How the Breezie Tablet Interface Helps Seniors Connect

Mobility technology is increasingly enriching the lives of elderly people in care and providing carers with a new way to deliver care at lower costs and provide value-added services to the care facility. Breezie is one of the forerunners of mobile technology being adopted by both facilities and the elderly, with the benefits of the service transforming the lives of seniors. Acquired by Samsung after great success in the US and the UK, Breezie is now being trialled in Australia through Vita Enterprise Solutions.

What is Breezie?

Breezie is a resident-facing tablet solution designed for seniors and proven to deliver a better quality of care. It consists of three core areas:

1. A platform that curates popular existing internet applications, content, and services, such as Facebook.
2. An online portal that family and caregivers can use to select the services relevant to the senior.
3. The software that runs on Samsung tablets to radically simplify and personalise the interface for the individual user.

Benefits of Breezie for Seniors

1. Customised for Them

Breezie uses a highly tailored approach to enable seniors to continue to engage in the activities they like most and to stay close to the people and things that matter most to them.  Breezie’s simplified interface and easily customised set up means each device is able to be personalised to suit the individual’s context, digital literacy, evolving physical conditions and cognitive abilities.

Family members, caregivers, and the senior themselves can all update and customise the experience from any computer, smartphone, or tablet. Breezie is designed specifically for seniors, making it easy for those with little or no computer experience to browse the web, send email, video chat and more. In fact, the software has had success across a large spectrum of users aged 63-104 years old, many of whom haven’t used computers or the internet before.

2. Engaged Living

Mental engagement is one of the key factors for ageing well. Breezie helps seniors to lead happier, healthier lives by providing a collection of existing applications, content, and services for ongoing mental engagement. Mental health and wellbeing applications are available and able to be used to help reduce depression and anxiety levels.

Games provide recreational fun while also ensuring they are exercising their brain – such as Tetris improving spatial recognition, mah-jong assisting memory and matching, and Sudoku for strategy training. Providing such engagement can increase mental well-being, self-esteem, and socialisation by encouraging seniors to challenge their grandchildren to the games.

3. Reconnecting with Loved Ones

Keeping socially engaged is just as important to healthy gaining as genetics and maintaining a healthy body. Breezie is introducing a new generation to the benefits of online social interaction with applications like Facebook, Skype, and email, helping to supplement human interaction when visits from friends and family aren’t possible or too infrequent. Providing these touchpoints and keeping the seniors connected to their family and caregivers, keeps them mentally engaged and active.