ROCHESTER — While medical science works toward a cure for dementia in future, Mayo Clinic geriatrician Dr. Christina Chen is working on a way to bring hope to patients’ lives today with technology.
“My area of passion is dementia care. We've known about this disease for almost 120 years, but we have no cure. … So it got me thinking, if a cure does not exist and perhaps may never exist, what can we do? What can we still do to bring better days to these people living with dementia?,” said Chen.
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Dementia, in the form of Alzheimer's, Lewy Body or something else, is very widespread. Research shows that one in three people who reach age 85 will develop dementia. More and more families are dealing with this issue, watching loved ones struggling mentally as they live out their later years.
Beyond medicines, how can the lives of those millions of dementia patients be improved in care facilities or even in their own homes?
That question led to the creation of Hope Technologies with her husband Aaron Chan, Dr. Marina Walther–Antonio, and Kathy Anderson. The concept behind the start-up builds on how families and caregivers use familiar pictures, calendars, lists, music and more to help keep patients calm and oriented.
“It's all in silos and pieces now. Music here and automated lighting there. It's never been put together in one cohesive space,” said Chen.
Hope (Health Optimized Personal Experience) is about bringing existing technologies together, combined with software to coordinate them to create a customizable automated system to improve the day-to-day life of long-term dementia patients.
Chen created a prototype system as a research project and set up it for patients in a Rochester memory care facility in 2019-2020. That early test run provided “proof of concept” that coordinated use of automated technologies can help a dementia patient.
The core of that system is the immersive, customizable “Wonderwall” screen to automatically provide “visual cues” and show patients their daily schedule, pictures of loved ones, play comforting music as well as controlling the lights and temperature in the room.
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The idea is that it all should be “plug and play” to automatically run in the background to create an environment that helps the patient through their day. Chen describes the concept as “ambient therapeutics.”
This is not a medical treatment, but the environment can help support therapies.
“This is to augment treatments to bring a better quality of life, hopefully reduce risks and improve their day-to-day, so that patients are living better and remembering that ‘This is who I am. This is what I love to do,’” she said. “My hope is that living in that type of environment every day will help stabilize cognitive health and their functional health by reminding them to eat and improving sleep.”
After the success of the research test, the question was how to turn an idea into a product that could reach patients.
“As just a clinician, I never thought I'd end up in the space of entrepreneurship. Finding my way through that maze felt very challenging,” said Chen.
Chen and Chan took their prototype and concept and then turned to Mayo Clinic’s Employee Entrepreneurial Program and the Collider business incubator in downtown Rochester. They joined the first cohort of the Collider’s 10-week Costarter program to learn how to get a startup company up and running.
“That was a real game changer for us, because it really was a safe environment that allowed us to ask dumb questions and learn,” said Aaron Chan. “Collider, SMIF (Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation), SBDC (Small Business Development Center) and the whole local E1 economic development Network have been very supportive.”
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In 2024, they officially founded Hope Technologies as a company. The Hope Technologies team made their pitch at the 2025 Ignite Cup Pitch Competition at Red Wing’s Ignite incubator and took home first place.
Now they are working with several technology partners and software engineers to build the software to make all of this happen automatically and won’t add more of a burden to caregivers and members of short-staffed care facilities.
The next step for Hope Technologies is to create a working version of the system soon, possibly by this summer. They hope to unveil at the Destination Medical Center’s planned demo space to display the efforts of local business startups. The end goal is to eventually roll out the system for use in memory care facilities focusing on patients with advanced cases of dementia.
While she doesn’t know exactly what the future will hold for Hope Technologies, Chen is hopeful that their efforts will help improve the lives of patients with dementia.
“We want to create something that makes life better today versus somewhere off in the future,” she said.
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