Age of Aging from Penn Medicine covers the developing role of AI in the care of older adults

Artificial intelligence is everywhere in 2025, and elder care is no exception. As the older adult population continues to grow, AI has the potential to provide desperately needed support. Both at home and in the hospital, AI systems are being developed that can summarize data, predict patient outcomes, and offer preventative interventions. These systems could help clinicians be more efficient as well as shoulder some of caregivers’ many responsibilities. Yet for as many problems as AI seems to solve in healthcare, many more questions arise as to how these innovative tools can be implemented ethically. 

This episode of the Age of Aging takes a deep dive into the developing role of AI in the care of older adults.  

We first hear from expert researchers in this space about the potential ways AI could be used to assist in the lives of older adults. Then, the co-founder of NewDays AI, Dr. Babak Parviz, discusses how his company utilizes AI to help older adults protect against dementia. Finally, we look into the potential challenges and ethical questions that come with implementing AI in dementia care.  

Podcast Excerpt:

One way AI is being used in preventative care is through targeted exercises that promote brain health. The company NewDays AI has introduced what it calls a new cognitive treatment based on clinical research. Co-founders Babak Parviz and Daniel Kelly looked at the latest research in dementia care to find interventions that might help build resistance to dementia.

One study they found was called the Internet-Based Conversational Engagement Clinical Trial, or ICONECT study. This clinical trial found that adults who receive a 30-minute phone call four times per week about an open-ended topic had higher cognitive test scores than the group that didn't. Dr. Parviz and Kelly took ICONECT's methodology and utilized their AI avatar named Sunny to lead these conversations.

Here's Dr. Parviz:

"When someone comes our way, they would like to use our service, they will see a clinician once every two weeks or once a month. So with some frequency, they see a human clinician. That interaction involves assessment, involves feedback and involves therapy. So they see a human clinician. The interaction is not very frequent, but in between those human-to-human visits, our users would interact with our AI system—the nickname is Sunny—nearly on a daily basis in the form of a long-form conversation. So these conversations could be half an hour long or even longer, and that's how the cognitive exercises are implemented."

Dr. Parviz explained that these cognitive exercises shouldn't feel like taking a test. Talking to Sunny is meant to feel like having an open-ended conversation with a friend about a topic like impressionist art. However, within these conversations, Sunny encourages the individual to reminisce about their own experiences related to the topic, use certain vocabulary, and apply their own reasoning to the subject. Sunny then learns from these conversations and personalizes future conversations to the individual.

"The other thing that Sunny does is that it has a self-reflecting memory. So once it conducts a bunch of conversations, it reflects on those and tries to surface things that are important and publishes those in the form of a report to our clinicians. So clinicians have a view of actually what's going on in these conversations, which is really a fundamentally new capability because typically in between therapy, clinicians don't have access to patients and don't know what's really going on there. So this really gives them a full view of nearly on a daily basis what's really happening to the individual. And we've also given our clinicians the ability to give guidance back to the AI system of what to do."

By using AI, NewDays also doesn't have to train professionals to run these conversations, hopefully making it more accessible.

Full 24/7 access to Sunny and NewDays' cognitive exercises currently costs $99 per month on top of the cost of clinical visits that can be covered by insurance. NewDays' AI is available in Washington, California, Texas, and Florida with hopes to expand across the country.

You can listen to the full episode on the show page available here.

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