CareCompass (Healthcare)

Health & Wellbeing - Empowering Caregivers

Empowering Caregivers with Simple, Accessible Support.

Team members:

• Isaiah Tan, UX Designer

• Joshua Gei, Data Scientist/Product Manager

• Justin Noah Chua, UX Designer

• Ming Jun Zhang, Developer

• Natalie Yu, Product Manager/Data Analyst

Problem Statement

Background
Almost everyone has been, is or will be a caregiver to someone else. This resonates particularly in the Singapore context, where the confluence of a rapidly ageing society and societal norms around familial responsibilities mean that the prevalence and burden of informal (unpaid) caregiving for seniors will only rise. Already, a 2020 study by Duke-NUS estimated that the cost of informal caregiving for seniors in Singapore comes up to $1.28 billion a year, with caregivers putting in more than 60.5 hours per week looking after seniors (Duke-NUS, 2024). 12,400 Singapore residents have also given up their jobs due to caregiving responsibilities for their parents (MOM, 2022).

Given the time and resource-intensivity of informal caregiving, it is no wonder that 53.4% of caregivers feel that they are barely coping or burdened (NCSS, 2022). For certain conditions such as dementia, the burden of care on caregivers is twice as high compared to conditions other than dementia (WiSE study, 2023). The top challenges include managing behavioural changes (cited by 70% of caregivers), emotional stress and burnout (67%), coping with disease progression (57%) and juggling personal and professional life (57%) (Dementia SG, 2024).

In our user interviews, searching for and navigating to relevant information to support loved ones was a common pain point underlying these challenges. While healthcare providers could be helpful if they were not busy, the long time between appointments (in the public system) meant that caregivers would need to take matters into their own hands. Research has found that caregivers (57%) of patients with dementia would turn to friends or family for advice, as our interviewees did in hopes of obtaining more specific advice that they could trust (Dementia SG, 2024). If not, online search could be useful but results may be too generic.


Problem statement
Caregivers of elderly with dementia need to search for and sift through multiple sources of information to make good care decisions when their loved ones require informal care. This results in a disproportionate amount of stress and time spent searching for and evaluating information because there is no single source of trusted, curated advice on next steps they should take for their care recipient’s needs.

Proposed Solution

We aim to develop a centralised platform with a conversational chat interface that takes in user input about the needs of their care recipients and pulls resources from trusted websites (e.g. DementiaSG, Agency for Integrated Care) that are regularly maintained. The output would be a set of personalised, step by step recommendations to help caregivers formulate their care plans. The chat interface would provide an alternative search experience that is like talking to a trusted friend instead of clicking through websites. The personalisation and organisation of plans would also help overcome the genericity of current online information, increasing the utility of outputs.

Impact
- Reduction in time caregivers spend searching for information (and hence working hours saved, $ saved)
- Reduction in stress in the search experience
- Additional resource for clinics / social workers to better help patients and caregivers
- Increase visibility and adoption of resources for community partners