GeriLife: Transforming Elder Care Through Data-Driven Insights

Background and Motivation

I co-founded GeriLife in 2015 with Marjo, an elder care administrator, after identifying a critical gap: care facilities struggled with inconsistent quality of care and limited visibility into resident wellbeing. Family members felt disconnected from loved ones’ daily experiences, and facility managers lacked systematic tools to track quality of life.

Traditional approaches relied on anecdotal information. Care staff, already overburdened, found it challenging to facilitate wellbeing activities equally for all residents. We envisioned a platform that could provide actionable insights at multiple levels: individual care planning, facility-wide programming, and system-level resource allocation.

Through a trial partnership with the City of Tampere, we implemented GeriLife across multiple facilities, developing the system in direct collaboration with nurses and care staff who would ultimately use it.

The Solution

GeriLife is a comprehensive wellbeing platform that captures both qualitative emotional metrics (how residents feel) and quantitative engagement measurements (time spent in wellness activities like nature experiences, art, music, and cultural events). The system tracks contextual factors including activity facilitators (volunteer, staff, family), providing insights into residents’ social connections.

The platform serves multiple stakeholders with tailored views: care providers see resident-specific details and preferences, facility directors view aggregate trends and identify at-risk residents, and family members gain transparency into daily activities and wellbeing.

Technical Implementation

Architecture

• Meteor.js: Real-time data synchronization across devices for multi-staff access
• Vue.js: Mobile-first interface enabling documentation during activities
• MongoDB: Flexible data model balancing comprehensiveness with usability
• Plotly.js: Role-based visualizations for different stakeholder needs

Key Features

• Sub-one-minute activity documentation workflow
• Granular access controls with comprehensive audit logging
• Participation gap visualization to ensure equitable care delivery
• Multi-layered reporting system (individual, facility, system-wide)

Development Approach

Iterative development with regular feedback cycles from care providers, administrators, and residents. Each cycle refined both the user interface and analytics capabilities, guided by Marjo’s domain expertise and practitioner needs.

Challenges and Solutions

Balancing Data Capture with Ease of Use

Care staff had limited time for documentation, yet comprehensive data was essential. Solution: streamlined workflow allowing activity documentation in under one minute while actively engaging with residents.

Designing for Diverse Stakeholders

Care providers needed resident-specific details while facility directors needed aggregate trends. Solution: Multi-layered reporting system generating appropriate visualizations based on user role.

Ensuring Data Privacy

Resident wellbeing data contained sensitive information but needed accessibility for authorized parties. Solution: Granular access controls with comprehensive audit logging, plus GDPR-aligned data minimization principles.

Supporting Equity in Care

Early prototypes revealed certain residents received disproportionate attention. Solution: Visualization tools highlighting participation gaps and tracking consistent non-participation to identify potential barriers.

Impact and Outcomes

Over a decade of implementation across multiple Tampere elder care communities, GeriLife enabled:

Evidence-based care planning: Objective data on resident preferences and engagement patterns improved personalization and communication between staff shifts.

Enhanced family connection: Transparency into daily activities and wellbeing fostered greater trust in care provision.

System-wide insights: Administrators could identify facilities with lower engagement and direct resources accordingly, enabling equitable resource allocation.

Best practice sharing: Data revealed which activities consistently generated positive responses, enabling replication across facilities and more effective resource use.

The City of Tampere partnership provided rich comparative data and demonstrated the system’s scalability in a real-world municipal healthcare context.

Personal Reflections

Leading GeriLife’s development over a decade confirmed my belief that thoughtfully designed technology can address complex human challenges when developed collaboratively with end users. The most meaningful technical decisions—database structure, visualization approach, workflow design—were evaluated based on how they would ultimately impact residents’ experience of care.

The partnership with Marjo exemplified combining technical expertise with domain knowledge. Her elder care administration experience and community connections complemented my technology background, allowing us to develop GeriLife in direct partnership with the nurses who would use it. This interdisciplinary collaboration, supported by the City of Tampere’s institutional partnership, was essential to creating a system that addressed real needs rather than assumed ones.

This experience shaped my approach to subsequent projects: building technology that makes complex information accessible, actionable, and transformative for the communities it serves.