Amid the challenges of an ageing population, the elderly in many Southeast Asian nations face one of the hardest hitting and silent ailments of our time – loneliness. Never before has there been so much demand for volunteers and social workers to care for the needs of the elderly. While the Singapore Red Cross ElderAid volunteers are able to visit beneficiaries twice a month, the elderly often spend the rest of the time devoid of any human interaction, sometimes for days at a time. The Singapore Red Cross needed a way to check in on the well-being of the elderly in the absence of the volunteers, and meet some of their needs for human interaction.

Ella was first tested in April 2017 and has been in use since among selected ElderAid beneficiaries from the Singapore Red Cross and with plans to have more languages added and functions as we gather behaviour response from the beneficiaries.