Tech Talks in CMMS
with Guest Marie-Anne Bazerghi

Dan Roberge
Marianne, thank you for joining us. Tell me, where are you from? Who are you? What do you do? Why are you here?

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
I'm, originally from Montreal in Quebec, and I work at Eugeria. We are a Montreal-based company that specializes in innovations for dementia care.

Dan Roberge
Okay.

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
I'm participating at the Advantage Ontario Conference just to share some of the latest innovations that can help with non-pharmaceutical approaches to dementia care, which is a really important topic right now.

Dan Roberge
Okay, so tell me about some of the offerings that you provide. Like, what does that mean? It's not pharmaceutical?

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
It has a lot to do with behavioral support in Ontario and different geographies around finding activities that can give purpose to some of the residents that are living with dementia. And that just helps with all kinds of behaviors that are really challenging for the staff in the nursing home. So if you think of someone with dementia, usually at the end of the day around 3 or 4:00 pm, they start to have sundowning, which is something that can usually, you know, create agitation, but also exit seeking, repeating repetitive questions around, "I want to go home. My bus is here. I wanna go home." And it's really hard for the staff to manage, because it's just about at the same time they have all the shifts change.

Dan Roberge
Oh, wow.

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
we have lots of technologies like interactive projectors, live music, instruments that can really be used to redirect a resident that is experiencing sundowning, at a time of day, which can be a real challenge for the staff to manage.

Dan Roberge
So there's real ROI just as far as staff management time. Right? Just on that. Not to mention the care side of it. So that's really useful.

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
There's lots of studies that show that giving purposeful activities to residents living with dementia has lots of benefits, whether it's emotional, cognitive, but even health wise, because you are giving them a purpose, whether it's gardening. So that's kind of the latest innovation that we're showing this year at advantage, is our latest gardening project, which is a hydroponic garden that is very easy to use. All you need is water. And, we provide it together with a year of programming activities. And so very easy for the staff every day to say, what's the activity we're going to do around our garden today? And so you just pull up our website and you have activities that you can get the staff and the residents involved. Many academic studies have shown that getting your hands in some dirt, caring for some plants has a lot of benefits for people living with dementia.

Dan Roberge
Okay.

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
These are just some of the examples, whether it's music instruments and interactive projector or gardening. Some of the products that we carry, that we provide for nursing homes because we have tested them, we have built an offering around them, whether it's activities or programming, so that it's very easy for the staff to provide these activities to the residents living with dementia. And in the end, it has positive effects on the residents.

Dan Roberge
Well, so there's a lot of education around how to use these tools. So it's not just here's a garden. Just take care of it. You've actually got a program built around it, and that's part of your service.

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
Yes, we sell products, but we do a lot of training around how to use our products to make it as easy as possible for the staff and their teams. And so we're really all about finding useful, dignifying innovations for dementia care.

Dan Roberge
So I was going to ask you, how do you come up to find these types of products? Or are they tested somewhere else and you find them or does your team do that? How do you find those?

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
That's really our specialization is we understand dementia really well. And so we know what long term care home staff need in order to provide high quality of care. And once we have identified those needs, we do lots of research all around the world trying to look for what is the best that is done out there in the world in order to address that need. So, we have a weighted doll that has a heartbeat that we found in England because it was designed by a professor who was working with the Alzheimer Society in UK to try and decrease agitation through touch.

Dan Roberge
Wow

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
We found that, and we said we know that's going to help a lot of people that are wanderers in nursing homes. And so now lots of nursing homes in Ontario have the hug doll, which is weighted, it almost looks like a sloth, and it has a heartbeat. And it just helps people calm down. The protectors that I keep talking about, we found them in the Netherlands, and we were really impressed by the research behind the design of the games that help with sundowning. And so what we do is we look across the planet for the best innovations in dementia care. We test them with, a network of nursing homes in Canada. And once we're happy with the quality and with the positive effect it has on the staff and the residents, that's when we decide to distribute them.

Dan Roberge
So people can trust that you've done your due diligence. You've researched them. You have the expertise behind it. So that's great. And then so how does your pricing model work? Do they just buy these one offs or is it a reoccurring membership? How does it work?

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
The products really are bought by the nursing homes, depending on what projects they're focusing on. So I work with a lot of people that have a foundation that helps them with specific needs. I have lots of people that are working with me when they have new builds. They want to include kind of our technology as part of the relaunch. But then I also have people who work with BSL, and then they are really looking for non-pharmaceutical approaches for dementia care, and so they have funding specifically for that. And so we work with them. What we try to say is, if you think you're interested in some of the technology, invite us over for a demo. We bring the projector or the music instruments or any of our products to you so that you can see it. You can see it with your residents. And usually then, because you've seen the positive impact they can have through an hour and a half demo, usually most people within a year or two, they're able to find the funding.

Dan Roberge
Wow. Amazing. So where can people find information about your products and your company?

Marie-Anne Bazerghi
I invite anyone who is curious about what we do to go on our website. Eugenia.com. Eugenia is spelled e u g e r I a, and then we'll be happy to help answer any questions you might have.

Dan Roberge
Well, this has been really, really, enlightening for me. So I appreciate you talking to me. And maybe we'll do this again later and we can learn some more. Okay. Thank you.