Fresh off a five-year rebranding initiative, a senior care technology company has entered the home health market with the launch of a new product geared at consumers. 

Formerly Tel-Tron, the newly-rebranded Silversphere has been in existence for more than six decades with 30 years of senior living-specific experience. It’s now shifting focus from customer-centric to resident-centric, says director of marketing Kaleb Scharmahorn. While leadership has not changed, the company is sporting a new name, look, and approach, he told SHN. 

“Silversphere is the combination of the last four to five years of brainstorming and strategizing,” he says. “It was essentially a rebranding, but it means more internally because of that shift in thought. We’re still doing the same products today as we were 30 years ago, but it was a paradigm shift for us.” 

Trends related to the global aging population, an increase in life expectancy, and a stronger desire to age in place with the help of technology lead to the rebranding. 

“We have always believed that creative innovation is one of the key elements that define our contributions to our clients’ success,” said Brian Dawson, CEO of Silversphere, in a  statement. “Technology companies have a special obligation to stay current, or they quickly become stale. For the last many years, we have been internally creating the next generation of Tel-Tron, to keep our look-and-feel as cutting edge as our solutions and now we are ready to introduce Silversphere to the world.”

Rather than remain static with its existing reactive system of alerting senior living communities to emergencies and other adverse events, Silversphere is now taking a more proactive approach.

On March 1 the company launched a brand-new product called BIOS: predictive health technology in the form of a wearable, watch-like device that tracks sleep and daily activity along with vitals such as pulse, weight, and blood pressure. Because the company develops its own technology and manufactures its products, Silversphere is able to BIOS into its community systems and proprietary market.

“With this tool, people can peer into the future of their health,” Scharmahorn says.

The human eye can detect a negative change in someone’s health after a 12-15% decline—in other words, not right away. With technology, according to Scharmahorn, changes can be detected after just a 3-5% decline. “It allows us to be much more predictive in what’s coming,” he says.

The plan is to deploy BIOS in multiple markets—to the basic consumer living in a private residence, to the home health market for those in need of continuing post-acute care, and into communities, as the system integrates into Silversphere’s existing ATMOS platform.

“Some communities could use this to do continuing care outside of their walls,” Scharmahorn adds. “There’s great opportunity out there to create another channel of revenue for communities and expand their reach.” 

Historically, Silversphere has been business-to-business, but now it’s on a path toward consumers, with an eye toward the home health market.

“We want to provide technology that’s not fearful for people,” says Scharmahorn. “We want to continue setting the pace for the role technology will play in senior living, and this was another toward expression for us to be able to set that pace. We’re adjusting, we’re changing, we’re growing.” 

Written by Alyssa Gerace