In 2022, Fishers resident Luke Gilligan, who attends Grove City College in Grove City, Pa., created Resense. The Pennsylvania-based company has a mission to “bring comfort and joy to those living with Alzheimer’s and dementia.”
Among the company’s chief products is the Memory Box, an activity toolkit designed to increase brain health, exercise the senses and elicit long-term memories. Now, the company is releasing a new product — the Resense Register.
Gilligan, 20, said the Resense Register is a mock newspaper that features simple stories for easy reading comprehension. The product is designed for those living with dementia to feel as though they’re actually reading newspaper.
“One of my employees, Logan Mays, and I attended one of our activity sessions where we go into care communities and do a game night or bingo session with their residents for free and bring our Connect + Comfort Kits as gifts to show how they will benefit their community and care plans,” Gilligan said. “After this session, (Mays) came to me and explained that he was interacting with one of the residents and he mentioned that he missed newspapers and the crossword (puzzles). (Mays) wanted to find a way to replicate a newspaper for these individuals but also make it dementia-friendly and beneficial to their brain health and care plans.
“So, with that goal in mind, we started to design the Resense Register.”
Gilligan said poll-based research led his team to conclude that many seniors with memory issues missed reading a daily newspaper. The main focus of the company’s latest product is to decrease frustrations dementia patients might encounter with a newspaper, such as struggling to read small print or complete complicated crossword puzzles.
“The first thing that we wanted was for it to be easily accessible and readable,” Gilligan said. “So, we ensured that (the Register) has a much larger font than a classic newspaper and that the crossword was also larger and designed for seniors. In our research, when going into care communities, we found that many individuals missed opening up a newspaper every day. Newspapers were soothing to them and decreased agitation. By creating the Register, we wanted to bring back that routine and activity of daily life and give them something that we know they will enjoy.
“Doing the same thing each day and adding structure has been proven to decrease agitation, restlessness and aggression.”
Gilligan said Resense also has a goal to ensure that each product increases brain health and exercises the senses.
“There is nothing better than feeling a paper each morning, but we also designed each article to elicit long-term memories,” Gilligan said. “We have articles about pets that can remind them of the pets that they had, or if they love cooking, we included recipes. We also added historical articles of people that they know, such as Abraham Lincoln.
“Unlike a current newspaper, we wanted to make sure they knew and recognized the content in the articles that are included.”
The Resense Register is expected to be available in February. For more, visit resensebox.com.
