Fitbit founders launch Luffu, an AI startup tackling the mental load of family caregiving

Fitbit founders launch AI platform to help families monitor their health | TechCrunch

Fitbit founders James Park and Eric Friedman have announced the launch of a new AI startup called Luffu that aims to help families proactively monitor their health. The duo are developing an "intelligent family care system" that will start with an app experience and then expand into hardware devices. Two years after their exit from Google, Park and Friedman are betting on AI to help lighten the mental burden of caregiving. According to a recent report, 63 million, or nearly 1 in 4 U.S. adults are family caregivers, up 45% from 10 years ago. Luffu uses AI in the background to gather and organize family information, learn day-to-day patterns, and flag notable changes so families can stay aligned and address potential wellbeing issues. "At Fitbit, we focused on personal health -- but after Fitbit, health for me became bigger than just thinking about myself," Park said in a press release. "I was caring for my parents from across the country, trying to piece together my mom's health care across various portals and providers, with a language barrier that made it hard to get complete, timely context from her about doctor visits. I didn't want to constantly check in, and she didn't want to feel monitored. Luffu is the product we wished existed -- to stay on top of our family's health, know what changed and when to step in -- without hovering." The pair note that today's consumer health market is filled with tools for individuals, but that real life health is shared across partners, kids, parents, pets, and caregivers. Family information is scattered across devices, portals, calendars, attachments, spreadsheets, and paper documents. With Luffu, people will be able to track the whole family's details, including health stats, diet, medications, symptoms, lab tests, doctor visits, and more. Users can log health information using voice, text, or photos. Luffu proactively watches for changes, and surfaces insights and alerts, such as unusual vitals or changes in sleep. The pair told Axios that people can ask questions using plain language to ask about their family's health, such as "Is Dad's new meal plan affecting his blood pressure?" or "Did someone give the dog his medication?" "We designed Luffu to capture the details as life happens, keep family members updated and surface what matters at the right time -- so caregiving feels more coordinated and less chaotic," Friedman said in the press release.

Fitbit's founders push AI into family caregiving

Why it matters: After helping turn personal health tracking into a mass habit at Fitbit, James Park and Eric Friedman are betting the next big shift is shared health, tapping AI to help ease the heavy mental load of caregiving. Driving the news: Park and Friedman on Tuesday unveiled Luffu, a self-funded startup building what it calls an "intelligent family care system," starting with an app and eventually expanding into hardware. * The product uses AI to organize family health data, learn routines and call attention to potentially meaningful changes before they become crises. * The company has about 40 employees, many from Google and Fitbit, and is currently in private testing. How it works: Luffu's AI is designed to operate mostly in the background, pulling together fragmented information that usually lives across portals, calendars, devices and documents. * Families can log health information using voice, text or photos, with AI automatically extracting and organizing details. * The system watches for patterns across multiple people -- kids, parents, partners and even pets -- and flags issues like missed medications, unusual vitals or changes in activity and sleep. * Users can ask plain-language questions such as, "Is Dad's new meal plan affecting his blood pressure?" or "Did someone give the dog his medication?" and get tailored answers or charts. What they're saying: "Our philosophy is quiet most of the time, helpful at the right time," Park and Friedman told Axios, describing Luffu as a guardian, not a surveillance system. * Alerts are customizable and designed to reduce anxiety, not create it, Park said. * "I didn't want to hover, and my mom didn't want to feel monitored," Park said in a statement, reflecting on the experience of piecing together care across providers and portals. Families control what information is shared and with whom, the founders told Axios. * "For instance, a user will be able to designate another person to have 'Guardian' level of control over their account which allows full control over a person's care and permissions." * People will also be able to control whether their data will be used to train Luffu's AI, they said. The big picture: Park and Friedman say the idea grew directly out of their own lives after Fitbit. * At Fitbit, they helped make personal health data mainstream, building a platform used by nearly 150 million people. * But caregiving for aging parents, often from afar, exposed how poorly today's health tools work for families trying to coordinate care. Zoom out: Roughly 63 million U.S. adults are now family caregivers, according to recent research, up sharply from a decade ago -- and the burden often falls on people juggling kids, careers and aging parents. * Of the technology that is out there, most is designed for individuals, not the constellation of people who care for them. What's next: The company plans to expand beyond software into hardware, but for now Park and Friedman are focused on refining the app and onboarding early users.