ORLANDO, Fla. — Senior housing operators and the companies that serve them are increasingly using artificial intelligence, which could make operators that don't adopt it less efficient than their competitors and run the risk of running into other problems. That was one of the messages WiseOx co-founder and CEO Fritz Brumder delivered last week at the Florida Senior Housing Association's annual conference.
“You have to start somewhere,” he told attendees at Engage 2024. “If you haven't adopted AI within your organization — and I'm not talking about individuals joining something like ChatGPT or Google Gemini, but talking about well-thought-out, strategic business initiatives powered by AI — then we all need to get there as quickly as possible.”
The early providers' efforts may be successful or they may fail, Brumder said. Either way, “we'll learn something from the process and have a deeper understanding of what AI is,” he said.
The benefits for employers and employees are “undeniable,” he said, citing a 2023 study published in a recent Harvard Business Review article that found that workers using AI complete 12% more tasks, complete tasks 25% faster, and produce 40% higher quality results.
“It not only makes the company more productive and makes everyone more valuable, it actually reduces stress for individuals,” Brumder said, adding that in a Microsoft study, more than 90% of employees surveyed said AI made them less stressed, more creative and more enjoyable to work.
AI in elderly housing
WiseOx creates trained, personalized AI assistants called Mascots. Brumder shared examples of how the company is using AI with its senior housing clients, including one provider that loaded HR policies and procedures into the AI Mascot so employees could refer to it when they had questions. Mascots answer an average of 10 questions a day, he said.
“This means that individuals can get an immediate answer 10 times a day, and managers and HR professionals don't have to spend 10 to 15 minutes answering inquiries and questions that they've probably received multiple times,” Brumder says.
Another company that does facility management for providers will inspect the building's equipment, determine if any adjustments or repairs are needed and prepare a report for the provider, he said.
“It takes about four hours to review a report and write up a summary and recommendations,” says Brumder. “We've brought AI into that process and reduced the time from raw report to summary and final report from four hours to one hour.”
Another area where trained AI could help senior living providers is in improving quality of life for residents and supporting staff, he said.
“Let's say a resident's entire family loads the story and tells us, 'This resident was a Bears fan, not a Packers fan,' or 'He was a tennis player, not a golfer,'” Brumder says. “You can feed all that information into the AI and have a staff member go into that resident's room and talk about the contextual things and stories that are relevant to that individual. Imagine the emotional impact that would have.”
The Florida Senior Living Association is using WiseOx AI to provide new benefits to its members. The association incorporates all of the state’s rules and regulations into a mascot named Bob (short for “best of the best”). By accessing a private section of the FSLA website, members can ask Bob questions about generator requirements, management training requirements, and more.
Bob's accuracy rate is “pretty high,” at 90 to 95 percent, Brumder said.
“You may have heard about hallucinations and AI that sometimes makes things up,” he told attendees. “With this type of AI, the risk is very low because it's trained to either answer questions based on factual information or not answer questions at all.”
That doesn't mean members can't test the limits of Bob's knowledge, Brumder said, “but if you give him direction on something like a shish kebab recipe, he'll probably say, 'That sounds good, but I'm trained on Florida's rules and regulations, so if you have any questions about it, let me know.'”
As for the answers Bob is trained to provide, users will still want to fact-check the answers, but the AI can get a head start on research, Brumder said.
“A lot of times we have questions that just need to be unlocked,” he said, “and even though in the back of your mind you think you know the answer, you can't come up with it right away. So part of it is just building confidence in yourself and your answers.”
Four points to consider
For senior housing providers considering adopting AI, Brumder shared four points to consider:
- safety. He says that publicly available tools do pose some security risks. “If your employees or you go into ChatGPT and enter sensitive company information or even personally identifiable information of residents or prospective residents, that's a security risk,” he says. “So you need tools that allow you to better monitor and control and track how people are using AI within your organization.”
- Brand Integrity“You want the AI that you're using to align with your brand,” Brumder says. “We all have a mission and a vision and a way of speaking within our organizations. By teaching the AI that, you can avoid having to give it multiple prompts and say, 'Try this different voice.'”
- Simplicity. “To get started with AI, you just need to pick one use case and one tool, and then you can always expand from there,” he says. “Don't try to boil the ocean.”
- support. “Work with someone within your organization or outside who knows AI, is deeply involved in the field and knows what all the opportunities are, because there are a lot of opportunities out there,” Brumder said.
