In Her Own Words: Jean Anne Booth’s mom inspired her invention
By Ellen Sherberg, BizWomen Contributor, The Business Journals
January 5, 2021

As our communities continue to struggle, women across America see their lives becoming more complicated as they juggle responsibilities at home and at work (which is often still at home), caring for coworkers, customers and family. Worrying about her mother inspired Jean Anne Booth to disrupt the personal medical alert device industry.

“The personal medical alert device industry has a long and successful history of saving lives and allowing people to remain active and independent much longer, protecting them from falls and other unexpected mishaps.

Yet only 6% of people 65+ in the US have one of these devices and fewer than half of those wear it regularly.

My aging mom was one of the 94%. She hated the idea of wearing a medical alert pendant— so bulky, so stigmatizing. “I’m not that old, and I certainly don’t want others to think so,” she said as she approached her 80th birthday. Yet she lived alone and had started to experience more unsteadiness when she walked. I knew I had to do something.

I am an electrical engineer by training and a serial entrepreneur. Over a 30-plus year career, I had built and sold two companies—one to Texas Instruments and the other to Apple. Using my experience and connections, as well as personal and investor capital, I invented a better medical alert device. It’s called the Kanega Watch and, while I worked with an incredibly skilled team of engineers and developers to make this smart watch a reality, its form and design came together with substantial help from my mom — our Senior (in stature and age) User Experience Advisor.

So now, thanks to Mom, seniors and others in vulnerable populations have a discreet, stylish watch that, in any emergency, connects in seconds via voice or button command (or automatically if a fall is detected) to a trained care specialist 24/7/365 who can quickly triage the situation and deploy appropriate support — whether calling a loved one, an ambulance, the police, etc.

The Kanega Watch took three years to design, build and manufacture from scratch. It’s now on the wrists of a quickly increasing number of seniors, as well as those with epilepsy and other conditions that can make them vulnerable, across the country. The vast majority of our wearers have never owned a medical alert device before and yet wear ours with pleasure. In fact, our data indicates that 92% of Kanega Watch customers wear their watch 24/7 (it uniquely doesn’t need to be taken off to charge), double the industry average.

Mom, who is no longer with us, would take real pride in this stat. I treasured the time we spent working together in designing this watch. She lived long enough to see us bring independence with dignity to many people who said a “hard no” to all the other options on the market. My mom (a professional model) was a woman of great style and now that style (in watch form) has outlived her in ways that are truly life changing and life saving for all our wearers. It’s a legacy I think about everyday as we try and bring this dignity to more and more wearers around the country and, soon, around the world.”

Link to Read More:  https://www.bizjournals.com/bizwomen/news/latest-news/2021/01/in-her-own-words-jean-anne-booth-s-mom-inspired-h.html?page=all