Innovation Spotlight:

ConnectCare Hero

As part of our Reinventing Caregiving blog, we will be featuring different innovators from the caregiving space in our “Innovation Spotlight” series. This week, we spoke to Osvaldo Montelongo, Founder and CEO of ConnectCare Hero.

ConnectCare Hero is a digital platform that provides a one-stop shop for assisted living facility staff to manage daily operations, create fresh programming for residents, and keep families engaged digitally, especially during COVID when in-person visits are often out of the question.

The ConnectCare Hero team recently completed the Techstars Future of Longevity Incubator Program, which was launched in partnership with Pivotal Ventures, an investment and incubation company created by Melinda Gates. Techstars is one of the world’s largest business incubators, seeding hundreds of companies, but this was its first foray into the longevity and caregiving area. In February, we featured the Techstars program in our caregiving podcast, When I’m 64.

What led you to create ConnectCare Hero?

My journey into senior living tech was through a personal experience- my dad. I was kind of an outlier when it came to having an older parent, at least in my group of friends as my dad had me at 57. So when I was in my early 20s, my dad was already in his 80s and there were signs of him showing dementia. Being Latino, it’s one of those things that you really don’t even think about- what is dementia? What is a nursing home? What is skilled nursing? All of these terms I now know very clearly, and my dad was kind of the one that made me think of CCHero because of one day- I went to visit my dad and even though he was one of hundreds of older adults in his community, he felt very lonely, very isolated, very depressed. When I asked him why, he said “there’s nothing for me to do- they play bingo, which I have no interest in, or they put on the tv which is the same show every single time.” And so, it really gave me an idea about how senior living communities were not really made for people like my dad and the Brown and Black community. A lot of the programming was really outdated or not very interactive or not culturally relevant, so that’s really what got me started with CCHero. There are millions of older adults with a need for intentionally programmed activities to get them to keep engaged and healthy.

What has the experience of building ConnectCare Hero been like?

Prior to CCHero, my past life was in the global marketing space- I was working in that sector for 8 or 9 years. I feel fortunate to be able to have experience in working in a corporate and learning how to strategic grow a business and brand from zero. That is not to say building a startup in the healthcare space has been easy. There are several challenges we navigate but the primary one is education on why culturally relevant activities is super valuable to older adults and how it can return back to bottom line of a customer.

Can you give an overview of the services that ConnectCare Hero provides?

CCHero helps senior living orgs track rising risk for social isolation by providing culturally relevant activity programming. You can think of us as the Master Class for the 65+. We help organizations by being a front door not only for engaging with their residents, but also providing key insights with the unique data we pull to help identify rising risk populations.

How, if at all, has being in the Techstars Accelerator changed ConnectCare Hero?

It hasn’t changed us much, but it helped us identify what true value we bring to our customers. When we first started, I always told my team “we’re going to be activities focused. Other startups were doing activities plus marketing, transportation, billing and more, so let’s be strategic and be really good at providing activities.” And so that’s what we really just honed in on. Techstars helped us with identifying how to best positioning CCHero and clearly showing customers how we bring clear value to help drive key business drivers. We offer value by having better curated programming for any organization, during Techstars we have built one of the largest activity networks of curated vendors that provide amazing & unique virtual activities. And we’ve been able to get advised by great mentors that are leaders in the senior living & aging space who are with us even now, after the program has ended, that continue to help us strategically navigate the space.

In what ways did COVID force ConnectCare Hero to adapt? Are there any COVID-era changes that ConnectCare Hero intends to keep?

We are activities focused, so before COVID, we were actually doing in person events. We don’t just do bingo- we do mariachi bands, cooking shows- both Afro and Latin inspired- and guided tours that are culturally relevant, and we used to do these in person. We would bring musicians and chefs into the living facilities, and when COVID happened, it really forced us to think about how to still provide these services that are in demand to communities. We were asked if we could provide these activities over a virtual platform. We talked to our customers and our vendors about their needs and concerns, and we ended up actually creating our own proprietary streaming platform that allows organizations to have safe virtual experiences through our platform. COVID has forced us to go virtual, and I actually do like that approach because I think that since we are a digital first approach, it has helped us scale and become more efficient.

Something that is important to ConnectCare Hero is making sure that facilities that are mostly made up of Black and Brown residents are also receiving access to enriching services. How does ConnectCare Hero accomplish this?

Right now we have over 200 master guides/master entertainers that have been vetted and curated. They cover 20 unique categories, in 9 different languages. They are both short and long formats. By offering a large network of highly skilled and curated activities it helps us provide a good range to cover most interests for brown and black community older adults. It’s important to note, that while we have tons of programming for these particular older adults, we view ourselves as a very inclusive company when it comes to activities we offer because who doesn’t like learning new things especially when it’s something culturally different.

What are some innovations that you see in the space around you that you are most excited about? 

I think one of the beautiful things COVID has done is put a lot of focus on investing in the aging and senior living space. We started in 2017 before COVID, but it’s great to see a lot of money coming in and more eyes on this space. We always said this is a very tech-less space; there’s not a lot of technology and the tech that does exist was really only in premium locations. So I’m excited to see the amount of innovation that is happening in this space in different ways. When it comes to social engagement, there are some new groups that are providing services now, some that we are even looking into potential partnerships with because we do see some synergies there to help make expansions happen for us as well.