AI for Good: Fighting Dementia with Dignity, Play, and Purpose w/ Bruce Elliot | S2E13

Full Episode Transcript

This is the full recorded conversation from The Human Protocol Podcast, published by The Human Protocol Group. © 2026 The Human Protocol Group. Please link to and attribute the original episode when referencing this conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:01.784)
Dementia steals memory, but it does not erase a person. And this is what AI for Goods should be and should look like when humans work for humans. Welcome to The Human Protocol, the podcast about staying human while building the future. I am your host, Michael Solomon. Today's episode is tender, it's urgent, and deeply human.

I'm joined by Bruce Elliott and co-founder and CEO of MemorLanes. And I'm very excited about having this very important conversation with Bruce today. So Bruce, welcome to the Human Protocol.

Bruce Elliott (00:44.293)
Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here, Michael, and share our story with your audience.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (00:50.142)
Awesome. Thank you. And to kick things off, Bruce, we'd to ask you if you can tell us a little bit about Bruce and we can take it from there.

Bruce Elliott (01:02.395)
Cool. So I'm call my self a tech guy, but not a coder always in business development. Started in the dot com boom and the dot com bust, unfortunately, times, then joined in an online small online payments company that we took to be one of the largest companies on the aim exchange in London competing with PayPal back in the day when Elon Musk was at PayPal. And then

into to the Isle of Man in the UK from Canada and eventually found myself sitting in a pub in 2019 with a good friend of mine and we were talking about our mums and his mom was 90 at the time with vascular dementia my mom was 86 sharp as attack in Canada we talked about what they had in common it was love of old family photos and I thought I wonder if we can turn those photos into games and my friend said

actually we're turning memories into games and we started memory lane games the next day. We started building games to delight our mums, to engage them, to get them talking and that's all we set out to do. And a little later we...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:02.862)
Hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:13.781)
Awesome.

Bruce Elliott (02:16.155)
won some awards with the Mayo Clinic. We worked with five national Alzheimer's associations around the world and ran a small clinical trial and had 100,000 downloads and our games have been played in 134 countries.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (02:30.478)
Wow, that's amazing. And what a beautiful cause to be fighting for, right? Because here is what I need people to also understand and to think about. When memory starts to fade, right? And we think about this issue that you're trying to tackle via memory lanes games. It's really what we owe to each other as humans, right? And the role that technology should play. And this conversation today,

to tell us a little bit to think about how can technology be leveraged for a greater good, which is part of what I'm very excited about having this conversation with you today. So thank you for going over that. And you just shared how memory lane got started, and who were you building it first. But when you started thinking about this, Bruce,

What did you notice first about maybe anxiety, frustration, or loneliness, right? When memory loss entered your family's life or someone else's life.

Bruce Elliott (03:37.947)
What we knew right from the beginning, from our own family experience, is frustration is the biggest barrier to adoption. And especially in conditions of progressive cognitive decline. From mild cognitive decline to moderate dementia to more advanced dementia, you have to be able to solve and deal with frustration. And so we built simple quiz style games, multiple choice games on 4,000 different topics.

just about every city in America, every city in India, the Philippines, the UK, Ireland, and many of the major cities around the world. So you can start by sitting as a caregiver with your mum, saying, why don't we play game on where did you grow up, Mykel?

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (04:25.802)
I grew up in Brazil. Correct, yes. Yes.

Bruce Elliott (04:28.474)
In Brazil, right. So we'll play a game on the town that you grew up or your mom grew up in Brazil and she will start telling stories. And it's wonderful. We showed that in clinical trials that over half the people had dementia were communicating more while playing our games because they get comfortable playing these very simple quiz style games. But we also got lucky and we are developer at the time who is 19, I believe.

he made our multiple choice that when you hit the wrong answer, it just gently disappears. It doesn't tell you you did anything wrong. And we did that just not to frustrate our mums. But when we were at the Mayo Clinic at their med tech accelerator, which we ended up winning, the head of computerized cognitive rehab for all of the Mayo said, my gosh, that's errorless learning. When you don't get it wrong, it doesn't tell you anything wrong.

That's fundamental to continuance in therapy, in all kinds of therapy. She just loved it. And we said, we just did that so we didn't upset our mumps. But dealing with frustration was the number, that's our North Star's frustration-free experience.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (05:39.082)
And that's when you look at it from the human side of things, right? And especially with people going through through the mention that type of cognitive issues, it's the motivation to continue to be playing the games. has to, it has to somehow bring them home, right? In a way. And that's what you and memory lane games have put together a way that they feel like they are home.

that those memories can be revived.

Bruce Elliott (06:12.43)
But we take it one step further. not only can we trigger positive memories with personal experiences based on their hometown or their favorite hobby or their favorite TV show, no matter where they grew up in the world, we get them talking. And it's all about socialization, not scoring. And that's the real insight that we found is it's all about the socialization, getting them talking. That's what has the therapeutic benefit.

Social isolation is the number one modifiable risk factor in older age and dementia. So why don't we just get people talking more? Well, it becomes hard as people are on their own more, they're talking less, that muscle memory fades. And sometimes the confidence and the cognitive decline all come together to present really strong communication barriers. And we've found a way

to overcome that by personalizing the engagement and then getting those people telling us stories. And it's just magical to see.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (07:17.23)
It's like a personal friend that has been with their all this time and now they can have it 24 7 in a way.

Bruce Elliott (07:21.146)
Hey.

We were sitting with one fellow at a football club in the UK. It was a day for fans with dementia for this one particular club. And so we were invited and we put out an iPad on each table and I was sitting at this one table and this one fellow sits beside me and we're introduced to him and said, he's pretty well nonverbal. hasn't talked for months, but you know, he'll probably enjoy this. said, great. So he...

grabs our iPad, flicks through, finds our game on 1960s music. And he starts flicking through and smiling, and he starts singing an Elvis song. Then he gets to a question on Roy Orbison. He looks over at me and says, you know, Roy Orbison's a way better singer than Elvis. But Elvis had a better manager. You're absolutely right. Exactly. And then at the end, we're

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:12.536)
Wow. Where did that come from?

Bruce Elliott (08:19.768)
gathering up the iPads and there's a woman in the corner crying and gosh we go over is everything okay? And she said yeah I'm Colin's caregiver and I've been working with them for three months I've never heard him complete a sentence. We found something he wanted to talk about and that's that personalized agency that's combined with cognitive stimulation that's all we're trying to do.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (08:44.558)
And that's the magic what AI, especially with the advancing of AI, it's bringing to specific to this app and this platform. It's like the ability to personalize and learn from it, which probably in the past was gonna be a little bit harder to build something like this without AI.

Bruce Elliott (09:08.858)
So we have 4,000 games in our app, and we started building them with students and then volunteers and then with Alzheimer's associations, volunteers from around the world. But now we can build a game in minutes with AI. So if we need a game on Baton Rouge, Louisiana, like we did yesterday, we can make a game very quickly, which is wonderful. But what we learned, and this was the big breakthrough of this past year, is often caregivers or family members

They sit with the person with dementia and play our games together. And that's where the magic happens. But care staff in care homes and home care agencies always don't have time to do that. And families.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (09:44.012)
Mm-hmm.

Bruce Elliott (09:53.049)
They just sometimes it's a sandwich generation. So mom with dementia is in the corner. The daughter's cooking dinner for her children. It's just too busy. And so they asked us, can we just hand the iPad over sometimes and let the iPad work with mom? And we took that inspiration and we built an empathetic conversational reminiscence agent. My mom calls it her AI friend.

And the AI friend says, hi Pat, how are you? Great. Tell me a memory about where you grew up. And then we've matched up with some really interesting AI to monitor the speech with 48 emotional cues. Imagine when I'm talking, the voice gives off more emotional cues than your face. And so by monitoring 46 emotional cues, we can detect joy.

We can detect agitation or frustration. And we optimize the conversation with the AI by doing that. If it detects joy, it says, oh, tell me another memory about that. It detects Yeah. And what we've also, because we're not, we're just practical thinkers. We're not deep tech people, but we thought if we can detect joy in those moments, over the week, can we find the 45 seconds of most

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:00.376)
Right. You continue down that path. Right.

Bruce Elliott (11:17.422)
joyous reminiscence of her most treasured memory of the week. And can we capture that as a 45 second audio clip to share that moment of joy with families? And we found we can.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (11:33.742)
And that's where the magic then happened.

Bruce Elliott (11:38.799)
You know, when families get those moments of joy, they, when you visit your mom with dementia, you might drive across town or you may fly or may not see them very often, or maybe they live with you. But it's rare that you're there in that moment when mom is right on her game, when she's really positive, there's no distractions, everything's just wonderful. We all treasure those moments. But it's hard sometimes, especially with all the communication barriers.

We can find this 45 seconds a week of magic memories and share that with the family and they can share it with the rest of the family. And that's bringing back just that touch of mum back into the room when you really, you you may hear stories you've never heard before too, which is truly amazing.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (12:30.798)
And that's the solution to those people and those families that, as you were saying, they probably don't have time to spend a lot of time with their elders going or through their family members going through those periods of loneliness, right? Because at the end of the day, it's just a person, as you were saying, sitting in the back of the room just by themselves. And now this platform and this app is giving them a reason to get them back

to life in a way, which is what I found to be really beautiful. It's really what the mission is, right? For those person to still feel like they are alive in a way by having those memories and those thoughts and that training on a daily basis. Because if it's becoming their AI friends as your mom, it's calling it, for example, this is a friend that is there for you anytime.

right? Any day of the week at any time when you need it. It doesn't have any limits on it. It doesn't have any problems. It's going to be there to help you navigate and transition to through your days and weeks in a way.

Bruce Elliott (13:45.391)
deeply empathetic is what it's optimized for, infinite patience, because it doesn't mind if you take 30 seconds or 45 seconds to answer the question, right? It's just infinitely patient.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (13:58.016)
And that's key today that a lot of humans don't have lately, Bruce.

Bruce Elliott (14:03.83)
Exactly. But it also knows the things you're talking about. So our LLMs are integrated when you're talking about a hometown, let's say there's a small town in Brazil that we're talking about, that the AI might say, what a beautiful town. The markets on a Wednesday are so wonderful there and the mountains are so close. Did you ever go up in the mountains? Those kind of questions trigger positive memories, but then get people talking. And we think this is what AI for good

should be about. you and I talked that when I've got a Google alert for AI for Good comes in every day and there's not much in it. Sadly, I think there should be more. We should all be doing more to focus on AI for Good like this.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:41.548)
Not a lot of news out there.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (14:50.956)
Yeah, I agree. And there's really not a lot of what you see in the headlines as far as when people are talking about AI, as far as the technology and everything that we see in the news today, but not a lot about what are we doing like you and memory lanes games to really help other human beings with the help of AI. And this is where the beauty of things are that people also need to understand that there is a lot

of positive that we can leverage this technology for if we try to help other human beings like you guys are doing, which is amazing.

Bruce Elliott (15:30.126)
Well, I'll share one example. We have 500 games on India because we worked with their National Alzheimer's Association. We've got 250 games on the Philippines for the same reason. And I was in Houston at the Texas Medical Center. We were part of their digital health accelerator. And it dawned on me that we only had three games for African-Americans. And my gosh, how have I missed this? And so I sat with a team from the Texas Medical Center and

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (15:50.254)
Mmm.

Bruce Elliott (15:59.235)
We had some great conversations and one of them invited me to meet her 99 year old grandma. We lived in a lower socioeconomic neighborhood in Houston. She'd been in same house for 70 years. So we went to her house. And what I realized was we could make a game on her neighborhood. So we did. What was the name of this building? It was a bakery.

What was the name? What would you buy in this shop? What would you do here? It was a movie theater. Those kind of things that and what was the name of this church? It was her Baptist Church. She got so excited. And that to me is the power of AI that we can take it down to a neighborhood. That's the memories that she remembers, right? That is the excitement that you can't do with a handful of people sitting in a room trying to find the right photos. But if we can get AI to pull that kind of

of magic through. That to me is powerful.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (16:54.678)
It is, it's definitely, it's powerful. And, and it's also, should also make people think that when you think about AI, doesn't need to be something very complicated that you need to be a tech person to leverage AI. It became with an idea with a problem to solve. And that's where you saw the opportunity. You say at the beginning, you are not a tech person. You've been in business development your whole life. Right? So you are the example that anyone.

can really, if you think about it on how to leverage for a greater good, you can find use cases on how to implement AI based on the solution, on the problem that you want to find a solution. And you proved that to everyone. You guys did.

Bruce Elliott (17:39.066)
And I wrote to a number of the large AI LLM companies, some of the medium sized and the large ones with this idea. said, we can deliver moments of joy to families in this really unique way by monitoring and optimizing the conversational AI, but really starting with that deep empathetic chats.

I was amazed at how many of them came back to me and said, I love your use case. This is amazing. we're going, it seemed obvious to us, but it has really surprised people that this is a wonderful use case.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:18.552)
Can you guys measure when people are smiling by working with the app?

Bruce Elliott (18:27.226)
even better. We, from the voice, we can detect joy, reminiscence, nostalgia, happy. All of, there's 48 of these cues that we can monitor. So it doesn't have to do with the smile. It is the voice that's telling us more.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (18:48.266)
And the, the actual goal is to keep human beings more on the joy side of things that were the agent continue to optimize itself and detect where, which emotion is the person going through that time. And then you try to overcome that and also always try to take it to where they feel the most joy.

Bruce Elliott (19:13.772)
and then share that joy with the families who rarely get to experience that moment. We capture the data science models, capture the over a week's chats, 15 minutes a day typically, we capture the 45 seconds of the most intense, joyous, all of these cues conversation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:20.802)
How do you share that?

Bruce Elliott (19:39.706)
And we clip that as an audio file and we can email that to families, which they can share. And then imagine get up on a Monday morning and you receive, you click on this file that you open and mom's telling a story about when she was a little girl, went to this place that you might remember her of going to or a story you may have heard. And she's telling it and having this wonderful conversation with our friendly AI. it's, that's joy.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (19:44.472)
That's beautiful.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:07.672)
So many memories that they probably without this, they maybe even ever heard about that from their parents because sometimes they just don't know.

Bruce Elliott (20:21.207)
And in dementia, sometimes people make things up that comes with it. So you have to, that is part of the...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (20:24.29)
Right, right. Take it, right. You have to take it with a grain of salt as well, yeah.

Bruce Elliott (20:32.067)
But the conversations you have when you visit mom or she's in your home are often very stunted and building that connection, maintaining that connection is hard. Is there so many competing things going on and you're never both or rarely both right on that same page at the same time as the condition progresses? Something like this can just bring back those moments. And that's what we think is.

joyful for the families, but also so empowering for the individual because it really builds their own sense of agency because they're thrilled that they can talk and connect and share a story, right? They may not have talked like the fellow at the colon at the football club may have not have talked for months and all of a sudden they're sharing that story and then

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:14.158)
Yeah. Yeah.

Bruce Elliott (21:25.453)
that families when they visit, because we can also, we're just building this model, but we can also share with families, here's the five topics this week. So maybe next time you visit, talk about one of these as well. That you know, those are hot buttons, wonderful for positive triggers.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (21:43.426)
don't know if there is any story, Bruce, that you may be aware of. But that increased in that person's brain activity by going through these exercises with your app. Is there any story linking that to improvement on their state or anything of that nature that you may be aware of?

Bruce Elliott (22:06.617)
So we've seen in some of the work that we've done too in the UK, maintenance of cognition is possible by increasing socialization. So it's not, we showed that in a small clinical trial, but that, just that release of starting to talk, remembering how to talk. So when your family comes, you're able to talk again, that muscle memory. All of those things we showed in our...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (22:27.523)
Right.

Bruce Elliott (22:36.457)
small clinical pilot that when playing with a caregiver that over 50 % of the people with dementia were communicating more and importantly 80 % of the caregivers were happier or more relaxed too which makes the whole experience so much better. But what we're trying to do is build on that and give a tool where

mom can just play solo on her own with the iChat and then also play along our games with the family or care staff in a care home or home care agency.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (23:12.258)
Yeah, when I was looking and trying to dive deeper on this topic of dementia and the reality faced in the world with that, I came up with some staggering numbers about how many people are living. It's something around 55 million people are living with dementia globally. And there are kind of an average 10 new million cases every day.

Bruce Elliott (23:40.95)
It's really, it's a global condition with no cure. And so the world is making tremendous gains in diagnostics to be able to say blood tests, one prick blood test and a bunch of other things to say your mom has dementia. And then as a family, you look at the doctor and say, okay, great, now what? And the doctor goes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (23:41.984)
And it's lot.

Bruce Elliott (24:09.731)
Well, your mom has dementia and...

Bruce Elliott (24:15.545)
There's not a lot. This is sad part, is that, so there's a lot of effort and really smart people working on early diagnostics, but there isn't many outcomes that can arise from the diagnosis. So I think that we need more focus on treatment, you know, than...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:17.24)
Yep.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:27.682)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:42.157)
Damn.

Bruce Elliott (24:43.961)
than on pure diagnostics. So it's a relief for your mom when you say, yes, my mom, your mom has dementia. Okay, great. I understand that now, but what can the family do? There isn't a lot.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (24:57.646)
Yeah. And usually when most people think about or hear about dementia, only connect it to or they only link it to loss of memory, right? That's usually what people think about. But it's a lot going after that with the person, with their family, right? The caregivers, the human reality behind that.

It's really, it's really a lot more complex than just thinking about the loss of memory.

Bruce Elliott (25:34.01)
Well, let me give you an example. There's a condition with dementia that's very common called sundowning. And what it is, is late in the afternoons, people with dementia often increase agitation significantly for no particular reason. It's just agitation, frustration, everything really builds late in the afternoons. And this happens for so, so many people with dementia. And so as sundowning sets in, caregivers and families can use our app to

redirect the conversation away from agitation into something happy and positive. So I'll give you a quick example. Our chief clinical officer works as a dementia nurse in a care home on a dementia ward. And she had a woman who was 85, moderate to advanced dementia, just admitted. And every afternoon she was experiencing this increased agitation.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (26:08.067)
Yeah.

Bruce Elliott (26:33.857)
And then it was spiraling into a flashback to her childhood where she had actually been abused as a child. Every afternoon this was happening.

And so the escalation was the staff understood it and they could see it coming. But one day our chief clinical officer was playing our games with her in the afternoon, early afternoon, and was playing our cats and dogs game, one of our most popular. And she found that her dog was in that game and she started telling a story about her dog. So as the escalation later in the afternoon was progressing, our chief clinical officer brought the app back, showed her the game and she started telling the story again about her dog.

and it stopped. And over the course of the month, they used less antipsychotic drugs.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:21.378)
Wow.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:24.93)
Wow.

Bruce Elliott (27:26.273)
because we were able to distract and redirect the conversation onto something positive that unbelievable outcomes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (27:37.304)
This is amazing. It's amazing to hear about this. It's to listen from it. Because imagine if this is happening now, if we focus the right energy on trying to approach this from all the different angles that we can approach it, how much information and data we're going to have to be able to connect the dots and try to improve this.

It's really, really, really amazing when I hear all of these blues.

Bruce Elliott (28:09.421)
Well, when you speak of data to imagine. So we're going to have weeks and weeks and weeks of conversational voice data for your mom. There are not us, but there are other amazing companies who have patented digital voice biomarkers that can predict depression, can predict anxiety, can predict a whole bunch of Parkinson's, some really interesting things from voice.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (28:21.643)
Mm-hmm.

Bruce Elliott (28:39.289)
But because we can engage hard to engage populations, dementia, and perhaps others, we keep getting asked about autism and other conditions that will be able to provide those data to third parties that can run and analytics on this wonder and changing, you know, on this regular passively captured voice data where they're talking about their families and their dogs and all these things.

and run other health diagnostics around that. So we think the future is really interesting around things like that. And again, it comes from, if you frustrate the person, they're not going to talk. If they aren't enjoying it, they won't engage. And if they don't engage, you can't generate any minutes of conversational health data. So we think by starting again at the beginning where we did playing games and then talking about

your hobbies and your hometown and your favorite movie, TV shows and local foods and bands and things like that. That's the solution to overcoming the biggest crisis in digital health is adoption, especially in conditions like dementia. And we think we can overcome that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (29:59.286)
Yeah, because the first step is being provided via those games, you are bringing them home. And that sometimes is the hardest part. It's for someone to get to a point that starts kind of interacting with the platform and the games, right? So I'm curious, how is that first step and what happens after they use it for the first time?

What have you seen out there? Are they asking that to be brought to them? The caregivers are giving it to them. Hey, take a look at it. Just curious to understand how that works, Bruce.

Bruce Elliott (30:38.701)
You know, they say, where's my games? And the care home care agency or care staff will bring over the iPad and give it to them. And they know their favorite games and they start playing and tell the stories. But as we're rolling out our AI companion, I think that's where it gets really exciting. Now, someone usually still has to hand the iPad over to your mom.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (30:44.782)
Hmm.

Bruce Elliott (31:05.689)
could be a care staff, family member or somebody, or depending on her level, she might be able to just click the button and open it up. But often you hand it to your mom and it says start conversation. And then all of sudden the AI starts talking to her and listens, reacts back and forth with those wonderful conversations. And as my mom says, you know, where's my AI friend? And I show her where the link is on her computer and she has a chat with her AI friend.

And then after she finished her last chat for 15 minutes, and I heard some stories I'd never heard before, she got off and she phoned two of her friends to say, my mom's 92, she said to her friends at the same age, you don't talk enough, you need this app. One of her friends only talks to the deer, and I said, did the deer talk back? And she said, no, that's good. she knows her friends aren't talking enough. So this is mild cognitive impairment, not.

full dementia, but just and loneliness, you know, and we can get those people talking more, perhaps they'll be more excited when their family does come to visit and they can have those better conversations that muscle memory comes back for socialization.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (32:06.583)
as a companion,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (32:19.224)
Yeah, that's very important to note because yes, it should not be only for dementia. So many people that are lonely on this world today and they don't have dementia, but they don't talk to anyone either, right? And it's so important for people to interact and talk. And this is what you guys are enabling people to, even if there's no human being.

Bruce Elliott (32:43.585)
And sometimes people will get frustrated. It happens. Or sometimes people get aggressive. That happens. And we gave our app to a, our AI companion to a professor of psychiatry at a university in Canada. And he said, look, I'm going to take this to the dark side. So just give me 10 minutes. Well, I went and got a coffee, came back and he goes, this is amazing.

He said, I took it down a really dark path and the AI said, and this is part of our clinical guardrails is, hey, I'm not a therapist, but if you want to do two minutes of deep breathing with me, I would love to do that. Would you like to do that? Okay, ready? Take a deep breath.

He said, that is amazing. The AI knew when to do that. That moment was just at the right time, he said. And it was said, you're not a therapist, so it's not making any claims at all to deceive anyone. But it just said, let's do some TV.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (33:35.427)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (33:45.43)
Let's do it, because I'm hearing something there. Right? That's it.

Bruce Elliott (33:50.041)
Yeah, so you have to be able, again, this is part of managing that engagement is from joy to apathy to agitation. You have to be able to manage that cycle because it does come up in in dementia in particular, all of those things. And so you need your AI to be learning and listening and responding so that you can continue those wonderful conversations.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:00.32)
is the whole cycle.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (34:15.948)
Bruce, I'm sure you are facing many challenges and what I'm curious to hear from you is how are you treating data privacy, for example, and what may be considered kind of sensitive health related data? And I'm sure from country to country it differs. But is that a big challenge for

for platforms like the one that you're building that you need to always be thinking about.

Bruce Elliott (34:51.914)
Absolutely, but we've taken a different approach. We are a general wellbeing app, like Calm or Headspace. So we're not a regulated medical device because for a small startup like us being regulated in every country, and we're in 134 countries, our games have been played today, it's crazy. But we respect...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (35:07.726)
Brian.

Bruce Elliott (35:13.624)
data privacy is our fundamental because we're working with vulnerable populations. So to us, we maintain all of the standards, but we are not taking the regulated approach. We use third parties who will house the regulated voice data, who can run the digital biomarkers, all those. But for us, it's really important that we maintain that general well-being status, that we're not excluded.

from any country so we can help people all over the world at very low cost. So that to us is incredibly important. But also our AI is trained not to ask for full name, not to ask for addresses, not to ask for any financial details or health conditions. It just gently redirects the conversations. Those things are so important because we are that trusted friend and that's how we manage.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:03.214)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (36:12.162)
That makes total sense, especially at this stage and the phase that the company is right now on the product, right? It does makes total sense. And thanks for sharing that, Bruce. And when we talk about AI, right? What does AI mean in your product today? And where do you see the future heading with AI and memory lane games?

Bruce Elliott (36:37.218)
So we started a year ago creating personalized games with AI. So a game on a new hometown or something like that, very quickly. So that was wonderful. Photos, six questions and answers, multiple choice questions. That worked out really well. But for us, it's all about delivering these moments of joy for the individual user with dementia and the family. And to me, that's where we can really, really create magic.

And learning more and more about that, what we're finding is our AI, when it successfully redirects a conversation, so it changes the subject to go back to cats and dogs or something to keep the conversation going, that kind of language we can document and share with the family. When we saw this kind of behavior, we used these words and it came to a positive result. You might want to try that. Based on that exact

personalized experience of their mother chatting with the AI to say, well, when aggression or frustration was really rising, we brought up the topic of Spot the dog on the beach in Vancouver. That kind of language we think can be really helpful for individuals. then longer term with AI, imagine we get 100 million minutes of voice AI.

across all countries in the world. And we can detect those who are playing games on the Philippines in all the different countries and looking at different really interesting data sets that can really, really help, again, with taking it beyond just an engagement activity into that there is diagnosis, but to me, it's all about the.

treatments as we move forward, we discover new ways of dealing with this. But for us, AI is helping us deliver joy to individuals with dementia and their families. And we think that's a lot.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:42.062)
Mm-hmm.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (38:48.214)
Yeah, that's the beauty. That's the beauty of it all, especially for those that are really in very dark places, right? It's kind of bringing them to the light in a way. Really.

Bruce Elliott (39:02.252)
But we need help. You know, we're a small startup. We have this amazing plan that has been embraced by some of big AI companies, which is spectacular. This vision of ours of being able to optimize conversational reminiscence for hard to engage populations is really getting people excited. But

We need partners for grants, academic partners in the US, corporate partners, grants to help us continue to develop this direction. And as a small startup, it's not easy. And as you and I talked about before, AI for good, it's hard.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (39:48.855)
It's hard and it's not cheap, it's not free, right?

Bruce Elliott (39:52.863)
AI is not free. think people forget that sometimes. But trying as we are to keep this affordable for so many people in the world, that it delivers so much benefit. we need to find some, say our purpose attracts talent. And it's true. And so we've had...

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:01.144)
Yeah, it's hard, it's hard, yeah.

Absolutely.

Bruce Elliott (40:18.904)
Wonderful support, but if there's anyone in your audience who would like to help, we'd love to chat with them. If there's anyone who would like to run a clinical trial with us, if there's anyone who is in AI development who would like to participate with us, or any granting bodies as well. We really welcome those conversations.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (40:38.424)
Yeah, all help, even if it's small help, it's help at the end of the day, right? And what I think people sometimes forget is that they think, but how can I help? There are so many ways that we all can help, right? It doesn't need to be with a lot of money. It can be with your time. It can be with your skill, right? Especially if you, if we want to be part of such a special mission-driven

company and product like this is, right? That it's really helping human beings when they need it the most, which is, to me, it's really, really special. So anyone that can be listening today or in the future, reach out if you think that you could help, right? That you're going to be doing great help for, really for humanity, right?

Bruce Elliott (41:11.18)
Bless you.

Bruce Elliott (41:23.074)
please.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:33.358)
We all know someone impacted with dementia one way or the other, even if it's not directly, right, Bruce, with a friend or someone we know. It's really a health condition that's impacting a lot of people.

Bruce Elliott (41:49.855)
And with the help from your community and others that we can bring up just a little bit of joy into the lives of both the first-time adventure and their loved ones. And that is so rare, right? But AI can help us deliver that. I think that's what, again, we're not really smart, dev kind of people, but we just looked at this and going, hmm, I wonder if we can do that. And we found some smart people who would say yes, actually. That makes a lot of sense. That's our approach.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (41:59.735)
Yes

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (42:16.896)
It's a movement, right? It's a movement and beyond the product, it's really the mission what's driving this and what people should be, should feel compelled to be part of it, right? Helping others, there's nothing more beautiful than that.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (42:36.846)
All right, Bruce, anything else that you would like to share with us today?

Bruce Elliott (42:46.648)
I'd like to share some thoughts about AI for Good and maybe others who are looking at starting the project. I think we all need to think of bold ideas, but in really, really simple ways. Just like I told you, sitting in a pub talking about our mums, thinking about, I wonder if we can turn memories into games and how actually we're turning memories into games.

These simple ideas are actually now becoming possible with AI. We all need some help and accelerators around the world are, we've been, we won the Mayo Clinic and ASU MedTech Accelerator. We participated in the Texas Medical Center, Digital Health Innovation Accelerator. We were part of the Longitude Prize for AI in Dementia Accelerator. So we were embraced by a number of really wonderful groups who looked at us and you know,

When we were at the Mayo Clinic MedTech Accelerator, there was a company that just closed their Series A for 10 million. There was another that had 19 patents. There was somebody else doing diagnostics of kidneys by retinal scans and like amazing stuff. But we won because they said they'd never seen anything this simple yet this scalable.

So, and this was before our AI, just before game. So I think that we should have confidence to move forward with some of these decisions and writing to a number of the LLMs and if you've got something valid, then you'll get some response. But think about it and be respectful of people's time. But I think it's really important to be doing things for the right reasons and having a personal story of passion.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (44:07.543)
Right.

Bruce Elliott (44:33.304)
that we tell startups that when you start, sometimes all you have is a story, so you better be a good storyteller. Exactly. So you need to work on that. And part of that comes from personal connection to the solutions that you're doing. But reaching out to people like yourself. I mean, this is the kind of thing that we need to amplify this.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (44:41.824)
Yes, absolutely. Because sometimes that's all you have to start with.

Bruce Elliott (45:02.338)
this need. And I also think that there isn't enough AI for good. So I think please everyone champion. You see anything that's really interesting for AI for good, celebrate it, amplify it, because we're just not seeing enough of that, I think, around.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (45:19.822)
Yeah, totally on point there. And this is what the beauty of it all is, right? As you were saying, it starts simple. You don't need to be a tech person. You don't need to be a young person, right? Anyone with something that they are passionate about, that they feel compelled to work on, AI and these new technologies, they are facilitating a lot.

getting from the idea to the actual implementation of the product. And that's something that we all need to think about when we look into the future. Yes, you may not need to be a developer, but you just need to come up with the idea, with the problem that you're trying to solve. That's where everything gets started. And with the help of AI, you can then try to visualize the rest, right, in a way. And...

and especially related to memory lane games. Since you've been talking, I've been thinking about, Bruce, it's like, what is the future of care, of healthcare, for example, and how technology can help really deliver more humanity, right? Because at the end of the day, care means that if you don't have someone to pay attention to the person,

while the person is there, technology can help to kind of fill in the gap and in the emptiness that may be their days in a way that they feel more present, right? And try to bring those memories back to them and try to bring that humanity back to sometimes those, you know, to the body and the being.

And that's where I think dignity comes from, right? With that connection that platform like yours is providing to these people, they are connected. They are having a connection there. They are talking more. And you're even measuring when joy during their days. I think that's such a beautiful thing.

Bruce Elliott (47:41.944)
Well, you said dignity, and I think that's probably the biggest.

Part of that dignity comes from language. The caregiver may not speak the first language of the person they're caring for. And the AI should be able to pick up that language and chat in that language. Why not? And reminisce in that language and get people excited in that language. Why not? Those are the kind of things that are so powerful.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (47:56.11)
Yeah.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (48:07.842)
Yes.

You just mentioned something that, and that I talk every day. It is not because you are talking to an AI because sometimes I think Bruce, this whole conversation about AI have people on the extreme side of it. Like you are enemies when you should not not because you're talking to an AI or a human. Will the human be show empathy to you just because it's human that does not happen all the time.

And it's not because the AI is not a real person that you cannot have empathy on the conversation with the AI. So it's like people put one in front of the other, like they are on the extremes. And it's not really because you are talking to a human being, for example, in customer support that that person will treat you with empathy. Sometimes you have human beings that they don't know what empathy is, right? But you can configure an AI

to show and have all the time and show you empathy in your conversations.

Bruce Elliott (49:18.146)
So we're hearing that voice is the new UX. We talk to our chatbots. So getting that right, I think, creates a tremendous opportunity to bring empathy in, to bring infinite patience, to bring knowledge about your hometown, to remember what your favorite foods were, and so we can make a joke about that on a particular day. Those kind of things, think,

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (49:21.783)
Yeah.

Bruce Elliott (49:46.636)
This is what AI can do is in a good way. But it needs guardrails, like we said, for agitation or frustration. You need to be able to manage those, redirection. But those are just techniques. But the whole principle of getting people talking, yes.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (50:06.208)
It makes it all worth it for sure. Absolutely. Bruce. Really, I want to say thank you, right, for thinking about this and for putting all the energy that you and your teams are putting on building something that are protecting families, right? People on these very fragile moments that they are, right? Especially if they are with dementia.

To me, this is really an inspiration, and I want to thank you for sharing your journey with us. It has been really, really inspiring to listen from you and your team, what you're doing, and the early signs of how you're bringing joy and dignity back to people. So really thank you for sharing that with us today.

Bruce Elliott (51:01.227)
Thank you so much. And my email is simple Bruce.Elliot. And I'd love to hear of other people who doing AI for good or anybody who's interested to help us. I just love to connect. So thank you for the opportunity to share with your audience. And wow, I've really enjoyed this chat.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (51:27.266)
Yeah, anytime. And I'm going to make sure that I put all the contact information when we release the episode, because I think you're going to start hearing from more people as you move forward on your mission. And I'll be also making sure that I check with you to see how things are going, Bruce, and getting updates from you in the future as well. OK?

Bruce Elliott (51:51.192)
Well, we need some help to progress, we're excited about the vision and we're just bringing little bits of joy to people. Yeah, that's what we're all about.

THE HUMAN PROTOCOL (52:03.444)
Absolutely, that's the beautiful part of all the mission. So thank you for that. And if this episode moves you, when you listen to it or you're watching it, make sure that you share this with someone that is caring for a parent or a friend, right? We all need help. This mission needs help. And follow us in the human protocol and join us every week as we...

explore what does it mean to stay human while building the future. Thank you all and talk to you soon. Take care.