What Watch Our Own does
Watch Our Own is a phone app built by a family caregivers for other caregivers. It is the most comprehensive care coordination, scheduling, management and communication app available offering those who care for loved ones everything they need in one app.
The Current Landscape
The rise of unpaid caregiving in the U.S. is placing increasing pressure on families, particularly women, who often sacrifice careers and personal wellbeing to care for aging parents or relatives. The physical, emotional, and financial toll of caregiving can lead to burnout, with as many as 20% of family caregivers showing signs of depression, twice the rate of the general population.
In the United States, an estimated 43.5 million people are unpaid caregivers, managing everything from routine checkups to critical medical care for their loved ones. For these caregivers, many of whom juggle careers, families, and the immense responsibility of caregiving, the challenges can be overwhelming. They often rely on a patchwork of apps and tools to manage their loved one’s needs.
Most of these apps specialize in one thing or another from alert notifications and managing medication to calendars and scheduling. No app has all of the features that family caregivers need to manage care for a loved one, until now.
Company Birth Story
Giancarlo Paolillo, CEO of Watch Our Own, experienced these challenges firsthand. As the primary caregiver for his mother, Paolillo oversaw coordination of her care, keeping family up to date, while raising three young children and working up to 60 hours a week. He struggled to balance his demanding job, family responsibilities, and his mother’s care.
It’s crazy, stressful keeping all of the balls in the air while ensuring that you’re present for a loved one.
And it’s a familiar scenario millions of Americans experience and live daily. As his mother’s health began to decline further, he needed to spend more time with her, assisting and managing her daily schedule, medications and more.
At the time there were some apps to help caregivers, but you needed to download three separate apps just to manage care for one person. As an experienced developer building complete solutions for some of the country’s top corporations as well as for first responders, Giancarlo knew there had to be an easier way to help caregivers manage it all and to better support their loved ones.
A few years later, in 2019, Giancarlo set out to do just that. With a team of experienced developers and advisors he launched Watch Our Own in 2020.
“Everyone you know has someone in their life that they are taking care of right now,” Paolillo said. “I juggled caring for my mother, my family, and being productive at work. What I needed was one tool to help me coordinate and manage her care.”
The Solution
Watch Our Own launched a groundbreaking app designed to be the ultimate caregiving companion, providing all of the tools needed to manage the complex demands of caregiving all in one place. Paolillo and his team envisioned a more streamlined approach, developing a single app that offers everything caregivers need, reducing stress and ensure effective caregiving.
The app’s patented Event Engine is a standout feature, allowing caregivers to track incidents and emergencies, locate loved ones, and connect with the group in real time and emergency services—all from within the app. This innovative technology provides peace of mind, ensuring that help is just a tap away.
Key Features of Watch Our Own:
● Create a Group: Easily assemble a team of family and friends to share caregiving responsibilities.
● Manage Health Information: Store vital health data, including medical conditions, medications, and allergies, for quick reference.
● Schedule Reminders: Set up reminders for medications, appointments, and caregiving tasks.
● Task Manager: Create tasks, share and delegate tasks for yourself or anyone in your group. Track important tasks to completion as well as re-assign if necessary.
● Emergency Assistance: With one touch or a voice-activated command, call for help from your group or connect directly with emergency services.
● Secure Communication: Use secure chat and video features to keep everyone informed.
● Geo-Locator: Quickly find a loved one in an emergency and navigate to them.
● Real-Time Updates: When an incident occurs, use in-app chat, calls, and video streaming to keep the caregiving group engaged in real-time.
● Customization: Tailor the app to meet the specific needs of your loved one, with optional features to suit your unique situation.
The app is currently available for iOS in the Apple Store with a version for Android Play Store by end of 2024.
The Team Culture
Giancarlo Paolillo, CIO/CEO/Co-founder Watch Our Own and experienced developer along with his wife and co-founder Sherrie, were both family caregivers to loved ones as well as parents to three children. For them, Watch Our Own was created for their personal use and then saw the opportunity to share it with those who can really use it.
Together with Peter Borodich, CTO and Founding Member, Watch Our Own is dedicated to providing a useful app with purpose to other family caregivers with a vibrant, easy to use interface. The goal of the company is to support caregivers and reduce the stress of caring for a loved one by making it as easy as possible to coordinate and manage 360 care, groups of caregivers and family, and provide the best care for loved ones.
The founders care so much about offering the best tool for family caregivers, that after a few years on the market and feedback, they developed a new user interface and built a patented task manager. They are committed to addressing user feedback and concerns with continuous development to improve the app. The Watch Our Own website is positioning itself as a resource for family caregivers as well with list of places to find support and advice and tips.
A founder quote
“Family caregivers are critical, not just to their loved one’s health and wellbeing, but also to the economy,” Paolillo emphasized. “Today’s caregivers are often caught in the middle—caring for their children and their aging parents. They need support, empathy, and tools that simplify their lives while ensuring their loved ones are well cared for. Watch Our Own does it all.” Giancarlo adds that providing the app for free is one less financial burden on caregivers.
Check it out https://www.watchourown.com/
Follow on social:
Comentários