In keeping with his long-standing commitment to employ cutting-edge technology, Joel Landau, founder and chairman of The Allure Group, earlier this year greenlighted the installation of the computer-based gamification platform RESTORE-Skills at two of the six nursing homes in Allure’s New York City-based network.
RESTORE-Skills enables residents of the Harlem and Linden Centers to engage in fun activities that make it possible to build on clinical outcomes and expand their skills. Moreover, it engages them to a greater degree than other forms of rehab.
Whether using the skiing, bowling or soccer games that are part of the platform, RESTORE-Skills removes the potential drudgery from the rehab process. The platform’s website touts the fact that it can enable residents to “play more, reach for more and achieve more” – that it can motivate them to improve their strength, balance, coordination, and endurance.
They can do this, the site notes, just about anywhere. In the case of The Allure Group, residents use the platform via the televisions in the day room, or the Samsung tablets that were long ago placed at each of the 1,400 bedsides in their facilities – tablets that residents typically use for entertainment, relaxation, and communication. Residents can also continue to use RESTORE-Skills once they are discharged, provided they retain their usernames and passwords.
The platform also enables residents to compete against others within the facility or loved ones remotely.
At The Allure Group, it is more common for the activities departments at the two facilities to use RESTORE-Skills, as opposed to the rehab departments. There is nonetheless a rehab tie-in, as on occasion rehab staffers monitor residents as they are engaged in a game. As an example, they might time how long a resident is standing to gain a greater understanding of how he or she is faring in terms of strength and balance.
As mentioned, Joel Landau has made innovation and state-of-the-art technology a priority since founding The Allure Group in 2011. Consider, for example, those Samsung tablets, which in addition to their other uses became a vital communications link between residents and loved ones when governmental lockdowns were imposed early in the pandemic.
Landau also approved a partnership between Allure and Vis a Vis Health in 2021, a move designed to improve transitional care. Each resident is given a hand-held electronic device upon discharge, which makes virtual visits with healthcare professionals possible. Clinicians are able to review a patient’s vital signs (including oxygen level, body temperature and the heart’s electrical activity) via these devices and offer recommendations, which goes a long way toward reducing the readmission rate.
Robotics have long been used by The Allure Group as rehab tools. They include the Armeo Spring, for those with partial arm paralysis; the Lokomat, an exoskeleton that helps residents “relearn” how to walk; the H200, for those with hand paralysis; the L300 Go, an electrical stimulation system to improve function of the lower extremities; and the AlterG Anti-Gravity Treadmill, also for those aiming to improve lower-extremity function.
Joel Landau is also co-founder and managing director of Pinta Capital Partners, an equity firm dedicated to improving patients’ access to healthcare and founder and chairman of the board of Alpha Care Health Plans, which since 2009 has offered high-risk elderly New York State Managed Long-Term Care (MLTC), Medicare Advantage products for dually eligible members (DSNP) as well as Institutional Needs Plan (ISNP) for Medicare eligible residents of long-term nursing homes.
