00:00Inspired by my mother, who after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's dementia, I had to take away
00:23her dog for safety reasons, and she was very unhappy with me.
00:28I looked around for substitutes for live animal companions, she didn't like anything that
00:33I brought home, and it was at that time I realized there was a very large gap in the
00:37market.
00:38I learned that there are over 300 million seniors with dementia or pre-dementia mild
00:44cognitive impairment who, like my mother, are also limited in their ability to safely
00:50or practically care for a live animal, and so these puppies are designed to treat the
00:56behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia, reduce the need for certain medications,
01:01including psychotropics, and we aim for them to be the first FDA medical devices.
01:08Over 40 years worth of peer-reviewed data show that where a senior with dementia can
01:13form a robust emotional attachment to an object, traditionally that's a human baby doll or
01:19a stuffed animal, that senior gets a great deal of relief from their behavioral and psychological
01:24symptoms, so loneliness, anxiety, depression.
01:28With traditional objects, most seniors don't care for them, maybe 1%.
01:34Research on robotic animals show they significantly outperform those traditional objects and have
01:39the added benefit of reducing pain and the need for pain medications.
01:44So people talk about loneliness and isolation, but they're actually two different things.
01:50Loneliness is the feeling of not having social contacts.
01:53You could be in a 500-bed facility or in a community of many, many people and you could
01:57still be lonely if you don't have those social connections.
02:00Isolation is the circumstances of really being distant from others.
02:05So this is a device that one would think could solve for feelings of loneliness.
02:13I love it.
02:15When I was younger, I had a dog and with modern life, it's difficult in the town to have a dog.
02:45I love it.
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