Welcome to Alula

Welcome to Alula

Where Technology Meets Compassion: The Alula Story

Oct 16, 2024

Welcome to Alula, where our mission is to streamline the care-giving process and enhance the quality of life for the care recipient.

We understand the immense responsibilities that come with care-giving—managing appointments, coordinating care, fostering social connections, ensuring overall well-being, and more.

Our journey began in response to the challenges we encountered while caring for our own loved ones. Care-giving has been one of the most complex and rewarding experiences of our lives. We’ve always thought we should make it simpler—so we set out to do just that.

By combining Jason’s background in technology and operations with my experience in care-giving and community, we created Alula to help others navigate the same challenges. Our team of leading physicians, designers, technical experts, and seasoned caregivers have come together to craft a solution that is human centered, empathetic in nature and is not technology for the sake of technology. Our goals are simple: to lighten the load of family caregivers and enable care recipients to have more independence and focus on what they can do.

As we build our product and launch Alula in Charlottesville, we remain deeply committed to the community. Just as our team collaborates to build a unified support system, Alula is dedicated to creating a space of empowerment and connection for everyone involved.

At Alula, we’re not simply building a platform—we’re fostering a movement grounded in empathy, empowerment, and community. Join us as we reshape the future of care-giving, one step at a time.

From the Alula “Docs”

(Justin Mutter, M.D. and Kathryn Mutter, M.D.)

“We must improve the way we support family caregivers in this country,” declares the 2024 Progress Report, released just last month, on implementation of the National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers. But the punctuation for this sentence is wrong. It is a declaration, yes, but it should also be a shout-to-the-ends-of-the-earth exclamation. Creating better care systems is not just a must, it is urgent work of abiding ethical importance (worthy of multiple exclamation points)!!!!!

Caregiving is a beautiful task, a service rich with meaning and value both to those who provide care and to those who receive it. Yet—as any caregiver or care recipient knows all too well—it is simultaneously a task fraught with deep and complex challenges: financial, personal, and medical. The statistics detailing these challenges are well known, detailing the mental and physical health costs of caregiving; the profound financial burden of unpaid caregiving; and the extraordinary difficulty that caregivers and care receivers have in navigating the labyrinth of health and social care in elderhood. We often find ourselves walking the landscape of caregiving without a map, perhaps without even a compass to point us in the right direction.

But these statistics need to be placed in context in order to fully appreciate their staggering breadth. When you combine the yearly financial cost of unpaid family caregiving with the annual lost income that unpaid caregivers incur by leaving their jobs, the total (over $1 trillion) is greater than the annual expenditures of Medicare in its entirety. Studies have shown that the rate of mental illness among caregivers is double, and sometimes triple, the rate within the general population. This is a challenge of truly epic significance, and we need real, permanent solutions—now.

We joined Alula because we want to build and refine solutions for caregivers and care recipients across towns, cities, states and nations. As doctors, we have accompanied thousands of families struggling with caregiving for their loved ones. We have been witness to its beauty and its meaning. We have also been witness to its hardships. One of us (Justin), is a geriatrician whose expertise in eldercare has brought him into the lives of older adults working to care for loved ones with profound physical or cognitive support needs. Kathryn, as an emergency physician, has counseled countless families who have arrived at the E.R., confused about and exhausted by their caregiving pathways. The question, “What do we do now?” is ubiquitous for both of us.

Alula strives to be the answer to that question. It aims to do so by providing a map and a compass to help us all journey better—indeed, journey well—across the landscape of caregiving. Everyone’s journey will be different. There are many pathways across this landscape, each with their own significance and particular challenges. But Alula will be the map and the compass in everyone’s backpack as they move forward.

Let’s get moving!

Be One of the First to Shape the Future of Family Care Coordination

We understand the challenges families face when managing the care of their loved ones: communication breakdowns, juggling countless tasks, and the stress of keeping everyone in the loop. That’s why we created Alula, a solution designed to ease those burdens and help you feel more in control.

Now, we’re looking for 50 families to join our exclusive early launch and partner with us to address these common struggles head-on. As part of our beta group, you’ll receive personalized, white glove treatment and direct support from our team of professional advocates as we work together to refine Alula into the most effective tool for caregivers and families.

Your feedback will be invaluable as we focus on solving the most pressing challenges:

• Keeping family members and caregivers aligned and informed
• Reducing stress by simplifying the coordination of care
• Ensuring nothing important slips through the cracks

We invite you to be a part of this transformative process, shaping a tool that will help families like yours across the country.

Click the link below to apply for one of the few spots in our beta group!

Join our Limited Beta Group!

Announcements

We’re hosting monthly Alula round tables to gather insights and discuss the future of care-giving.

Our next round table will be: Tuesday, October 29th 7-8pm Eastern. To join, click the link below.

Round Table Sign Up

At Alula, we’re aiming to provide a curated list of local resources, community news, and more to help keep you informed and connected. If you have specific topics or questions you’d like us to address through our care-giving corner or from our medical experts, leave us a comment at the bottom of this page. We’ll do our best to include as many requests as possible.

This is your chance to make a real difference— help us create the future of family care-giving!

POLL

What topics would you like to discuss?

Stress management

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Transportation options for seniors

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Navigating the healthcare ecosystem

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Medicare

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Preparation

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