Senior Care Academy - A Helperly Podcast
Senior Care Academy is the podcast for caregivers, senior care providers, and families with aging loved ones. Hosted by experienced professionals, we explore essential topics like elder care planning, dementia support, financial advice, and emotional wellness for caregivers.
Each episode offers expert insights, practical tips, and resources to help you navigate senior care with confidence. Whether you're a healthcare provider, a family member supporting aging parents, or a senior adult seeking guidance, this podcast delivers actionable advice tailored to your needs.
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Senior Care Academy - A Helperly Podcast
From Battlefield to Bedside: Reinventing Rehab with AI ft. Sheila Buswell
What if rehab care didn’t mean waiting hours for help to do the most basic things? We sit down with Sheila Buswell—Army veteran, engineer, and CEO of Buswell Biomedical—to unpack how a life‑altering injury and her mother’s hip fracture exposed a quiet truth: activities of daily living are overdue for a humane upgrade. Sheila shares the origin of Upmo, a patented mobility system that navigates like a Roomba, syncs to a patient’s RFID strap, and uses LIDAR and IMU sensors to support movement, detect instability, and prevent dangerous falls—without replacing caregivers or dignity.
We trace her path from Bosnia to biomedical innovation, exploring why many facilities still rely on slow, manual processes that frustrate patients and burn out staff. Sheila explains how machine learning distinguishes a user’s normal gait from a real risk, when to off‑weight for balance, and when a controlled lower to the ground is safest. We also dive into the realities behind the promise: FDA clearance timelines, safety validation, model updates, maintenance, and the business concerns that can stall adoption even when patients say “yes, please.”
Along the way, we challenge assumptions about AI in elder care, argue for autonomy as a measurable outcome, and consider why tomorrow’s seniors—more tech‑literate and active—may welcome devices that give them privacy and control. If you care about fall prevention, senior mobility, ADLs, and realistic AI in healthcare, this conversation offers a grounded roadmap from problem to product.
Enjoyed the conversation? Follow and share the show, leave a review with your biggest takeaway, and send this episode to someone working in rehab or senior care who’s ready to rethink mobility.
Welcome to another episode of Senior Care Academy Podcast, where we explore the innovations, challenges, and stories shaping the future of elder care. Today's episode is especially powerful. We're joined by Sheila Bustwell. She's the CEO and co-founder of Bustwell Biomedical, a veteran of the U.S. Army, and the author of Is This My Seat? Overcoming Imposter Syndrome in Everyday Life and Business. In her book, Sheila shares her personal experience with imposter syndrome, as well as the stories of a diverse group of accomplished individuals who struggled with self-doubt but found ways to overcome it. She hopes to help others who feel limited by their beliefs experience more freedom and realize that they are enough. I'm super excited to chat today.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you, Caleb. It's great to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Awesome. I want to kind of start with your journey. You've had a unique journey from the military to engineering and then now innovating in rehabilitation and med tech. So what was your when you let's go back to the beginning. So in 1997, you joined the Army. What was your mindset at that time?
SPEAKER_00:I in 1995, I graduated high school and I had a scholarship. That scholarship was tied to a high GPA. And I went to scholarship, which was the University of Utah, funny enough. And I lost that scholarship after the first year because I did not maintain a high scholar, like high GPA. So I don't know who maintains that high GPA. Since I lost that scholarship, I found out a lot of people lost that scholarship. I limped along for like a year. And then after a year, I was like looking for alternatives, and I ended up in the military. And at the time, you know, I thought, oh, I'm gonna, it was go to the army, go to jail time that time. And I thought, oh, just gonna, I'm gonna be smarter than everybody. I'm gonna whatever. Like I had this preconceived notion of what everyone's gonna be like. And I realized after I joined that people join the military for a myriad of reasons, and you meet people are just people. And after I joined the military in 1997, that was my mindset. I just wanted to pay for school. I learned a lot. Um, mostly that people are just people. Uh that some of those lessons were expected, and some of them were, you know, snuck up up on years later, they come up on me. But um when I was deployed to Bosnia, that's when I was injured. And I was rehabbing in a UN hospital in Bosnia. And I remember my mindset at that time, at when I was injured, was simply, oh, well, I joined this military force, and you know, there was a lot of things that I did that at the time I thought, well, this is part of it. You know, like I don't know people who are in the military think about the duck walk in the map station as just part of, you know, it's not a great part, but it's something you got to do to get from here to there. And I thought, oh, this is just that. You know, I was in the military and I was gonna be treated a certain way. I was in the military and in Bosnia I got injured. It is what it is. So that qualified it, and I put like cleaning out my garage. I labeled it as this is something to expect. And I put it in, you know, that little drawer in my mind, and I did what I did, and it was what it was. And then I got out of the military with a medical discharge and completed my education, ultimately obtaining an MS in engineering. And then 20 years after my this is this story was like years in the making, but 20 years after my accident, my mom has an accident and she falls and she breaks her hip and she rehabs in Arizona. And at the time, I'm not a caregiver. I know you've had caregivers on here before. I'm not, definitely not that. But I'm a problem solver, not a caregiver. I do have gifts, it's just not the caregiving. I'm not the empathy type. Um, I remember my mom didn't sign up for anything that was happening. And when I it struck me that in 1998, between in those intervening 20 years, and in Arizona, in a hoity-toity rehab facility, that the solutions or the opportunities, or I don't know what you call it, but the activities of daily living were conducted very much the same way that they were conducted 20 years prior and in Bosnia at the UN facility. And I was like, my mom wasn't in the military, she didn't sign up for that, and she didn't have the cadre of Norwegian nurses that could conduct these activities of daily living with her. Like it was hard enough for me 20 years prior because I had to have somebody with me all the time. It was much more difficult for my mom because not only did she have that, there wasn't enough healthcare workers. In 1998, between 20 in 2018, that was the case. In 1998, it wasn't the case for me, but it's definitely the case now after, you know, pandemic and all the things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_00:So this is the standard of care today, but people wait hours to conduct any activity of daily living, like going to the bathroom. Hours.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's such an interesting, like you said, you had this uh very well supported as far as healthcare workers go in your instance, but with your mom, what do you think that had it happened to you in 2018 that it would have struck the same nerve of like, this is 20 had you been injured again, or do you think there was some piece of it where it was almost protective of your mom's care being like, what's happening? This is my mom here.
SPEAKER_00:I I am not sure how to answer that. I know that I was definitely protective protective of my mom, but also it was I knew there was a better solution, right? Like by this time I had a master's in engineering, I'd worked for a lot of great companies, and most of that was in RD automation and you know, like using sensors to do stuff. It were, you know, when there's a shortage of people to do things. Like at Anheuser Bush, there was not people to move hoses forever. So, and it was dangerous work. So, how can we do that with piping and instrumentation and like sensors? And that I felt the same way. Like, okay, it's it's it's a more difficult task, but we have greater technology now. We wouldn't have the internet speed that we had in 1998. Why are we still solving problems the same way?
SPEAKER_01:Medical problems, yeah, that's true. Like doing the exact same cares. Um, and like you said, it is a little bit more complex or maybe more um emotional, sentimental, and intimate work than automating uh Anheuser Busch. But um, there's something, there's gotta be something to do. Um, during like that experience, now that would be seven years ago with your mom. Was there maybe a moment during her recovery that really sparked the idea for upmo or upward mobility?
SPEAKER_00:It really wasn't an aha moment like people talk about, nor was I this entrepreneur. I didn't have that entrepreneurship spirit, right?
SPEAKER_01:Like at the time You were like looking for a problem to solve, necessarily.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I remember being struck by like total, I totally admit that I was not a caregiver, but my mom like needed help with socks. So I was like trying to put socks on. She's like, You're going too slow. And then I tried to heat up and she's like, oh, you hurt me. And I'm like, I, you know, like to me, I don't know how to like I don't know how to walk that line. But it was like gradual, and I was there for a couple weeks. And at my instance at that time was I'll just go work for who's ever solving this problem. And I think it was really shocking to me to find out nobody's working on this problem.
SPEAKER_01:And then it was especially technologically, yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It there, and there's a lot better companies, bigger companies with a lot more resources. But I was like giving myself a pet talk. If not you, then who? If not now, then when? Like it was, and I'm not saying it like tritely, like that was an easy thing to overcome. It was definitely something that was like, okay, this is a systemic problem, it needs a solution. And who's better situated to provide the solution? And it was a year from it was more than a year, but it was definitely 2018 to 2019. We filed for the patent in 2019. But it was a year from when my mom fell and I was there till, you know, I came up with a solution and I kind of had it sketched out till we got a patent attorney and formed the business and all those things.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So let's talk more about Upmo. Um, what is it? And then how does it work to help um seniors, but really anybody in a rehab setting to have more kind of autonomy and support.
SPEAKER_00:First, I'll just explain how it would work. Right? So, like right now, people hit a button and eventually a healthcare worker comes and says, What do you want? This would be a separate button. You push a button, and this thing would come to you in a similar way, like a Roomba or a self-driving car that uses LIDAR technology. And you would have your own nylon strap. It'd be, or a patient would have a LIDAR strap with an inertial measurement unit that would they would put on or they would attach the device would come to them, and then you would attach your device to the unit and then put the harness on like a jacket, in a similar way to a jacket. And then you would conduct any activity of daily living. We're gonna use toileting because that's that was my main thing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's the most urgent one. Like a shower, as much as it's not fun to smell bad, but if you have to go to the bathroom, you've got to get there.
SPEAKER_00:And you can wait several days for a shower.
SPEAKER_01:You can't so, but you can't wait You can maybe wait several minutes for uh an yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And I I remember specifically it being a challenge for me to do conduct business when there's somebody else in the room. And they're like, oh, it's the opioids. I'm like, nope. And I'm I it's not the opioids, it's whatever, it's because you're here. And I I think as the thing is, uh the accident happened to me when I was 21. But as you get older, more accidents like this are prone and common. Right. So it's not that necessarily that this device is designed for old people or people with a limited mobility. It could be used by anybody, but that's who's gonna be using it because that's who has these type of problems.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, and so in essence, what it is, like you said, it's kind of it's autonomous in that it can come to your bedside and then you're wearing a device that supports your um your weight and whatnot, you hook into it, and then it can help lift you up and you're able to move. I remember there's some cool things that uh you and I had talked about before where it kind of detects your motion to almost counterbalance, right? So if I'm walking, if I have a say I have a leg injury and I'm attempting to walk to the bathroom um and I slip, doesn't it like it basically takes all my weight at that point to make sure that I'm not risking further injury by trying to take care of my ADLs by myself?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. Sorry, I didn't explain it fully how after the device will know who's in the radio frequency identification tags or RFID um will know, tell the device, the device will like a healthcare worker will know your position and location at all times and status. But like you move under your own power unless, like you said, you know, you the IMU inertial measurement unit will like be able to compare your normal motion to the normal motion of this library of people, and then this is where the machine learning algorithm comes in. And then it'll sense when you're unstable or what's not normal motion for you, I walk with a limp. It would know that that limp is normal, right? Like, not that I'm drunk or inebriated or whatever, it's just that that's what I I wobble, or that you're liable to fall or anything. Yeah, but if uh if you're unstable and it's out of character, and I say character, like it's weird, the whole stability has to be honed. Like we have to identify what unstable means. Then it offweights you. I don't know, Caleb, if you have children, but if you have children and they learn to walk, you know that when you learn when they learn to walk, you just pick them up. If they start to stumble, you just pick them up. And so the off-weighting part would just let let pick them up, offweight them so they can get their feet under them and they they won't fall. If it's a delicate person, as people age, my bones are increasingly more like chalk, but as like m people age, they're to be safer, it might cause more harm if it's not like anyone's gonna be hanging there like a pinata, right? Like hanging in the ground. Yeah. But it might be better to in a situation where okay, you they're not gonna be able to stabilize themselves. So they'll lower them slowly to the ground. It's different than a fall, right? Because a fall, you can it's unplanned and you can hit your head, and physically, a lot more bad stuff can happen. You can die or you can like hit something and cause a blood clot, like bad things can happen.
SPEAKER_01:Yes, yeah. Yeah, there's a I forget the statistics of uh regarding falls, specifically among older adults, where if somebody falls, it like exponentially increases their their decline. Um, and so avoiding that fall, even if maybe they get bruises where the harness is, it's better than falling and breaking a wrist or um something to that effect. I'm curious. So I know that you have the patent, it's not yet ready for like mass market. As you've talked to people within rehab facilities and uh higher levels of assisted livings, um what has been the response so far? Like I imagine it's like yes, please. Um I wonder if there's any pushback. I guess the the deeper question is why do you think that rehab and mobility has been outdated for so long? And now that we you have this really cool thing that's new, are they ready for it?
SPEAKER_00:It's weird because when rehab and hospitals period, there's people facing and business facing people. The patients absolutely again we talked briefly beforehand, before we started recording, about how like there's a certain segment of the population that fears when you talk about artificial intelligence. So being explained that that's what it does, it's that's what it uses, but it's for good. It's like a roomba. Nobody's scared of a roomba vacuuming your car, yeah, but they're definitely scared of you know the potential humanoid robot.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the humanoids that are robots that are coming out.
SPEAKER_00:But the one of the fears that kind of took me by surprise that the business facing that I honestly hadn't thought about was okay, this has a machine learning library. How when is that gonna be updated? How is it gonna maintenance gonna be handled? Like, is it gonna stop somebody in use when the library needs to be updated? Or you know, because this thing part of the FDA clearance is you have to prove that something's safe and that people you know, like that's gonna work like as expected. My dad is 95 years old. If it's but if it doesn't work, he won't use it. So it has to be something that like if it impedes him too much, he's not gonna use it. The healthcare workers, on the other hand, they need to trust it, and those are the people facing. But the business facing people, it needs to benefit them. If it costs a lot to have maintenance done on it, they're not gonna want it. If it if they can't use it when they're for a long period of time while the library is being uploaded or whatever, that has to be all handled. And it was a different concern that I had envisioned. And I guess the reason I think it's slow to change is because you the thing you know. This is a like people understand a Roomba. They need they know their dat their their cloth their uh and there's their floors need to be vacuumed. They don't have it's not uh the worst possible thing that could happen is there's lint in your carpet if it doesn't work right. The worst possible thing that could happen in this device is a lot more significant. And so I think it's it's a very uh benefits risks kind of scenario that needs to be worked out in those healthcare workers. But however, like I don't know about you in Missouri, it's like this thing where the only people who use fax machines are healthcare workers, and that's insane.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. So yeah, it definitely is uh probably one of the slowest industries to uh adopt any sort of innovative technologies. But to your point, I think that once it's adopted, it um there is the fear, I'm sure, from direct care staff of like, oh, it's going to replace me. Um, but I don't think it will. I think that it'll enable just like people, just creative roles or more white-collar roles where um using AI has been able to be an amplifier or something that makes them more productive and more powerful on their day-to-day. I think it'll be similar with direct care staff where they have this um device that makes it so they can be more efficient, more um, you know, less stressed or less um running from room to room because there's this device that can help with mobility. Um and so once it's adopted, I think it's gonna be really um quite cool. Um we kind of talked about it a little bit, but you're an advocate for an AI for AI as a tool and not as a threat. How do you envision AI improving um rehab and and senior care specifically over the next decade or so?
SPEAKER_00:There's a lot of people in I'm gonna say senior, I'm gonna start with senior care. But like my mother-in-law, her body didn't break down or her mind didn't break down, but her body did. She wasn't able to stand up. And it's not like she couldn't there just wasn't enough healthcare workers, especially on Thanksgiving weekend in the middle of the night, right? So I think there would be it's that scenario when people she didn't need help to I'm trying to think of other things, but she didn't need help with the uh basic stuff, but she needed help certain parts of standing were hard. And I think with rehabilitation and with you you don't want people to hurt more. Like nobody, there's like 180 billion dollars of lawsuits. Of those lawsuits, it's not older pe that are filed every year, it's not older people that are filing the lawsuits, it's their families that are filing the lawsuits.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, they're upset because mom should have been taken care of, and I trusted you with her care.
SPEAKER_00:And as I think And now she's hurt, yeah, and like you like you want to protect your kids, you want to protect your mom, but you know, inherently you can't bubble wrap your mom, right? Like she's not gonna benefit from being bedridden all day. So it you you have to be able to try and we talked briefly about especially older people. There's a spiral, I think it's 65 and older. There's a spiral that they do less. So when because they were injured when they did more, so they do less. And then when they do more, they're more likely to get injured. So they do less again. And it's a spiral, and then it's like I think it's like 12 years, maybe it's eight years. I don't want to lie, but it there's a definite thing of death is eminent because you don't do stuff. The more stuff you do, the more stuff you can do. And I think the senior population is great. It definitely means different things to be old now than it did 20 years ago and 40 years ago and whatever. Like a hundred years ago, it definitely people didn't get old. But now it just changes. I remember when I was a little kid and my grandma was 80, like she just stood up out of her wheelchair. My dad was hiking at 80. Like it's just a different mentality. Yeah. And it's a different physical set, right? Like, sorry, I heard your alarm go off.
SPEAKER_01:So oh no, you're good. Sorry. No, keep going. Um, I think that, but I'm I'm curious on do you think that to your point of like people are living longer, um, living healthier, and the standard, like you said, my grandpa just turned 90 this year, and he's still he has a junk trailer that he fills up every like month or so with just like random projects and trees, and I don't know. Um, and he's still like doing that by himself. He's running, building, doing home improvements by himself at 90. Um, do you think that and then if you look at the younger, the baby boomers that are retiring, they often are on social media. They're using their device regularly. You know, they're on, they have their iPad out doing like family history or something. Um do you do you think that that trend, the people that are in their 50s and early 60s now over the next decade as AI improves, that it'll be less of a barrier because they're used to the technology that we currently have, or do you think it'll just continue to be kind of an uphill battle trying to get technology into senior care?
SPEAKER_00:I honestly pe I I don't know how to answer that because I think it devent depends on the individual. My dad is 95 and he can clear the board on Jeopardy, but that's not every 95-year-old. But it's becoming more common and God, it's very different, and I think there's more um it's more common for people to be like your grandfather, like they do things well into like they're more active well into their 90s. That's more common, but there's still those people who are like in their 70s and scared to leave their bed or scared to leave go outside, and it's just very different. And there's also people who are adventurous and they'll, but I also know somebody who's like in their 50s who's scared to pump their who doesn't know how to pump their own gas. So I don't know how to, you know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01:Like, do I Yeah, yeah, it's such a a broad skew, a broad brushstroke to try to say. Um I guess so. My last question is what what do you think's next for for you and Buswell Biomedical? Is there anything that you're super excited about or that you're working on um that you want to tell the world about?
SPEAKER_00:I am very excited about getting FDA clearance. I think that that's a big milestone, and that's what we're working on now.
SPEAKER_01:Sweet. Is that close?
SPEAKER_00:Actually, no, it's not close. Well, I don't I don't know, close and not close or relative, I guess. It's closer than it was, but it's not. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Not quite yet. Well, good. Um, I'm excited for that to clear. I think that this is just gonna be huge and really help give a lot of people who had a life-altering experience or injury um the autonomy that they crave and that they deserve. So I'm excited that you're working on it that somebody is. Um, everybody, that was Sheila Buswell. She, in my opinion, is a true innovator with heart of healing and a vision for the future of rehab care and mobility. You can learn more about Sheila and her work at Buswellbiomedical.com, B-U-S Bus, W E L L biomedical.com. And then don't forget to check out her book and buy it. It's the Is This Seat for Me. And then even more stories of resilience and purpose are in that. So thanks for listening to Senior Care Academy. Um, and Sheila, thanks so much for being on.
SPEAKER_00:Thanks, Caleb.