24

It's called Yeah, the bad the bad cop. We call it Yeah.

Susie Singer Carter: 27:28

It's like, I don't want to say anything, but she has put in like 25 hours this week, and yours is zero.

Crystal Gallo: 27:37

Well, it's kind of funny. You mentioned that because family dynamics came come up more than you think, and when you actually have that journal. And I had someone else that shared that sentiment, and she was building resentment with her sibling, and she was like, I just really strongly dislike them right now, and they're not they don't care, and they're not helping. And I was like, Well, why don't you journal everything? Why don't you then share that, and at least start with you've done your job in terms of, let me give them some perspective. Let me help them understand what I'm managing, what's going on. Because she's like, No, they don't get it. They don't care. And I was like, Well, have you explained? No, they don't. They don't. They're like, what takes so long? What are you doing all day? Why does it what do you really spend that many hours? Is it really that stressful? And she's like, I just want to hang up the phone. I was like, Well, put your energy into the journal. It's a good reference for you. You get to learn about you and your mom. You can share it with your siblings, whether or not you know, lead the horse to water, whether or not the horse decides to drink different different conversation. But at least let some of that emotional energy out. Find a way to turn into insight. Let them have the opportunity to consume and understand a little bit more. Build some empathy around Wow. You are navigating a lot.

Don Priess: 28:41

So family members use, I mean, they can have input, or is it just one input and everyone else can just access it? Or can many people do memos and things like that? I missed

Crystal Gallo: 28:54

the beginning, but I think what you asked is, can you have one account where multiple people are engaging in it? And if that

Don Priess: 28:59

is engaging, yes, both, not only just reading or seeing it, but also, again, doing input and things

Susie Singer Carter: 29:04

contributing. Yeah, 100% 100%

Crystal Gallo: 29:07

Yep, you have the ability. So all accounts. Let's just say, Me, Crystal wants to sign up to inner hive. I go, I download it, my enter in crystal at lives free.com and I say, I'm actually going to bring my sister Rosie and my other sister Sarah in, and they're going to be co owners. So that means they're going to have full access. We can add edit, we're all in there. We trust each other, and then maybe I'm going to bring my brother in as a viewer, and he can see what's going on, but not be a co owner. How about family dynamics? Has that for How's that for a softball? Yeah, but there is an option where you can choose to bring people in as CO owners. They can see it all and do it, and do it all. And then you can bring people in as viewers. And we have a lot of families that will use that in situations where they're bringing in help into the home for respite, or sometimes they go into a day program, you know, maybe for movement or spiritual groups. And so it's really important to be able to have that context. It gives them the ability to, you know, in many cases, there's a profile page that says, here's my dad's preferences. Here. His medications, allergens, diagnoses. Also, here's some context around how he tends to communicate best, and that's so invaluable. When you're you're trying to figure out, like, how can I best connect and give someone a great experience when I'm not there, it gives a peace of mind. It gives you, know, a slice of confidence you're like, I I feel good and I know that they're safe because they've got the critical information.

Susie Singer Carter: 30:21

I love this I love this technology. I'm just getting into AI a little bit myself with just, you know, my social media, and it's been so helpful. And I think that, you know, at least for me, I don't know how your technology and how your AI works, and I'm assuming that you are building it on a on a database of, you know, all this information that's already there from caregiving that, you know is, is informing how AI responds to certain things. So, but is there also that personal component where it understands, like, like, let's say the three of us are on the same account. So it's like, this is Susie checking in, and that AI knows, it starts to learn my patterns and starts to learn what's going on. And then you can say to it, hey, listen, what would be a really nice way to tell my brother to step up like and give me? Could you do that? Is that part of the component or not? So

Crystal Gallo: 31:16

there's two parts. Yes, it starts to understand and learn. So it does start to recognize who's in the conversation and then identify. Then the other piece that you had said would be more like, can I use AI in an interactive conversational way? And we do have within our app be a little nod, because inner hive was kind of born we we have a love for nature and bees and their social structure. I mean, everyone thinks, oh, busy bee, and that's great, but it's actually the resilience, the way they communicate, the way they come together. And that shared collaboration was something that we wanted to kind of, you know, emulate and shine through with inner hive. So B is our little interactive chat. And so in this case, you can absolutely chat with her and say, Hey, can you give me some questions that I can consider asking my brother, or can you give me some tips and how I can help my brother recognize that he's maybe not sharing the care load, or that I'm frustrated. So you can have that interaction with bee. And she also gets smarter and starts to to be able to understand and learn. And she can offer you some some guidance, where it's like, hey, consider this. And you can go then do some further discovery, or right, right, here's something that you might, you know, you might find valuable or I

Susie Singer Carter: 32:22

think that's so great. I think that's such a good tool, because just just the idea of having to sit down and write an email to someone that you're already upset with because you're tired and you're frustrated, so now you've got to sit down and think about the, you know, a non confrontational way of like asking a question, and everybody is very sensitive, that is such a good tool to have. And it's learning you like that. To me, this is the best, the best use of AI for me. And I'm a writer, so I mean, I I find it really helpful in framing certain things that you that are that just, you know how to frame it, but it takes too much time. Yeah, does that make sense?

Crystal Gallo: 33:09

Yeah, it does. I still think there's a lot of opportunity there, because we've explored, we've had a lot of people say, you know, it'd be really great. I can identify my inner circle. I can share, you know, updates, help, requests, whatever there. We've had people ask and say, Okay, what if I want that inner circle to expand? Can we just have all inner hive users? And you're bringing caregivers together, and then we're having conversation there. So there's learning that's happening at multiple levels. So a lot of people have said, if they get that guidance and they help, you know, they're given a space to just journal, let the emotion out, also a space to have some dialog around, how do I reframe this, and some data to kind of back them up and say, hey, look, here's what's going on. It does change the entire way that connection happens through coordination. It makes it less viable. It makes people feel more informed and present.

Susie Singer Carter: 33:55

And it's so great because I'm sorry, I just get to be so excited. It's so great. Because, do you have like, if you're saying something and you want to present something AI, because it does clock and cat, you know, and catalog everything that you input. It just that's the nature of AI. It could easily say back on such and such, remember, use this, you know, bring up something that you forgot to even think of to mention about an appointment that you had, you know, journaled or logged in, or whatever. And it can bring that up and say, don't forget to remind them this. You know what I mean that I think that that's those things start happening. I noticed it with with working with AI. Now that it, it has all the memory that I've given it, everything that I've, you know, all my information is there, so it has it, it'll say, oh, yeah, remember when this so and so did this? Yeah, let's, let's do this instead. You know, to, know, offer up different ways.

Crystal Gallo: 34:52

I love that. Actually, I feel like that's super applicable to people that are navigating, well, you know, you understand the audience, Alzheimer's, yeah? Dementia. Or any sort of cognitive impairment, because it helps you, like, being organized isn't just helpful. It's actually really protective, because it supports your safety. You reduce, like, you know, you reduce any sort of errors or missed care steps. It provides you with continuity, so you've got a reference point, a nice kind of audit trail, if you will, when your memory fades. So it's not really a luxury. When people think, well, I don't need that. It's actually, it's a you do need that. It is a necessity like that is going to help you. It's going to bring you together. It's going to help with your preferences and, you know, decision making. And there is so much power and information if we can sift through and help people remove the noise, we can give them the insights that are

Susie Singer Carter: 35:37

going to change the outcome, the important things, and get the emotions out of their way. No,

Crystal Gallo: 35:41

I mean, we could say here, we have other features in the app that are, you know, there's a community piece. You can hook up your calendar and bring your appointments in. It will remind you and say you have a doctor's appointment with your neurologist in five minutes. Would you like to record? So it puts it in front of you. Don't have to think about it. It gives you the option right after it finishes and says, added the notes would you like to share with your inner circle? And we're trying to take a lot of that, that mental load out, and we're trying to make it as easy as possible. So there's a lot of richness with our journal, with our appointment, with a note recording. There's, there's so many different places that, you know, people extending care can kind of grow and they can pick their own journey in the app. So

Susie Singer Carter: 36:16

this is so, so great and so important. I'm, I'm even more excited about inner hive now. So I'm glad this was a happy accident, because I like the I like the direction that you're going in and it, and I get it, and I think, you know, looking back at if I had that kind of tool, it would have been so helpful in so many ways, like super duper helpful. And I mean, I'm all for it. I'm all in I think, I think this is really good.

Don Priess: 36:46

Yeah, I wanted to ask a couple things about Doctor interfacing, because I assume B can say, you know, you can summarize, here's here was the day we spent with her, and some weird things were going on, and blah, blah, blah. And I assume you can ask B to say, hey, I want to express what happened today to my doctor in a coherent, simplified way based on all of this. So I assume you can take whatever transcripts it has, and it'll kind of summarize and say, Yeah, this would be a great way of communicating to your doctor. This is the important, salient points that really he need. Would need to know. Would it go that deep? Yeah, that's

Crystal Gallo: 37:23

interesting. We haven't actually connected those two, because right now you can have a conversation and we provide a summary, and we have very clear next steps or themes, so like, here's what we discussed and here's what needs to be done, and that's typically shared, but I think what you're doing is taking a step further and thinking about the emotional undercurrents or the nuances, like, how can I position this differently? Or what am I not thinking about? And you could absolutely take absolutely take that, it's not automated right now, but you could take that and you could connect with B and say, Hey, B, I want to show you, and I want to express what we did today. Can you help me reframe, you know, how I can share this with my doctor? Yeah, so that's and that's probably an area that we can explore even, you know, in terms of where there's opportunity. And this is why, the more people we can get in, the more families we can reach, the faster we're gonna find, what do they need? Yeah, what

Susie Singer Carter: 38:09

completely, yeah. And then you're speaking, you're speaking Doctor lingo to not, not in but I mean, enough so that it's short it, you know, you're doing a shorthand in a way, not, I'm not I'm not saying that it's medical, but you're doing a quicker short. I'm like, you know, I didn't know any terms when I was taking care of my mom, right? So I'm trying to explain everything like, I didn't know what acuity was. Like a high acuity. I didn't know when they were throwing all these words to me, like comorbidities and all these things. I didn't know what that meant, right? So those are things that you know we might not ask at the time, like, Wait, slow down. What are you talking about? What? What? What's high acuity? What do you mean? Like, and how? When you say high acuity, how many acuities are there? Like, what are we talking about? You know what I mean? Because we don't know. If you don't know, it's not your business and you but these are things you need to know as a caregiver.

Crystal Gallo: 39:02

Yes, yeah. The other side of that reference to, like, go back to and learn and spend time and process, because in on the fly, when you're, like, elevated or, you know, you're just, you're trying to be present, it's really difficult to difficult. We can't be a medical scribe and an emotional support and a firefighter and everything else that you know, at once though,

Susie Singer Carter: 39:21

and because you are good, let me just one say one thing. So because your app is geared towards this, it's not like you're going in, because people could say, well, I could just do a Google search. No, because it's different, because yours is already fine tuned, and it's already in this in this lane, it's, it's, it's primed for this kind of conversation, so it's just picking up and holding on to the important things that belong in the caregiving conversation. Correct?

Don Priess: 39:52

Yes, yes, also relevant to your your situation.

Susie Singer Carter: 39:57

That too personalized, but I'm saying on a bigger Yeah. Yeah, but I'm seeing on the bigger, but, like, on a bigger resource capability, it's it, to me, it's short. It's like, you know, you rather go there than to a Google search where it's like, this generalized AI that comes up and goes well, that there's many ideas that could happen with that. And there's, you know, and then it gives you this, you know, but this, this AI, B knows you.

Crystal Gallo: 40:24

It's targeted. It already knows what you're there for. It already has an understanding of what happens when you're extending care. It's very a lot of people have shared, you know, I want something custom. It's just like you're an entrepreneur. You want to find another entrepreneur. Because you don't explain yourself. You just say, Oh, I'm not trying to Oh, I get it. You want to find someone else's extending care. Same thing. It removes that load, and it just makes it easier to then collaborate and know very specifically, like, here's the situation, you have empathy, totally.

Susie Singer Carter: 40:52

Does it say? Good job. I like it. I like it. I like it. Keep going. I'm all about it. I'm all about it. I don't care that it's a machine. When my AI tells me I'm a fierce lioness, I like it.

Don Priess: 41:12

Do you have you had heard any experiences or, you know, for example, if I was using this and I went in to see the doctor, I would want to turn this thing on and say, I, I'm, I'm recording this information, yeah, and you should be able to do that, you know. But you know, for example, when Susie was, you know, caregiving was her mom, they were like, oh, you can't turn your you can't record, you know, the CNAs were like, You can't do this, or you can't record this. You know. Have there been any pushback? Do you know of any or do you suspect there would be from any one on the medical side saying we're documenting this?

Crystal Gallo: 41:48

I think different offices and different doctors or care teams have different preferences, but if you're talking from like a statewide governance there's definitely different laws by state, if it's a single party or, you know, two party or whatnot. So that's why we have a consent before you do is like, Hey, make sure that everyone's good with you capturing notes on here. But generally, Have we had any pushback with the families that have been using it? No, because they've gotten more value out of it than any sort of barrier of entry. And in many cases, you know, we actually had an organization, and by chance, I happened to meet this organization because of the family. And so what had happened was a gentleman had needed to go into assisted living. He ended up going in. They happen to recognize some patterns that maybe there was possibly, like a bipolar situation. So ended up sending him off and said, Hey, maybe you want to go chat with your doctor. Describe this a little bit more. Had a doctor's appointment. He was, in general, cognitive like health, no issues. Had the doctor's appointment was so overwhelmed with what was said, missed a bunch of it, misunderstood what the doctor said, walked away, think the doctor said he was bisexual. Ended up going back to this organization and thinking, Oh my gosh. Had such an emotional response. And was like, I need to understand if this is accurate, pursued some inappropriate discovery, ended up snowballing into a situation that could have been completely avoided had he had a record of no it was actually the doctor saying, you know, you might have some bipolar, and here are some ways we're going to explore it. But he was so overwhelmed, he misunderstood. He heard something different and walked away. So there's been so many cases where it's valuable to both parties in terms of making sure someone gets help, making sure, you know, there's the information is heard, and when you think about it, I just did a post recently on LinkedIn, where I was talking about, you know, what does this look like in terms of medical errors? Because the volume of money that happens from missed conversations or from information being misunderstood is crazy. It's reported that just shy of 80% of people that walk out of an ER don't like they think they know what's next, and they think they understand what's happening. But then you've got almost 30% readmission and you've got when you look at the dollars, you know, we're spending over 40 billion in just medical like medication errors, 20 billion in general, system errors. So like, there's a disconnect happening with communication. So anyone that doesn't see value and coming together and finding a better way of feeling more aligned, you may, you know, you may question their why,

Susie Singer Carter: 44:17

also, besides the financial issue with that kind of information chasm right there. There's also the fact that they're most most facilities, even if they're a hospital or rehab or whatever the case may be, they're understaffed, so the chances of getting records accurate when people are rushing are, you know, that is a that can be a problem, so and that, and and so if you can take an accurate record on your own, then you're ahead of the game, because, you know, you can say, like, I'm just thinking in my own case, like when I would take, took my mom into the. Urgency for the 20th time, and the doctor just immediately put her on another antibiotic. And I said, but I think she's on two right now? And he's like, Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. And I could have easily said, Well, she is. She's on blah blah blah, blah, blah blah without, without being stressed out about it. But so that comes in handy, because, you know, they're, they don't have time to look it up, especially an emergency situation, they're like, whatever, you know, they'll do whatever it takes to keep to get them at a base level, that's it,

Don Priess: 45:33

yeah, as simple as just the, just what you said, what medications are she currently on? Yes, because they're not going to look it up. They, you know,

Susie Singer Carter: 45:41

they don't have time. Yeah, they don't have

Crystal Gallo: 45:43

time. And a lot of the systems don't talk to each other. And, yeah, there's always behind, like you've got the person extending care and the person receiving care, and almost always the person that needs the care. They're under their own like they have their own situation, they're working through and emotions, and they have a whole nother level of confusion, but almost always behind that degree of confusion is someone in the family that's extending care, and they're completely overwhelmed. I mean, two thirds of people extending care cannot keep track of information, and if you don't have the right information, just like you said, impacts decisions quality of care, it may be prevents decisions from even happening, and you're sitting in the space that can then have detrimental impact. Like, it's crazy, there's there's a better way we can use information to be insightful and really change outcomes. And there's a much more proactive way of being able to identify some of these trends and patterns and help people. It's just, there's so much out there. It's overwhelming.

Don Priess: 46:37

I love it. I love it. You're doing a better way. You're creating a better way. Yeah, yes. Good on you.

Susie Singer Carter: 46:44

I'm all in, I'm all in crystal. I think this is great. I love it. Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you for coming back on and thank you for sharing this and and just, I'm excited about that, like I'm excited about what, what our technology can do. I know there's a lot of bad side to it, but I think you know what it brings to us, in terms of Assistance and Resource is, is unbelievably valuable. It's just so incredible and super exciting too, I think. But it also it also frees you up as a caregiver and and allows you to enjoy the time that you have with your care, with your loved one, instead of being stressed out all the time because you never know life is very tricky, and you know, you want to be able to get as much quality time and as you can and and not be so stressed out, not be so tired, not be, you know, killing yourself.

Crystal Gallo: 47:51

Literally, yeah, literally, we're there. We can be there to like

Susie Singer Carter: 47:57

you got, yeah, you're there. I love it. We love we love anything that has to do with right Don

Don Priess: 48:04

why we do and you know, why? Then that's because love is powerful. Love is contagious, and love conquers all. Conquers all. We thank everybody for watching, listening. We hope you share like all those good things

Susie Singer Carter: 48:19

and yeah, go check out inner hive. Go check out people. We'll have all the information for that. Yeah, you got look at all this great information today on this episode. It's worth it. Look at we have so much good stuff for you guys. Thank you for coming and provide you.