Leading Northern California senior living operator takes innovative approach to older adult hospitality and care
RALEIGH, N.C., Jan. 31, 2022 — Today, Sequoia Living’s Viamonte at Walnut Creek announced a technology partnership with K4Connect, a mission-driven healthtech company integrating the best in technology to serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities. Viamonte at Walnut Creek opened the doors of its state-of-the-art senior living community in December 2020. Today, they have more than 150 residents across independent living, assisted living and memory care.
Located in the San Francisco Bay Area, Viamonte at Walnut Creek implemented K4Connect’s technology, K4Community, to deliver a next generation living experience for residents and a better-connected workplace for staff. The technology also helped the new community steer through the challenges of the pandemic by increasing resident access to information, keeping residents connected to loved ones and empowering staff with dependable and scalable tooling to ensure residents were safe and cared for.
“K4Community has played a vital role in Viamonte at Walnut Creek’s success during its first year of operation,” says Melody Mitchell, executive director of Viamonte at Walnut Creek. “We leveraged the technology to seamlessly navigate through the continued hurdles of the pandemic with the communications, engagement and resident safety tooling. We’re confident our strong resident adoption of the technology indicates a continued desire for this type of integrated and innovative living experience.”
K4Community is a comprehensive suite of resident and staff solutions built for senior living. Over the last year, Viamonte residents have used the K4Community Plus app to conduct a myriad of tasks. This includes staying connected to loved ones through video chat, messaging, and photo-sharing, which helped curb the harmful impacts of social isolation throughout the pandemic. K4Community Plus also provides easy access to smart lighting features in their homes, improving safety by allowing residents to turn lights on and off on their personal device(s) from anywhere in the home.
In addition, K4Community Plus enables residents to view community events, dining menus, resident directories, entertainment content and more, all of which over 90% of residents are actively accessing. This same content is also provided as a voice-first experience with K4Community Voice, powered by Amazon Alexa.
Over the last six months, the community has seen high adoption and benefits including:
- Daily app users grew by over 50%
- 77% viewed community photos and 65% viewed community shared videos
- A 190% increase in the total number of voice commands
- 84% of residents used the K4Community Voice control feature for smart lighting
- A 200% increase in the number of smart lighting commands
Community staff are also realizing the benefits from streamlined and augmented daily workflows. With the award-winning K4Community Resident Check-In (RCI), the daily resident check-in process is automated for both the resident and caregiving team. Motion-enabled smart home and voice-activated devices automatically alert staff and confirm a resident is active for the day. This non-invasive, passive monitoring is a complete departure from the traditional method of administering this critical daily task, often relying on in-room resident pull cords or meal check-ins. In using RCI, the time to resolve alerts decreased by 79% over the last six months, a reflection of the increased efficiency of the time-consuming process, along with residents feeling safer.
“We designed our technology with a pretty simple yet impactful objective – to help older adults live their best lives,” says K4Connect CEO and Co-Founder, Scott Moody. “In recent times, that has meant using K4Community as a tool and resource to stay safe, connected and healthy during the pandemic. We are thrilled to see how the residents at Viamonte have embraced our technology and look forward to working with the community team to continue to deliver on our mission of serving through innovation.”
K4Connect is a leading provider of enterprise technologies being used by tens of thousands of residents and staff teams across the nation. For more information about K4Community, visit www.K4Connect.com.
About K4Connect
K4Connect is a mission-driven healthtech company that integrates the best in technology to serve and empower older adults and individuals living with disabilities, together with the people, communities and organizations that also serve them. We believe meaningful technologies have the power to make the lives of older adults simpler, healthier and happier. Our leading solution for senior living, K4Community, is an ecosystem of smart products and features that help residents live more independently, while streamlining staff workflows and driving operational efficiencies for operators. The entire K4Community experience is powered by our patented FusionOS operating system, enabling all of our community partners to finally unlock the value of enterprise data.
Based in Raleigh, N.C., K4Connect is currently serving thousands of senior living residents and staff at over 800 continuing care, independent living and assisted living communities across the nation. For more information, please visit www.K4Connect.com.
About Viamonte
Viamonte at Walnut Creek, owned by Bay Area nonprofit Sequoia Living, includes independent apartments, assisted living units and memory care. The 191 units at Viamonte feature spacious floor plans, modern kitchens, and private patios or balconies. The award-winning design of the community includes $1.5 million in public art on display on every floor and common area. Viamonte is a truly inspired environment to call home. For more information or to schedule a private tour and lunch at Viamonte, contact the sales office at 925-621-6600 or visit online at viamonteliving.org.
