Lonely senior woman

A Louisville, KY-based healthcare council is piloting two innovations in senior living communities to debut its Healthcare Innovation Engine.

The Louisville Healthcare CEO Council, composed of 12 aging innovation companies, launched the Healthcare Innovation Engine to identify healthcare system gaps, design potential solutions and pilot innovations. The pilot program provides entrepreneurs with mentorship, funding and access to patient populations to test their innovations and develop data-driven insights about health impact. 

The inaugural pilots will address social determinants of health, specifically social isolation and loneliness. Kentucky ranks 48th for risk factors associated with social isolation among older adults.

Signature HealthCARE and Trilogy Health Services, which are members of the council, will pilot the first innovation next month — Famileo, a French-based tool that uses an app to convert digital content into a newspaper for older adults. Families post messages and photos that are organized into a customized family newsletter for a senior living resident.

Famileo was identified through a global innovation search conducted by Aging2.0, a San Francisco-based global network of innovators, in conjunction with LHCC’s CareTech Pitch Competition, an international contest to identify innovations that address the needs of unpaid caregivers. 

Trilogy will pilot Famileo at five of its campuses — Franciscan Health Care Center in Louisville, KY; Cedar Ridge Health Campus in Cynthiana, KY; West River Health Campus in Evansville, IN; Stonegate Health Campus in Lapeer, MI; and The Springs of Mooresville in Mooresville, IN. The pilot includes residents and patients in independent living, assisted living, memory care, personal care and post-acute healthcare services.

A second pilot, launching in June, will evaluate the effects of loneliness and social isolation on aging-in-place at-risk populations, with a particular focus on Black, minority and ethnic community members. 

LHCC President and CEO Tammy York Day said the goal of the Healthcare Innovation Engine is to create a “repeatable and scalable model” to tackle challenges in healthcare and aging services.

“These challenges require a systems approach to problem-solving, and that is the LHCC advantage — the CEOs of companies representing the entire continuum of care, some as direct competitors, working together to solve healthcare challenges, not only in our community, but on a national level,” Day said. “You can’t find this kind of firepower anywhere else.”

Entrepreneurs tapped for pilot programs will be given space in LHCC’s Corporate Innovation Center and have access to former healthcare leaders as mentors through the council’s Chairman’s Circle, led by Randy Bufford, founder, former CEO and chairman of the board of Trilogy Health Services.