Dementia affects millions of people worldwide, with its devastating impact extending beyond the individual to their families and carepartners. Providing care for someone with dementia is a challenging task, requiring compassion, patience and expertise. This is where Vera comes in, providing an innovative solution to make dementia care more personalised, effective and joyful.
What sets Vera apart from other technologies is the use of music as a tool for engagement, connection, and communication. Music has long been recognized as a powerful medium that can evoke emotions, memories and positive behaviours in individuals, regardless of their cognitive ability. Vera builds on this foundation, using cutting-edge AI technology to analyse an individual’s cultural and linguistic background, mood and preferences to curate a personalised playlist that can enhance their well-being and quality of life.
Vera is designed for family carepartners and individuals who provide care for loved ones with dementia. It is an easy-to-use app that offers a range of features, including three personalised music stations, mood detection and free resources that provide guidance to maximise impact. Carepartners can use Vera to support daily activities such as bathing, eating, or getting dressed, where music can create a calming and enjoyable experience. With Vera, carepartners can say goodbye to guesswork and hello to the right music at the right time, enhancing the care experience for both the carepartner and the person with dementia.
Vera was initially designed for one carepartner caring for one person living with dementia at home. After winning funding to conduct research, Vera was deployed for the first time in a residential aged care setting. It became clear very quickly that the product needed to adapt in quite a significant way so that one carepartner could care for multiple
people at once from a single device. VeraPro was born!
“I enjoy the way VeraPro is tailored to our residents here. You walk into a room, it’s already loaded as to what that person’s tastes are from their era, you just press play. Happy faces.”—Carepartner from a residential care facility in Australia.
VeraPro is designed specifically for professional carepartners working in residential aged care and geriatric wards in hospitals. The app offers a range of features that are tailored to the needs of the professional care environment, including personalised music stations, reporting dashboards that offer powerful insights to help optimise the care delivered and multi-profile support. VeraPro also offers comprehensive accreditation training, which can count towards continued professional development points (CPD), ensuring that carepartners are equipped with the skills and knowledge to provide the best care possible.
The team behind Vera understands that caring for someone with dementia in a residential aged care facility can be extremely challenging when one person can be looking after multiple people at the same time. We’re constantly removing friction to ensure our users can get to the right music at the right time without fail. But things go missing, devices run out of batteries and tensions can quickly escalate without warning. To ensure Vera is ready to go when it’s needed, we created the Vera box which is the home for all the devices required for using VeraPro. Our boxes plug into the wall socket to power 8 USB ports ensuring devices that live in it are charging up every second they’re not in use.
Vera and VeraPro form an innovative solution that is transforming the way we think about dementia care. By using the power of music and cutting-edge AI technology, Vera and VeraPro are helping to make care more personalised, effective, and enjoyable. Whether you’re a family carepartner or a professional carepartner, Vera is here to support you every step of the way.
Stephen Hunt is the co-founder and COO of Vera. To learn more, visit veramusic.com.
