SilverBills: A Financial and Legal Tech Tool for Caregivers

ABSTRACT Financial and legal management for persons with dementia (PwD) is a crucial responsibility of caregivers. This responsibility adds to the stress and strain of caregiving. Current technology tools that help with bill management and budgeting often require a high degree of technical expertise and provide an insufficient degree of personal support to address the caregivers’ needs. Current approaches to financial management are typically aimed at technologically savvy millennials rather than caregivers. Additionally, these approaches do not address the need for safe and accessible storage of legal documents. Thus, the current solutions available for these tasks are a mismatch for caregivers. We will address the lack of effective financial management and legal support for caregivers of PwD by building features on our existing SilverBills (V1) product that simplify financial management, provide a supportive communication tool and a vault for critical legal documents. Using proprietary technology, SilverBills receives, scrutinizes, stores, and pays bills on behalf of clients. SilverBills intends to use this NIH grant to further develop its technology and tailor capabilities to specifically address the needs of caregivers. The goal of this project is to decrease the stress and strain on caregivers of PwD, by providing a simple, safe, and effective financial and legal management tool. The objective of the administrative supplement to our existing Phase II grant (award number 1R44AG074126-01) is to receive technical and business funding to further minimize risk. The proposal is to use the additional funding to become SOC 2 (Health Information Trust) compliant. SOC 2 certification determines that SilverBills has met industry-defined mandates and maintains the highest standards of cyber risk management and patient data loss prevention. Our central hypothesis is that SOC 2 certification will enhance our security protection beyond cyberthreats. We aim to uphold that the SOC 2 certification optimizes our efficiencies and keeps our internal intelligence protected. As outlined in the parent grant, in collaboration with researchers from the University of Denver, we will assess caregiver burden and physical, financial, and emotional distress. The administrative supplement for Technical and Business Assistance will benefit the study as the participants data and software used will have the highest level of compliance and security.