We are finally here! I am excited to announce the launch of our flagship product the CAN Go™, the world’s smartest cane.
How did we get here? Well, our product tells the story.
How it all started.
I got into this space more than a decade ago after a personal experience with my grandmother. Growing up, my grandmother was my inspiration, and I was always very close to her. She was a strong, independent woman, but as she was getting older, she started to struggle with her mobility. I saw her using a cane, a walker, and then a wheelchair. Even with all these devices, she needed more care as her mobility declined.
The Silver Tsunami and the Falling birth rates
Clearly my experience was not unique. We will all get old one day. However, future generations face a new challenge: the number of older adults continues to rise, while birthrates continue to fall.
More than 10,000 Americans are turning 65 every day and one in three seniors uses a mobility aid device. Mobility challenges are hindering the independence of older adults and are threatening their quality of life and sense of wellbeing.
This, combined with the caregiver shortage and the lack of modern solutions to help people with mobility limitations, may leave many seniors without proper care, impacting their life and that of their loved ones. In short, we face a future with a lot of seniors and no one to take care of them.
How Technology could help
We can’t take people out of the caring process, and there will always be a role for the human touch in caregiving. However, we need to leverage modern technology to help address the uncertain future for older adults. Technology can help us solve this problem by doing two things:
1. Help people stay independent longer. 90% of older adults want to stay in their homes as they age, and maintaining mobility is key to living independently. Older adults who lose mobility are less likely to age in their homes, require costly institutional care, have higher disease rates, and have a poorer quality of life.
2. Make the caring process more efficient. Technology-enhanced solutions can efficiently transform the process of caring and address the growing demand for home care and caregivers. So instead of one human taking care of another, one human could take care of 10, 100 then 1000 humans.
That’s the purpose behind CAN and why I started the company. At CAN, we advance human mobility and address the challenges hindering the independence of our older adults. Our goal is to unlock solutions to help people with mobility limitations stay active, live independently longer, and make caregiving more efficient and accessible for those who need it.
Bringing the cane into the 21st century.
Despite being one of the most used mobility devices, the cane has remained the same since the caveman days. At CAN, we decided to reinvent it from the ground up, leveraging the latest advances in hardware, software, cloud computing, AI, and healthcare.
After interviewing thousands of users, we found three key needs that drive cane usage:
- Safety and Fall Prevention: Users who want to feel more stable and active and reduce the risk of falling.
- Chronic Health Conditions: Users who want to manage a chronic condition related to mobility such as osteoarthritis, which is as big as Diabetes.
- Rehab and Recovery: Users recovering from an injury, surgery, or stroke may need a mobility device in their recovery process.
In order to help address these most common use cases and types of users, we optimized the product design for the following key benefits:
- Mobility devices packed with Safety Features: the CAN Go™ is packed with as many safety features as possible such as emergency calling, GPS, a flashlight, and reports to loved ones.
- Quantify Mobility: CAN Go™ helps quantify users’ mobility to help them with their unique mobility challenges.
- Mobility Care Solutions: The CAN Go™ will unlock care programs to help users with their underlying mobility challenges.
As part of creating a new category product, CAN has brought together leading product designers, engineers, health care professionals, as well as senior care professionals to unleash the cane’s full potential. Driven by a meaningful purpose and committed to cutting-edge technology and a human-centric design, we’ve created CAN Go™, the “Tesla of mobility aid devices,” that will change the way people move through life.
The CAN Go™ is packed with advanced technology, but it’s as easy to use as a normal cane. It quantifies mobility and unlocks a wide range of mobility care solutions based on quantifiable needs and improvements.
The CAN Go™ platform, accessible via mobile and web interfaces, leverages unique data, machine learning, and analytics to deliver and quantify mobility health while managing the most complex mobility challenges. The possibilities for new care programs and improvements in the caregiving process are endless, and we are excited to partner with others to deliver new innovations to the market.
We’re just getting started.
This is just the beginning. I’m grateful for everyone who has been part of this journey and got us to this point.
Thanks to the entire CAN team and to our community of users, advisors, and early investors without whom none of this would be possible.