Episode 59 - IndeeLift the People Picker Upper With Steve Powell

Welcome to caregiver relief. I'm Diane Carbo, RN, and today's show we're exploring groundbreaking innovations and the brilliant minds behind them today.

We're honored to introduce a truly inspiring individual, Steve Powell, the founder and inventor at the helm of IndeeLift. Steve's journey into innovation wasn't just driven by a spark of genius, but a deep personal necessity. The saying, necessity is the mother of invention, couldn't be more apt.

Steve witnessed both of his parents struggle with falls due to various healthcare complications. And Steve Experience firsthand the challenges and dangers associated with helping our fallen loved ones up after a fall. The personal struggle he went through highlighted a glaring gap in available solutions to assist in these situations when you are trying to get your loved one up off the floor.

This gap led to the birth of IndeeLift, a company that has revolutionized the way we approach how we pick up our fallen loved ones. Loved ones or those with mobility challenges at Steve. You are transforming how to safely handle patient experiences, frequent falls, ensuring the safety of both the patient and the caregiver.

That's what led me to contact you. You're offering innovative solutions. That use the principles of gravity and machine assistance, and therefore you minimize the risk of life related injuries. your invention could not be timely or in the United States alone, approximately 8Million people call for help after a fall.

And I know from my own experience that millions more experience falls monthly. And they offer requiring assistance from family members, neighbors, or EMS. I have one family that used to call the football team to help them. Steve, this is your product. IndeeLift is more than just a product. It's a lifeline that offers immediate recovery from falls with enhanced safety and peace of mind.

I watched the videos and I had to call you. Today, Steve Powell is here to share his story, the challenges he faced and how his personal experiences has led to the creation of a device that has changed lives.

So I'd like to give a warm welcome to Steve Powell, a man whose invention is not just a tool, but a testament to the power of necessity driven innovation. Steve, I'm thank you for joining me today. I read that article in, on, online about you and your IndeeLift selling it you're promoting it in nursing homes and assisted livings.

And I'm a rehab nurse of over 50 years and I instantly said, I need to know this man. I need to contact him. I used to pick up men for a living. That's an interesting one. And I did. I picked up men for a living. I, I was a rehab nurse. And in those days, we actually did fireman lifts. I worked with quads, paras, head injury, stroke victims.

When I saw this and my body at 70, Years old is broken. My back is ruined. I live with chronic pain due to the picking up thousands of patients over the years. So I'd like to talk to you about your experience and how it inspired you to create your product IndeeLift great. So I really. I was the care provider for my mother and my father, and I was assisting with my father because he had a registered nurse as a wife, and they actually had a Hoyer lift, but a Hoyer lift requires multiple people to operate, and there's a sling, and you're picking people up, and they're swinging, and my dad's dementia caused him to be very nervous about it, and he, after a couple of times of the Hoyer lift, he just was not cooperating anymore and Could not stand hanging there being afraid.

Yeah. So we migrated from being able to get him up once in a while to having to use EMS to get him up when he fell. And my dad was almost. almost 80 when we were having this problem. He had bad knees from osteoarthritis and he couldn't get his knees fixed because he was obese and the medical community will not operate on somebody who's obese because of the inherent risk that go with that.

So he was stuck in a catch 22. He had bad knees that made him fall down but he couldn't get him fixed because he couldn't get his weight down far enough to do that. And so when we couldn't any longer get him up with the Hoyer lift we were Left with only the 9 1 1 option for EMS and he. Many times because in the middle of the night, he'd get up and need to go to the bathroom as he did all of his life, jump out of bed and go to the bathroom.

His dementia was such that he didn't remember that he couldn't jump out of bed and go to the bathroom and he would try to jump out of bed. And the next thing, is the demon swollen feet would cause him to fall over. And now he's on the ground. And this happened night after night for weeks at a time.

We can't really restrain him. So at one point we're trying to strap them in to keep him from falling out of bed, but he still would sit up and try to get out of bed.

 The EMS folks would come out. And and they would pick him up. The problem with that is he was very heavy and they didn't have any special tools to pick him up. All they could do was manhandle them with three guys, grabbing him under the shoulders and by his arms and lifting him up.

After a couple of weeks, he had gotten bruised from lifting him by his, extremities, and then when they would come, and he would fall, they would come after he fell, and when they picked him up, they picked him up in the same way, by his same arms, and he would scream and holler in pain, so it was just this most horrific thing that I had to deal with, my father not being able to get any help, you And the only help we had being firefighters that would pick him up and hurt him, and they didn't want to hurt him, but they had to get him off the floor, and so he would scream in pain.

I was moved by that need. So that was the stage was set for me to do something about this. During that same period of time, my mother fell six times in four weeks. She lived in the same town with me, and whenever she fell, she was Inevitably, she was getting up from the bed in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and she would slip and fall on the way to the toilet, and there we'd, I'd find her on the floor.

One time I found her on the floor after she hit her head on the nightstand on the corner, and she was a bloody mess because she just fell and hit her head and bled all over, and now I've got my mother who's falling in my bed. And I thought I've got to find an answer for this. So I searched the Internet.

I searched everywhere with all of my great technical resources. I could not find a solution to solve this problem. I guess it's my job to make one. And I'm telling you that God pushed my mother over those six times because at some point he said if I keep pushing her over, Steve's going to do something about it.

And so I, that's the story I use it. God pushed my mother over enough times. He caused me to make an answer. I did. So I invented a machine so that she could get up by herself because she didn't want to have to call 911. She called 911 the last of those six falls and they broke into her house because it was locked.

She was on the floor, had messed herself because she was on her way to the bathroom when she fell. She, so now we've got a mess. She's got four firefighters. They're standing over. She told me she was never more humiliated in her life than that moment, and she was never going to call EMS again because she was just going to wait for me to get back into town because I would pick her up and it wouldn't, and it wasn't so dignity crushing as having four fire guys over there do that.

I told her, Mom, if you don't get up soon, you're not going to survive it because falling isn't necessarily the biggest problem. Getting up is the problem. And when you can't get up for a while. And you struggle, your body gets. in bad shape. And when you're elderly and disabled, the longer you stay on the ground, the more trouble you're going to have recovering from that over time.

I have one aunt that fell and they didn't find her for two weeks. And that was a mess, a real mess. So I have real personal heartfelt stories that caused me to think we've got to solve this problem. So necessity is the mother of invention between my father and my mother falling down regularly. I had to build two machines, one for each of them with different functionality.

And now that we started talking to other folks about it, apparently, my parents are not the only two folks on the planet to fall. And it only made sense that if I was gonna solve the problem for them, that I might solve it for others. And then we found people with inclusion body myositis, and people with muscular dystrophy, and people with all sorts of neuromuscular disorders and a plethora of causes that caused them to fall down and they don't have the strength to get back up.

And now a company was born in 2014 to solve that problem, and by 2016 we were shipping machines for people at home so they could get off the floor by themselves. And we've actually got some patents and the patents are covering them as self operated devices because the goal was to make people independent and when mom goes to work and dad stuck at home, if he falls over, he can't call mom to come home from work.

He needs to get up off the floor and he can scoot over to this machine that we built and pick himself up. So we truly have solved that problem for people. It's certainly helpful if you have a caregiver can roll the machine to wherever you fall, but many people live in a small location. They put the IndeeLift in a central point within their home, and if they fall, instead of scooting over to call somebody on the phone, they scoot over to the machine, pick themselves up, and get on with their day.

No EMS calls, no calls to the neighbors, no dignity crashing in the interactions with anybody, just private independence. Helped up by a mechanical device that's just a life assist device. I love the concept. I have to tell you because I have worked in nursing for over 50 years and we pull, we tug, we do so many things.

I have to ask you, Steve, how did you approach the design of IndeeLift to ensure it was both effective for the user and easy for caregivers and the patients to operate? I didn't know what I was doing when I started. I built five different machines to try to do this and every one of them failed under the weight.

So I had to find something that was industrial strength enough. They could hold up. My father was 300 plus pounds. So I needed a machine that would pick up a large person or a small person, but just pick them up. And I went through multiple iterations. I have videos of the 1st machines that I made, and then I finally made 1 that worked and was on wheels and could roll around and be helpful.

And that's the 1 I took to a factory and that's the 1 we engineered and we're using a another or 2 generations past that now. But we are using all those same concepts that I did when I initially started it, and someday I'll share the video of the first machine I ever built that worked. And and it was so little, it was just a little tiny thing and it had a bathroom seat that came from Bed Bath and Beyond.

And you push the button and it stood you up. And I've got a great video and I remembering those days of inventing a machine to do the job, that was the breakthrough because I actually. had a machine that somebody could push the button and pick themselves up. So now we're multiple generations in and we've solved all of the associated problems with falling in recovery because people need assistance getting on, people need assistance getting up, and now our machines have all the features they need to do that.

So I guess that was going to be my next question, is how has user feedback influenced the evolution of the IndeeLift products? In fact, a lot. So I had my mother and my father as guinea pigs originally as my market samples and my mother being 82 at the time, she she showed a lot of weaknesses in our product because she didn't have any strength, but she fell down and she didn't have any problem walking around, but she had bad knees.

She couldn't get up by using her knees because it was too much pain. Once, once I solved her problems, I have solved the problems of the world because she was 82 and didn't have any strength. If I can get her to be able to operate a machine and get off the floor by herself, it was going to be a win.

So I created the first machine that mounted on the wall in her hallway, so it didn't take up any space in the house, right? The idea was, oh we don't take up space in the house. We put it on the hallway. I mounted on the wall. I turned it over to her and said, okay, you're ready to go. She didn't fall down for nine months.

Apparently, it's a fall prevention device as well. There you go! But then at nine months into the game, she called me up, and she left a message on my voicemail and said, Steve, I need you to come help me up. I'm on the ground again, and I'm not calling the fire department. fIve minutes later, I got another call from my mother, and she said, Steve, I'm calling to let you know that I scooted over to that machine you put in my hallway, and I sat on the, I pushed the button.

I got myself up. You don't have to come here. Nobody has to come here. I got myself up and she got herself off the floor for the first time and she had fallen for many years and people that fall fall regularly and she fell so many times. And, but she, this was the first time in 10 years that she got up by herself after a fall.

And that was my redeeming moment that rationalized and justified all of my efforts because now my mother could get off the floor by herself. Hallelujah. thAt brings tears to my eyes because I have worked with, like you, many seniors that fall repeatedly. And there is a thing of pride and there's there's their dignity is being invaded or encroached in some way because, like your mom, she missed herself when she fell on the way to the bathroom and then she's got these four men hanging over her trying to get her up and she's mortified and that, that vanity.

Is in all of us in some form or fashion and independence are we have a strong sense of independence. So we don't want to have to rely on anybody. And I'm going to be the worst patient in the world. Nurses usually are and I don't want to ask people to help me or and so I'm like, I need to get this right now.

I'm not falling yet, but I want to get prepared. So let me tell you, there's another angle that you didn't mention. So when my mother fell so many times so regularly over a short period of time, she literally became afraid to walk around in her own house because if she fell, she had to put up with it.

So her psychological condition was I'm walking on eggshells living in my own house and I am just afraid to be here. I don't want to do my laundry. I don't want to stand up because if I fall down, I have to call I hate When she finally got herself up with this machine, her psyche changed from, oh my gosh, I have to go to the other room, to it doesn't matter if I need to go to the other room because if I fall down, I can just pick myself back up.

I have a way to do that. And her whole demeanor in life. Her whole demeanor in life changed to a I'm okay now I can live my life as I did before not being afraid of falling because now I don't have to call 9 1 1. I don't have to call my son. I can scoot my little butt right over there, which is closer to me than the phone, and I can pick myself up.

That, Is golden because that gives absolutely right that so that's an angle that people don't think about just getting up. But that's the ability to be comfortable in your own home is priceless. As we get older, we do become. Have a fear of falling and I know seniors that won't go into their bathroom because sure as anything, something they're going to fall or and they take baths at the sink and not in, in the shower, because they're afraid of getting slippery and falling.

I know when up north, I'm in the south right now. But in the cold in the winter, the seniors don't want to go out of their house because they slip and are afraid of slipping and falling. Absolutely. And no way to get up. And it's and besides, if you fall on an ice thing, you're likely to hit hard and break a hip or something like that.

Yeah, just that fear factor to be able to live comfortably in your own home without the fear. So I have a little story about a woman that I got a phone call from a 70 year old woman. And she said, two years ago, I bought one of these machines for my 93 year old mother. She wanted to stay at home.

And she fell down all the time and we were going to have to put her in a home. So we bought your machine to see if it would work. And she used that machine two to three times a week for the last two years. And she's now 95. And we have to put her in a place now that they can take care of her more because she can't live by herself anymore.

But we wanted this machine back because we know you're going to have other people that will benefit and their lives will be better for it too. And my mother got to stay at home for two years. That she did not have to go to a care facility. She was happy that is a touching story and it's so one more one more piece for it.

Okay. The conversation moved to them. Now that you moved her. What does that cost? Now we have to pay 8, 000 a month for her to live in a facility that they take care of her. So for the last two years, they used, mom was at home where she wanted to be, and when she fell down, she got up and she didn't tell anybody.

And she didn't have to worry about it. Nobody said, oh, mom, you're going to have to go to a care facility if you can't get up. She got up on her own. It was private. She did it independently. And she stayed at home two years longer than she could have. And two years times 8, 000 a month is a whole lot of money.

Yeah, especially when you're private pay and I can tell you from my personal experience. I was a regional manager for several nursing home chains and they look at you. They want private pay. They want. And it's being done. Yeah, I'm not paying them. They get paid in private. But the point is. So not only did we allow this woman to stay home for two years and she took care of her falling problem on her own, we saved her and her family really a lot of money by being able to do that, but more than that, it's not about money.

My mother died December 18th of this year at 91. She. Was had been in rehab a couple of times in her life from a broken arm and a couple of things she had to do. She swore she was never going to go to one of those places again because they don't smell good. The people are not really very nice because they don't get paid enough.

The food is not really nice because it's institutional. We don't really want to be there. I'll get rid of all these other old people that are going to die. Nobody wants to be there. They all want to be at home. And so that was the inspiration. For us to build these machines to be self operated and to be small enough, like the size of a vacuum cleaner to stay in the home because they don't take up too much space, but they provide true independence for those who want to stay at home.

And Steve, we're in a public health crisis right now. That's only going to get worse. We have more seniors than youth in the country. Actually, it's all over the world. The low birth rates have killed off so many of our youth. In some way or fashion, it's unfortunate, but what we're what those consequences are going to be, we don't have enough people to take care of our elderly.

And this is an amazing solution to help people that to allow them to help themselves when they can. And I love that. I just love that. There's 65 million Americans that are the tail end of the baby boomer generation, of which I am now 66. I'm in that group. 65 million Americans became 65 in the last two years, and it is a giant bubble of humanity.

And we don't have nursing facilities. We don't have staff. We don't have any way to take care of those people as they continue to age. We're living longer. We're getting through these diseases, but we're having a tougher time after those things. And. It's this giant need. And now this one little tool is going to change lives for a bunch of people because, I wished I had, I've used the Hoyer lift a million times.

I can tell you it's not only challenging, but patients have a real fear like your father did of being dropped. I understand that, but yes. And I can tell you, it takes 2 or 3 people to, you have to turn a person and put them on this and make this oh, sling. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Word finding problem. It was a sling and then you have to. Get it so that it hooks up at the right way to make sure that they're not going to fall. And it's a lot of physical work. When I watch this and I see this, I'm thinking, Oh my Lord, my body could be so much better. The Hoyer lift was intended to do transfers from a bed to a wheelchair to a bed, a gurney to a bed, those kinds of things.

It was never designed to pick people up from the floor. So I started to look to how he's going to solve this problem. I looked at the Hoyer lifts. I looked at the sit to stands. I looked at all of the devices that were out there. None of them were focused on finding a way to get somebody up from the floor.

It ends up being that I built a machine that was specifically designed to do that. So it's a purpose built appliance and it does its job very well. And during the course of the years of deploying it, Some folks contacted me with inclusion body myositis, which is a degenerative muscular disorder that takes their thigh muscles and they're there and it just wastes them.

So now, not only are they weak and they fall down because of this, But when they try to get up, if they were sitting in a chair, they can't stand up from a chair because they don't have the muscles to do that. Yes. So they ask me, Mr. Powell, your machine will pick us up from the floor and that's great, but it only picks us up to a seat height and our disease doesn't allow us to stand up from a chair.

Could you make it a little bit taller? And that was in December of 2020. In April of 2021, I built our first machines, and by May, we were doing clinical trials in the field with people with inclusion body myositis. They could not get up from a chair, and I showed them how our machine, they could slip onto it from a chair, slide over to it, and it would stand them up.

And now we've solved the problem for that disease, but then we learned. that people with muscular dystrophy, with ALS, with muscular sclerosis, with Parkinson's, all of these other diseases have the same sort of issues, osteoarthritis, that people can't stand up. So now our machine that picks you up to stand you up completely can help literally millions of people that have a plethora of different reasons to why they can't get up and why they lose their balance and why they need a tool like this.

So it's been a progression of now we can help more and more people. And podcasts like you're doing here by getting the word out is going to help those folks. And I'm not doing this because I want money. In fact, I could retire. I should retire. I'm old. But guess what? I get, we get reviews written about how it changed someone's life.

Because now I can take care of my disabled daughter. Now my wife and I, who are too old to do this, can pick them up now and we don't have to call 9 1 1. We're not getting injured. It's taking care, mom taking care of pop, and pop taking care of mom, and mom and dad that are elderly, taking care of their disabled child that they've been, that they've had now, been caring for them for 30 years, and now their backs are broken.

They can't do it. This tool does the job. It's just I'm totally enamored every day by the positive feedback we get from folks who are benefiting that I'm all steam ahead. We're going full around. We're going to change this problem for people in the world and we're going to make it better.

You're taking it I'm going to take it from a different perspective as well as the caregiver as a professional caregiver and a family caregiver. I cannot tell you how many times. You your back gets injured and this just from the workers comp point of view for the business end of things, people should be the building should be swarming to you to.

To have this, because it will save on workers comp claims. It'll save on the caregivers because we, there's so many of us out there say I can't help anymore because my back hurts. I can stand there and lift can help you, but I can't lift and roll the machine over and push the button. Yes.

Yeah, I just love that idea because it's so challenging and I've helped probably thousands of people up off the floor in my 50 years of nursing and it does take a toll on your body as I'm living. I used to do fireman lifts. So my neck and my thoracic area are bad and then my lower back from lifting patients and picking them up.

And like I said I picked up men, I threw them over my shoulders and I. Put them in bed or put them in their wheelchair or on the potty chair or whatever. So I know it. That's why I had to as soon as I read your article, the read the article about your company. I looked it up and I said, I have to share this story.

This is an amazing tool that is going to forever change the way we are going to be able to help our seniors and the youth that are subjected to. Quadriplegics or paras. There's so many different diseases or disorders, MS. And multiple dystrophy and a plethora of other degenerative or muscle wasting diseases you're going to give them a quality of life that they haven't had before.

So there's real knowledge around this health care crisis and the health care crisis is that OSHA did a study for 15 years and determined that 250, 000 health care workers a year are injured to a point of disability by caring for their patients, picking them up and pulling them on the bed, getting them off the floor, and they made some care.

New rules in 2018 about we can't pick up patients anymore health care workers at a assisted living facility Cannot pick up a patient off the floor. So there's this Conundrum because I know I have people that are on the floor, but I have a rule that says I can't pick them up So the denver story talks about the 19 locations that have these machines because they solve the problem by saying I'm, not picking them up.

I can roll a machine over to them. We can push the button the machine picks them up Nobody's doing that Nobody else is doing that. And now we're meeting OSHA requirements for safe patient handling. And this tool is just a piece of technology that is enabling. The implementation of safe patient practices, whether it's getting them off the floor, whether it's standing them up from the commode or standing them up out of bed or putting them back in this tool allows you to get through that stuff.

It's good. It's going to have such a huge impact, especially with the growing aging population. I do want to address the impact on your EMS and health care. What has IndeeLift had on EMS and healthcare systems, especially in the terms of reducing physical strain and cost associated with those non emergency lift assist calls?

You talked about this yesterday with your Wisconsin EMS system. Could you share that with me? So it is, it's, it ends up being that because of the rules around patient handling and now healthcare providers not being able to lift patients, the only legitimate source to go to for lift assist calls is now the emergency medical services call nine one one.

And it ends up being that between 15 and 20 percent of most EMS Organization's calls are related to lift assists and lift assists have caused untold numbers of injuries in our EMS people because they together are lifting these larger patients. We have in the Midwest, we have many patients over 400 pounds.

We work with the Veterans Administration and the Head of Safe Patient Handling there. At the Veterans Administration across the country said we have four. We have 170, 000 patients that are over 400 pounds. And when we try to manipulate our health care workers get broken. And so our machine fits into that.

In fact, we built a machine for fire trucks. In emergency medical services, they goes on the fire truck, they roll it to the patient, they tilt the patient on, push the button, they never pick up a patient again because we can get them up to stand them up, we can get them up to transfer them to a gurney, we eliminate picking people up from the floor by using mechanical means.

Now, you mentioned Wisconsin. Let me give you a couple of statistics in California, and these are not hard statistics. I'm just demonstrate demonstrative of the issue in California, 42 people out of 100, 000 people will fall down multiple times in a month. In New York, that's 44 people out of 100, 000. In Florida, it's 46 people out of 100, 000.

In Wisconsin, it's 119 people per 100, 000. Oh, wow. Now, we don't know why the anomaly is what it is, but they literally have done studies and they know that they are the highest volume of lift assist calls in the country. And I was working with a bunch of fire chiefs across the nation and trying to solve the problem because I believe our machine can do that a couple of years ago.

And last September, I got a call from a chief in Oshkosh, Wisconsin named Mike Stanley, who I had met with and talked about how to solve the problem a couple of years before the conference. He says, we have a legislator that wants to write a rule and a program that requires assisted and caregiving facilities to have tools to pick up folks.

Because I go to some places, this is a chief speaking, we send our truck to a care facility four times a day. And there are hundreds of care facilities and we're sending our trucks all day long. They're out rolling around, just picking up people. We have got to solve the problem at the source. So I explained how our machines, not for the EMS, but how our commercial machines could be deployed in every licensed residential or skilled or assisted living facility, and they can be trained, and we can literally eliminate almost 100 percent of the calls that come in for fire departments to be rolling their trucks to pick up people, and now 100 percent seems a lot, but the reality is, 94 percent of falls do not result in a medical injury that requires medical attention.

And if you're going to a facility like in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and you're going there four times a day, every day, because people fall down one out of the week. Are going to go to a hospital for transport. The rest of those folks, they just need to be picked up so they can get on their way with their day.

And now they've put a law in place. There's Assembly Bill 942 and Assembly Bill 943 and the state of Wisconsin right now that's talking about and mandating the training of first aid and the ability to manage tools to get folks off the floor because we cannot Continue to use our fire trucks and emergency medical services for such a pervasive problem that is growing exponentially as our population ages.

And so now there's a law on the books that they are working through the details now for it to be fully accepted to cause care facilities to use the tools necessary to eliminate it. Most of the calls to EMS and that's working and it's a working thing and as you saw in the Denver article, 19 locations each have one machine.

They don't call EMS anymore. They solve the problem locally and that's not only relieving the pressure from EMS, but it's saving tons of money and it's solving the problem for the people on the floor within a moment of being on the floor because the machine is there and we're not waiting for the 911 call to come in.

What I find amazing about government policymakers is they make these decisions based on information they get without having real practical applications. When, what are you supposed to do when a patient's on the floor? If you're not supposed to pick them up, it's that's right.

They make the rules as you can't do that. But then they don't have a solution for it. Yeah, we now have a solution. So I work senior behavioral health and they, they're cracking down on, they don't want people to be medicated. I'm really okay with that, but they also, and they don't want them to be sedated, but they also don't want them to be put in restraints.

So we have falls all the time. It's, all these rules interfere with care, but I love. I absolutely love your solution. So looking towards the future, how do you see IndeeLift evolving and are there any new innovations in the pipeline for you? Sure. So we actually have machines that are built for fire departments.

We have machines built for people at home and we have machines that are built for care facilities and hospitals. And so one of the issues with hospitals is when I pick somebody up from the floor using our machine. I need to transfer them to a wheelchair to be able to take them and move them somewhere.

Actually, our machine was designed to pick them up from the floor and transport them, like a dolly. But the hospital folks don't believe that a dolly answer is a good answer. So they really need something with four wheels so that when I pick them up, I can tilt them back and they can sit on four wheels and I can just walk away from them.

They're sitting there comfortably, but they don't, they can't fall. So we have a machine now that is in development. We've already got our first prototypes. That not only do what you've seen our machines do, but then when they tilt back, they're on four wheels. So now the care provider is not holding a patient.

The patient is being held in this machine and the tilted back state and you can push them to whatever destination they need. If they were on their way to the toilet, you can take them to the toilet, slide them over, use the toilet, slide them back over and take them back to their bed. We don't, we've eliminated with that machine the transferring, but picking them up, transferring to a wheelchair and then having to transfer again.

So for professional health care, our newest machine in the pipeline will actually eliminate the secondary transfer requirements so that they can use this machine to pick them up and immobilize them and take them wherever they need to go. The technology is changing so much and we have the Japanese have been practice working on caregiver robots for over 20 years.

And one of my biggest I often ask, these robots, how are they going to bathe people or how are they going to get them off the floor? And you have, because that's a big, serious concern of mine. We because we don't have enough people to take care of our elderly. yoU solve the problem.

That's amazing. It's just going to solve. It's going to provide. I know it's just everybody wins. Yeah, it's a win for everybody. So I'd like to ask, what advice would you give to other aspiring inventors and entrepreneurs? We're looking to create solutions for complex problems. I have many other people that have found a problem and then found the solution for it because they became caregivers.

Any advice you can give them? So the main thing about caregiving is you're doing this because this is someone you love and you are not necessarily a caregiver before it became necessity. But now you are so now that you're a caregiver if you find things that you might Do differently that might be helpful suggest them to someone but it's really And i've been commended for this.

I just think it was part of the job, but it's very difficult To get people to understand that you might do something differently. And right now in the care facilities, they all know they can't pick up a part of somebody and some of them know that we have these machines available, but they still are resistant to change and they want to call 911.

And instead of practically thinking through the problem and solving it, they a. They revert back to the old way of doing things because it's a simple way, but we just a little extra thought bringing a product to market and healthcare is very difficult. Now I spent 400, 000 getting our certified so that I could just sell it in Europe because it needed medical certification.

And first you had to become an official licensed. Medical device manufacturer in Europe. Then you had to submit all the stuff for your documentation for the individual machines. Then they had to do all this testing and 400, 000 and 2. 5 years later. I can now sell our machines in Europe. We have the same sort of problems in America.

FDA is a little bit easier for class 1 devices, which we are, but for folks who think they have an answer. Find somebody to help them implement it because it's not easy to bring a product to market in healthcare, but there are so many needs. It's worth the follow up to get it done. I love the American entrepreneur attitude and I love that.

We can fix it. We can build a machine for that. Yes. And And I love that. Do you see beyond IndeeLift do you envision the future for care for our individuals? Do you see any other technology playing a role in our future? Sure. The things that people don't really get yet is there are life assist devices.

We use walkers and we use wheelchairs and we use as steps tools and we use things that help people. And now. Now we have, there are 17 million people in the U. S. that are over 85 years old. They need support. They live independently. They need support. But when they need life assistive tools.

We have fancy smart canes now. We have fancy smart walkers now. And devices like IndeeLift. If you're a falling person, this is a, it's a device that you can't live without. If we can make it so that the people can do it themselves, it will be successful because everybody wants to stay at home.

Everybody wants to be independent and they don't want to go to facilities. And the number 1 in this situation, the number 1 reason that people are relegated to have to go to a care facility is because they've fallen. They can't get up. They cannot care for themselves. And when they leave, you can't care for yourself.

You got to go to one of those stinky places with the bad food. And you know what? Nobody wants to do that. Or the very upscale places where you're paying out the nose assisted living. The food might be better, but it's still not home. Trust me. I was I've worked at many. So I understand. Steve, I am very excited about this product.

I can't wait to get this to tell people about it. I'm excited for many reasons. Selfishly. I wished I'd had this when I was younger and I'd still not, I'd probably still have a decent body, but I applaud you and your ingenuity. And your ability, we found a hole, we filled it. And now we're helping people.

And I'm not just helping people that I know I'm now impacting people's lives all across the world. And it's not about me. It's about changing the way we handle. And look at this is truly a societal problem. Oh, it absolutely is. And I, and I want to share with you that when you were saying how some of the facilities are resistant to change, that does not surprise me.

Most of them don't even have internet or they have internet, but they don't have electronic records. They're still paper charts and, facilities are hard to change. And and people are that work in these facilities, it's even harder for them to change. But when you have a solution like this, that's going to save bodies.

I, at 70 years old, I, I take care of dogs once in a while, and I get scratched. I get my skin breaks open. I have skin tears because I have price. Rice paper, thin skin now and a fall can just be horrendous. So I really applaud you and I know I, I have a bad shoulder. So if somebody's picking me up off the floor, they're going to hurt me.

Yeah. Yeah. Pick you up from your torso. Nobody gets hurt to get hurt. The patient doesn't get hurt. It's just it. I, I have to take some credit. I've after a bunch of years of working it out. We have a machine that really is the best possible answer to the problem. I applaud you and I know that somebody is going to come along and be your competitor, but you're out in the market.

I'm excited to promote your product because it's going to change lives and save. bodies. Steve, I appreciate you. I'm Diane Carbo with caregiver relief to my family caregivers out there. You are the most important part of the family caregiving equation without you. It all falls apart. So please practice self care, take care of yourself, learn to be gentle with yourself because you're worth it.

And if you can afford it, you need to get IndeeLift. Thank you so much. By the way, they're very inexpensive now. We've, we have gone offshore with manufacturing and right now we are offering a base model IndeeLift. It'll pick up a 300 pound person for 1, 295. Oh my lord. That's cheaper than a TV.

I'm telling you we, our, my goal was to make this product accessible by everybody that needed it, whether they have a medical condition, they just need some help. And now we're getting close to that. And so it's really it's time to help everyone. Oh, Steve. I applaud you and I will be in contact with you.

Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Yay. Thank you.