Is Mum OK Today? An Idea for a Daily Check-in App for Ageing Parents, and Why We Want Your Feedback Before We Build It

If your mother lives alone in another province, you probably know the feeling. You call at lunch, she doesn’t pick up, and for the next two hours you’re doing the maths: is she at the market, asleep, or on the bathroom floor?

We’re a software studio, so our instinct is to build something. This time we’re doing it the other way round. simpliCare is a design, not a product. We’ve written the full technical plan, but we haven’t written the code yet, and we won’t until we know families actually want it.

This post explains the idea in plain terms and asks you to tell us where it’s wrong.

The problem, in numbers

Thailand ages faster than almost anywhere. Krungsri Research reports that over-60s passed 20% of the population in 2023, about 13.2 million people, which officially made Thailand an "aged society". The same report notes that the share of older Thais living alone roughly doubled between 2002 and 2021, to 12%, or around 1.6 million people. Many more live with only a spouse who is also elderly.

Two other findings from that report shaped our design, and one of them is a warning we take seriously:

• Most older Thais are online, but struggling. Close to 60% use the internet, yet around 80% of those with phones say they have trouble using digital devices.
• The real decision-maker is often the "sandwich generation" — adult children supporting both their kids and their parents, usually from a different city.

So the problem isn’t "old people need another app". It’s that busy adult children need a calm, reliable signal that a parent is fine, and a fast, coordinated response when they aren’t. Asking a parent to install anything is a real cost, which is why the parent side of our design is as small as we could make it.

The idea in one paragraph

Every morning, your parent’s phone shows a simpliCare notification. Tapping it opens a screen with two big buttons: "I’m fine" and "Not feeling well". At medication times, another notification with "Taken" and "Skip". If they tap "fine", nothing happens — no alerts, no noise. If they tap "not feeling well", or don’t answer at all, simpliCare starts working its way up a list of family members until someone says "I’m handling it".

That’s the whole product. Everything else is about making that loop reliable.

One app, two modes

The whole family uses the same app on iOS or Android, and everyone signs in with a social account they already have, so there’s no new password to remember.

Your parent’s phone runs it in parent mode. Large text, two buttons, nothing else to get lost in. You set it up once — ideally sitting next to them — and from then on it’s just a notification and a tap.

You and your siblings use caregiver mode. It shows today’s status at a glance — checked in, morning dose taken, evening dose pending — plus a 30-day history. Alerts arrive as high-priority notifications, separate from your chat apps, so a missed check-in doesn’t get buried under the family group chat.

Why an app and not LINE? We started with LINE because parents already use it. We moved to a single app because it gives us notifications we can track end to end, a parent screen we fully control, and one system for the whole family instead of two. The trade-off is honest: your parent has to install something. Whether that’s a deal-breaker is one of the main things we want to find out.

How an alert climbs the family ladder

This is the part we spent the most time on, because it’s the part where a bug hurts a real family.

flowchart TD
    A["Morning check-in notification on parent phone"] --> B{"Parent replies?"}
    B -->|"I am fine"| C["Closed - nobody is disturbed"]
    B -->|"Not feeling well"| E["Primary caregiver alerted immediately"]
    B -->|"No reply in 60 min"| D["Gentle reminder sent"]
    D -->|"Still no reply in 60 min"| E
    E -->|"Taps I am handling it"| F["Ladder stops - siblings told who is on it"]
    E -->|"No acknowledgement in 30 min"| G["Backup caregiver alerted"]
    G --> F

A few rules we think matter:

• A late answer always wins. If Mum replies "fine" after the alerts have gone out, everyone who was alerted gets an "all OK" notification. Nobody keeps driving three hours upcountry for nothing.
• "Not feeling well" skips the waiting. No reminder, straight to the primary caregiver.
• One tap to take ownership. "I’m handling it" works from the lock screen, and the rest of the family sees who’s on it, so three siblings don’t all call at once.
• Quiet hours. No prompts to your parent between 9 pm and 7 am, unless you deliberately set a medication time in that window.
• If the phone can’t be reached, you’re told. If notifications stop being delivered — the app was deleted, notifications were switched off, the phone is dead — caregivers hear about it rather than the system silently going quiet.

All the timings are defaults that each family can change.

Privacy is not an afterthought

Medicine names and "not feeling well" answers are sensitive. Our design treats them that way:

• Your parent consents themselves, in the app, before any prompt is sent. They can pause everything from their own screen, and the family is told.
• Each family’s data is walled off from every other family’s, and only members with the right role can change settings.
• Logs never contain medicine names or answers, only IDs.
• Deleting your family circle actually deletes the data within 30 days.

One honest caveat: whether medicine names count as sensitive personal data under Section 26 of Thailand’s PDPA is something we’re confirming with a Thai lawyer before any beta. We’re designing as if the answer is yes.

What it is not

We’d rather say this up front than in small print:

• It is not a medical device or an emergency service. It won’t call an ambulance, detect a fall, or tell you whether a symptom is serious. It tells you that something needs a human, quickly.
• It doesn’t replace a phone call. The alert screen has a "Call Mum" button for a reason.

What’s designed vs. what exists

Item	Status
Daily check-in and medication prompts in parent mode	Designed, not built
Escalation ladder with acknowledgement	Designed, not built
Caregiver mode (iOS and Android, Thai and English)	Designed, not built
Sign-in with an existing social account	Designed, not built
30-day history and adherence view	Designed, not built
Appointment reminders, voice replies, SMS fallback	Not in first version
A web dashboard for families or care homes	Not in first version
Pricing	Not decided — that’s one of our questions

What we’re trying to learn

We have a handful of assumptions we can’t verify from a desk. If you look after an ageing parent, these are the questions we’d love you to answer:

1. Would your parent keep an app installed and answer it every morning? Or would it be deleted, ignored, or feel like being monitored?
2. Is a missed reply really the right trigger? Or do you worry more about things a button can’t catch?
3. Who would be on your family’s ladder, and in what order? Is "primary and backup" enough?
4. Medication reminders: essential or noise? Does your parent take regular medicine on a schedule a reminder would help with?
5. What would you pay, if anything? Nothing; a small monthly fee; something a hospital or employer should provide instead?
6. One morning notification or two? A single prompt combining check-in and morning medicine, or separate ones?

How you can help

Answer even one question. Email hello@simplico.net with the subject "simpliCare feedback", or message us on LINE at iiitum1984. A two-line reply is genuinely useful. "My mum would never install an app" is as valuable as "when can I start?"

Join the first five beta families. If we decide to build, we’ll start with five families for a month, free, and we’ll help you set up your parent’s phone personally. Put "simpliCare beta" in the subject line and tell us a little about your situation: who you’re caring for, roughly where they live, and what phone they use.

We’ll write a follow-up post with what we heard, including the answers that told us to change course.

FAQ

Is simpliCare available now?
No. It exists as a detailed technical design. We’re publishing the idea first to find out whether it’s worth building.

Does my parent need a smartphone?
Yes, an iPhone or Android phone with the simpliCare app installed in parent mode. A family member can do the setup; after that, your parent only needs to tap a notification.

Does my parent need a new account or password?
No. Everyone signs in with a social account they already have.

Can it detect falls or emergencies?
No. It only knows whether your parent answered a prompt and what they tapped. It’s not a substitute for emergency services or medical advice.

What happens if my parent doesn’t want to be checked on?
Nothing is sent without their own consent, given in the app, and they can pause it at any time. The family is told when that happens.

Why not just use LINE?
That was our first design. A single app gives us reliable, trackable notifications, a parent screen we control, and one system instead of two. The cost is an install on your parent’s phone — and we want to hear whether that cost is too high.

Who is building this?
Simplico, a software engineering studio based in Thailand. We build systems for enterprise clients; simpliCare would be our first product for families, which is exactly why we want to hear from families first.