If you live alone, have no family, no friends and no pets, you still have to take care of yourself. You are a caregiver for yourself.
If you live alone and have a pet, you are a caregiver for yourself and your pet.
Most people have more complicated lives, of course. We take care of ourselves, our pets, our children, and often our family and sometimes our friends.
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If you are taking care of someone who is disabled, ill or just elderly, things can get really complicated. The number and variety of tasks, the things to remember and worry about can be overwhelming.
In 2012, over 15 million Americans helped care for family or friends who have Alzheimer's, and this is just one example. A study from the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found that there are over 3 million caregivers for special needs children and nearly 42 million for people over age 18.
Here at Unfrazzle, there's not much we can do about these numbers. But we can still do something very important.
By making it easier for caregivers to remember and keep track of all their caregiving tasks, to stay in synch with and share some of these tasks with others, we can help caregivers find more space for joy, health and life.
To illustrate how this works, we created the following video example of how a family might use the Unfrazzle smartphone app:
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In this video, Unfrazzle connects Sue with her family (husband Bill, her mother Mary, son Joey), her dog Gizmo, and her fitness coach, Yoko.
Sue, Bill, Mary and Yoko use Unfrazzle. Joey and Gizmo do not, but tasks related to them are shared by Sue and Bill.
Sue uses "journals" to keep track of her daily exercise routine, the foods she eats, her weight and other tasks. She also maintains a "headache journal" and is correlating the frequency and severity of her headaches with how much coffee she drinks.
This is useful stuff, but for Sue, what makes Unfrazzle really powerful is that it lets her look at the regiments of other family members. (Unfrazzle users can determine which ones they want to share and with whom.)
At a glance, Sue can check up on her Mom. She sees that Bill gave Mary her morning meds (he's assigned to this task), she slept 7 hours, and the quality of her sleep was 4 on a 1-to-5 scale. She can also see that Mary feels like it is going to be a great day even though she has some minor back pain, probably from gardening.
Sue even see a note her Mom entered, "Great day for gardening." This makes her smile because she knows Mary loves gardening and isn't going to let a little back pain stop her.
Thanks to Unfrazzle, without calling Bill and her Mom, Sue knows what is happening. She doesn't have to fret.
This is only one example of how Unfrazzle brings "serenity to chaos."
Unfrazzle gives users complete control of how tasks are described using optional scales, lists, amounts, frequency and text fields. It also gives users full control over how much access family members and other users in their Unfrazzle network have to these task descriptions.
Our goal is to provide a simple service that makes a profound difference in the lives of caregivers, no matter how overwhelming and seemingly unmanageable their situations are.
Right now, Unfrazzle is in beta. We'll be reporting soon on the experiences of our beta testers and within a few weeks, the app will be released first for iPhone users and then for Android users.
Want to know more? Here's some useful links:
Unfrazzle website
Unfrazzle User Guide
Unfrazzle Explained YouTube Video
Unfrazzle on Facebook
Unfrazzle on Twitter
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