Allyson Schrier, co-founder of Zinnia TV, talks about the reasons why she developed a streaming service optimized for people who are living with dementia and Alzheimer’s. She explained how she would visit her husband, who had dementia and resided in a senior living community, but while there she noticed that some of the residents were watching TV, some were asleep in front of it, and some were becoming agitated by what they saw on the screen. We don’t want our senior loved ones falling asleep in front of the television – that means they’ll have trouble falling asleep at night. People with dementia can’t tell fact from fiction, and they have difficulty following a plot. She found a paper on the topic that found that the most engaging images were kind of like a slideshow, moving slowly enough that they could follow it, with music that didn’t conflict with what they were seeing on the screen. This led her to more research, and then to the idea of showing her husband things like that instead. She realized she made to make that programming herself.
