The Future Leaders Awards program is brought to you in partnership with PointClickCare. The program is designed to recognize up-and-coming industry members who are shaping the next decade of senior housing, skilled nursing, home health and hospice care. To see this year’s future leaders, visit Future Leaders online.
Nick Nemer, vice president at LifeLoop, has been named a 2021 Future Leader by Senior Housing News.
To become a Future Leader, an individual is nominated by their peers. The candidate must be a high-performing employee who is 40-years-old or younger, a passionate worker who knows how to put vision into action, and an advocate for seniors and the committed professionals who ensure their well-being.
Nemer sat down with Senior Housing News to talk about his career trajectory and why he joined LifeLoop, a company that offers a multi-faceted platform designed to streamline operations, work flow, and communication with senior living providers’ internal and external stakeholders. Nemer also discusses ways the industry is evolving, and why having the “right sort of empathy” is so important for any company serving senior living providers.
I was in the health care field for a while, working more on the acute and ambulatory side and in the software space, and LifeLoop Co-Founder and CEO Amy Johnson and her husband have been friends of mine for a long time. So when they had the idea for LifeLoop, they called me to see if I’d be interested in joining them in taking this adventure on.
I started doing some exploring volunteering in the space and had loved ones that were in senior living communities, dealing with dementia. It seemed like a good transition that I could make from health care into this space.
More technology focus. I think we take for granted what our seniors can actually do in terms of what technology they utilize day-to-day. And a lot of these senior living buildings are slightly older — how can we bring technology into the mix to create better buildings that have the ability to provide technology to improve the quality of life of these residents?
The other big thing is putting a big focus on the social isolation component of senior living. How do we really get seniors to engage a little bit more, get them involved, and get people to understand what the positive effects on their actual overall health can be just from socializing, engaging. Really starting to look at the correlation between those behaviors and health care is going to be super important.
Getting back to the technology side, I think you’ll see more technology in place in these communities, and a big focus on person-centered care — really creating plans and activities that are specific to each resident.
I think you’re going to see some of the adaptations that we’ve made during this pandemic continue to go on, for the better. So moving towards the future, I think you’ll see a lot of good things come about from the innovation that we’ve had to make during this time.
I think a lot of organizations on the vendor side don’t empathize in the right way with what the staff is doing, until you really dive in and see it and understand it. And so, my advice would be to get really into those communities and understand what they’re doing.
The jobs they’re doing are so hard. They’re doing 18 different things at any point in time. And, you know, what we provide to them is just a small piece of their day. We want to help, and I think really just understanding what goes into a day in the life of someone who’s providing care for our seniors is the biggest advice that I could give anybody if they’re looking at starting any sort of company for senior living.
Innovation.
To learn more about the Future Leaders program, visit https://futureleaders.agingmedia.com/