Gregg Fous

Founder @AtendaCare | Voice AI for Dementia Caregivers | | Videos: & | #AtendaCare

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

Ambient AI in Home Care

The invisible crisis in healthcare isn't a lack of tech. It's the caregiver burnout that holds families together.

Will AI just make medicine more expensive, or can it finally reach the people shouldering the heaviest burden?

We founded AtendaCare™ on the conviction that AI can make home care more human and less costly at the same time. Not by replacing, but by empowering.
See how ambient AI changes the game for caregivers 🧵👇
> #AmbientAI #HomeCare #DigitalHealth #Caregivers #AtendaCare

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

#Dementia #CAREGIVER
Asking for Help Is Not Giving Up

"At least you learned from that mistake."
I hear that from other entrepreneurs, and I have said it plenty of times myself. It's true. We learn from experience. But isn't it better to learn from somebody else's?

Picture a brick wall. It's high, and you can't see either end of it. The ground under it is rock hard. You try climbing and slide back down. Digging is out. You walk east looking for the edge and never find it, then turn around and walk the other way with the same result.
So you quit.

Or you ask for help.
Asking for help is not quitting. Asking for help is how you keep going.

Caregivers hit walls all the time. Some of them turn out to be small obstacles you can step over. Others are thick molasses, and you can get through those too, slowly. Why walk it alone when somebody a little further down the road already knows where the ground is firm?
You set the goal yourself: take care of your Tended, the person you care for. That's the whole job. And you can't pour from an empty cup. If there's nothing left in you, there's nothing left to give.
I told a new acquaintance yesterday that I can't get to support groups. I never know when Gail will need me, and I don't like making obligations that take me out of the house. Is that a weak excuse? Maybe it is. I want to share what I've learned, and I want some support for what I'm going through.
She told me the group runs two to six people, all women. Men come once and don't come back. It isn't that they're unwelcome. They just stop showing up.
I told her I'll be there. Ten o'clock, Friday.
How am I going to manage that? I'm going to ask for help, and I'm going to do it twice. I'll ask that room of women for support. And I'll ask somebody to come sit with Gail, with a good reason for being here that makes sense to her.
I don't know yet whether I'll make it. Friday morning could go sideways and I could still be sitting right here at ten o'clock.

I know how to say this. I don't always know how to do it.

But I'm going to ask.

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

Patience is the most interesting lesson, because patience is two things, especially in caregiving; What you feel, and what you show, or demonstrate. You can FEEL so impatient, and with it's certain guilt, while you demonstrate incredible patience outwardly toward your Tended {the person you care for). Learn to show patience and be proud of what you SHOW, and don't harbor guilt about what you feel.

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

@DeeWayneAnthony Good job Dee!

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

@mymomcare Don't hate. Just refuse to like.

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

Elon Musk, why is it easier to by a new Tesla model Y than a Tesla Level 2 wall charger?

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

When Gail was diagnosed with vascular dementia, we left the doctor's office with a name for what was happening. Not much else.
The next appointment was months away. The time in between was mine to figure out.
I did what I know how to do. I studied. I took classes, joined forums, watched every caregiving video I could find, and took notes on all of it. Then Gail would get lost in her own home, and none of those notes were in the room with me.
Vascular dementia doesn't fade. It drops in steps. Gail was steady one week and changed the next. When the follow-up visit came, I was trying to fit months of changes into one short appointment.
Early on, Gail didn't want anyone to know about her diagnosis. So I carried it quietly. I learned that what I needed most wasn't another answer. I needed someone to listen.
That's why we built AtendaCare. Atenda is a voice companion for the caregiver at home. She listens, and she carries what I see at the kitchen table to the clinician's desk. She doesn't replace a doctor's judgment. She makes sure the doctor hears the whole story.
I'm still living this with Gail. Nearly 12 million Americans are caring for someone with dementia. They deserve more than a pamphlet and a long wait.
If you care for patients living with dementia, I'd like to talk. See what we're building at https://t.co/DREcLLMGff
Gregg
#Dementia #Caregiving #AlzheimersCaregiving #HealthcareInnovation

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

When Gail was diagnosed with vascular dementia, we left the doctor's office with a name for what was happening. Not much else.
The next appointment was months away.
I did what I know how to do. I studied. I took classes, joined forums, watched every caregiving video I could find, and took notes on all of it. Then Gail would get lost in her own home, and none of those notes helped.
Vascular dementia doesn't fade. It drops in steps. Gail was steady one week and changed the next. When the follow-up visit came, I was trying to fit months of changes into one short appointment.
Early on, Gail didn't want anyone to know about her diagnosis. So I carried it quietly. I learned that what I needed most wasn't another answer. I needed someone to listen.
That's why we built AtendaCare. Atenda is a voice companion for the caregiver at home. She listens, and she carries what I see at the kitchen table to the clinician's desk. She doesn't replace a doctor's judgment. She makes sure the doctor hears the whole story.
I'm still living this with Gail. Nearly 12 million Americans are caring for someone with dementia. They deserve more than a pamphlet and a long wait.
If you care for patients living with dementia, I'd like to talk. See what we're building at https://t.co/DREcLLMGff
Gregg
#Dementia #Caregiving #AlzheimersCaregiving #HealthcareInnovation

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

@alzheimerssoc Atendacare will be a huge part of this. We offer 24 hours support for home caregivers, where the majority of dementia care takes place. https://t.co/y3CLoux0Z5

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

I didn't start an AI company any more than Coca-Cola started a water company. AI is the ingredient. Caregivers are the point.

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

This is the whole design question for anyone building something they actually care about.
We serve family caregivers taking care of a parent with dementia. That is pillar one, and it is why the company exists. It doesn't pay for itself. So we built pillar two: the provider, who gets paid for reviewing what the caregiver reports.
Pillar one is why we exist. Pillar two is why we can. The caregiver never sees a bill.
Turn those around and you get a documentation tool with a caregiver attached. Nobody needs that.
You don't create to make money. You make money so the creating survives contact with reality.

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

@MartaCecilia36 I have never used an ATM.

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

An ICP is a person" beats "SMBs." But name the job, not just the person.
User, chooser, payer are often three different people. Design for one. Sell to another. Bill the third.
Otherwise you've shrunk the vague answer, not fixed it. At Atendacare we design for the caregiver , and that caregiver has a narroer definition. We sell to the provider. The payer {in our case Medicare), we comply with.

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

Three psychiatrists. Same training, same rubric. They could not agree on what makes an AI response to a mental health crisis safe.
A new Stanford study had three board-certified psychiatrists rate 360 AI responses across eight clinical dimensions. Reliability was poor on every one. On the highest-stakes questions, suicide and self-harm, they disagreed the most. One rated 92% of responses inadequate on whether the AI disclosed it was not a clinician. Another rated those same responses fine.
The disagreement was not sloppiness. Each psychiatrist held a coherent, defensible clinical philosophy: one led with safety, one with engagement, one with cultural context. All three are right. Average them and you get a number that represents no clinician at all.
The conclusion: a general-purpose AI, asked to be everything to everyone in mental health, has no stable ground to stand on.
This is the problem AtendaCare was built to solve.
AtendaCare is a purpose-built clinical companion for the family caregivers of people living with dementia. The population is known and the clinical framework is declared in advance. The scope is narrow by design. It does not make the clinical call. It captures what happens over the month and delivers a structured summary to the prescribing physician, who reviews and attests. The clinician carries the judgment. The platform carries the watch.
The Stanford authors, in their own recommendations, draw the line exactly here: general AI cannot be made reliably safe for mental health, but purpose-built tools with a known context and a declared philosophy can.
We did not commission that research. They were studying the largest AI systems in the world. They described the architecture we already built.
(Jafari et al., Stanford, FAccT 2026)

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

If the next chapter of home-based care is honest, it includes the caregiver.
If it is just, it starts with the families who served.
Real progress takes partnerships and harder questions.
Mine: Who is building for the caregiver? #VeteransHealth

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

UnitedHealth's earnings call last week highlighted a 35% reduction in skilled nursing facility admissions through home-based care.
Real number. Real shift. But there is something nobody on the call said out loud. A Thread #Caregiving

[Gregg Fous @GFous]

I built AtendaCare for this gap.
Voice-first AI the caregiver talks to. Remembers. Watches for warning signs. Converts thirty days of caregiver observations into a structured monthly clinical summary for the prescribing physician.
Built around what a caregiver actually needs. I am one. #Caregivers