CareWheels was founded in 2001 as an Oregon non-profit Public Benefit Corporation with a clear puropse, to: Help People to Help People. The growing disparity between the needs of frail elders and people of all ages with disabilities on the one hand, and the gaps in healthcare and social services on the other, demanded solutions that would help strengthen and redistribute caregiving resources more effectively. Today, in the midst of a severe economic recession and the growing population of aging Baby Boomers, we, our families and communities are all touched by these challenges.

As a biomedical engineer, I naturally sought ways to leverage technology to empower people to help people.

You may be familiar with the TV commercial:

Grandma: I've fallen down and I can't get up!

(pushes her Call-for-Help Button on pendant)

Monitor Company: OK – help is on the way...

When I interviewed Kaiser Permanente's Aging Network Director, Expanded Care Managers and Home Health Care Workers, they told me that in many cases, these personal emergency response systems failed – not because of technical problems – but because the monitored person was afraid to push the button. Why? I asked. Because pushing the button was an admission that they could no longer take care of themselves – a step toward surrender and institutionalization. Sometimes the monitored person was not wearing the button when they needed it. In fact, some people avoid wearing the call-for-help button because it feels like a stigma suggesting: I can't take care of myself.

Instead of requiring people to wear - and push - the button, I thought: How about monitoring an elder's daily activities around the home with simple motion sensors to detect any changes that could indicate a problem such as a fall or incapacitation? My idea was to marry computer-network with smart-home technologies to create an intelligent monitoring and support system that would allow people to live safely and age gracefully in their own smart-homes as a preferable alternative to call-for-help buttons or institutionalization.

The goal was to give families the connection and assurances they needed to overcome the fears of a loved one living alone, providing an automatic call-for-help function if the smart-home detected a problem and a video-phone connection to provide peace of mind.

So, in 2001 I wrote a research proposal to design and install a “living lab” smart-home network in the Pine Point apartments, a specialized housing project in Portland for people of all ages with disabilities who wish to live with utmost independence. Pine Point features private apartments, barrier-free design and live-in attendants. Fortunately the Intel Research Council found my proposal interesting and offered to fund the Pine Point Project for a year.

Results from that first year of research merited two more years of funding for the Pine Point Project, during which several important discoveries were made, one of which leads directly to the CareWheels - LOVE Connection. Instead of an anonymous operator at an impersonal monitoring company responding to a call-for-help button, who would you want responding to your loved one's call for help when their smart-home detected a potential problem?

One of our Pine Point Participants became quadriplegic when his neck was broken in an automobile accident. Sometimes he would get locked in his apartment, unable to open the door, so he gave a paraplegic Participant who lived down the hall his spare key. When he got locked-in, he would use the voice-activated video phone to ask his neighbor for help. This natural, neighborly support system inspired us to replicate it – first within the Pine Point local network – and then beyond into the community as a TeleCare service provided by people at Pine Point.

The Intel Research Council documented this in the CareWheels TeleCare Project video, in which Eric Dishman, General Manager of Intel's Health Research & Innovation Group, explained:

The magic of CareWheels is taking these two disenfranchised communities: people who are of working age with physical disabilities, and using technology to help them support frail elders who are trying to live at home in the community. With a program like CareWheels, we’ve seen successful use of wireless sensor networks, the successful creation of interfaces that both frail elders and people with disabilities can use.

Now the challenge is: How may we cultivate these kinds of natural, neighborly support systems throughout our communities? LOVE is the answer!

By implementing the lessons we have learned in our first decade of service, CareWheels is developing the tools needed to connect people into networks of interdependence - empowering them to co-produce services like Laura's at Pine Point. We all "need a good reason to get up in the morning" and could all benefit from richer giving and receiving relationships. In fact, we observed that the greatest benefits were bestowed on those who were transformed from being passive recipients of care to becoming active care-givers as well as receivers. These transformations resulted from changing isolation to relation, self-doubt to self-efficacy and depression to joy.

The LOVE: Mutual Credit & Time Bank employs the principles of reciprocity, local sustainability, and the Golden Rule to create a market for people to exchange their local skills, goods and services, plus incentives and rewarding opportunities to volunteer. These activities generate social capital - increasing the number and quality of relationships - which promotes health and well-being by strengthening community, reducing isolation and increasing opportunities for meaningful, rewarding work.