On the TechTO stage ×1
First seen on the TechTO stage in 2019. Every talk is searchable — ask the archive about Joe ↗
In their words
The Ring of Support is a first step towards that community response model — one day it can lead SE Health to deliver care not necessarily every Tuesday and Thursday at 2pm, but when you need it.
Who knows — maybe one day, when predictive analytics is more accessible for everyone, we can send a nurse to someone's home before they even ask for it.
Quick answers
Who is Joe Au-Yeung?
He introduced himself on the TechTO stage in June 2019 as a project specialist on the SE Futures team at SE Health, the not-for-profit home-care social enterprise formerly known as Saint Elizabeth. No current role is published here because none could be verified from a first-party source.
What is the Ring of Support?
An Amazon Alexa service for seniors living at home, built by SE Health with the digital health company Memotext on a grant from the Centre for Aging + Brain Health Innovation. It runs morning and evening wellness check-ins, reads out the day's calendar and messages from a caregiver, and sends medication and appointment reminders, with automated phone calls as a fallback if someone misses the Alexa prompt.
What happens when a check-in is missed?
It escalates to people. A missed check-in or a report of feeling unwell routes to SE Health's virtual nurse team, who call the client and try to resolve it on the phone; if they cannot, they dispatch a nurse or personal support worker to the home. Caregivers get real-time SMS updates and a dashboard showing trends over time, which Au-Yeung framed as the point — a daughter two hours away stops carrying the whole thing alone.
Why build it on voice?
Because there is nothing to learn. He quoted a line he had heard — that we used to have to understand machines, and now the machines have to understand us — and pointed out that a beta tester who did not know how to set her oven timer simply asked Alexa to do it. Older adults with mobility issues do not have to reach a keyboard. As presented at HealthTO, June 2019.