“Harnessing the global supply of human compassion, intelligence and care to enable families to provide loved ones with very cost effective company and supervision when they can’t be there”
MIT-trained Victor Wang, Founder and CEO of GeriJoy, presented his company to the crowd at the July 2014 Silicon Valley Health 2.0 meetup at the Plug and Play Center in Sunnyvale. He started out by talking about his grandmother who was living by herself in Taiwan thousands of miles away from his family. When she was diagnosed with dementia, Victor said, his mom gave up a lot to provide her with companionship, care and oversight.
Victor’s family is not alone in making these kinds sacrifices so their loved ones receive good care. He says, “there are 16 million Americans that provide unpaid care for a family member or friend who has dementia. The dollar cost is staggering—$214 billion just in the US.”
Victor thinks the root problem is that there is a huge demand for caregiver hours that vastly exceeds the supply because of age demographics in the US—there are barely enough young people to take care of all of the elderly and the ratio is getting worse as the population ages.
Watch the video to learn how GeriJoy brings joy to people with dementia and peace-of-mind to the people who are about them.
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This video is under BY-ND creative commons.
