The Empatica Subscriptions Are Here!
Dear Supporters and Friends,
Following last month’s post, we’re ready to share more on our latest progress :)
We’re thrilled to announce an important new phase of Product & News development for Empatica, which will improve the Embrace, customize Alert services to the different needs of our community, and ultimately help more people living with Epilepsy.
This is going to be a long message: we’re going to talk about a new Alert app, renewed gratitude for our long-term community and continued support for those of you in need.
We spent the past months working hard to build our vision of improving lives for our existing and future supporters. We especially focused on two fronts: adding a set of new features that you asked for, and making sure you could customize the Alert services to your needs and resources.
The result is the biggest advancement in the Alert App so far, with new features and a customizable experience.
Introducing Empatica Subscriptions
The first phase of Embrace development – which started with our Indiegogo campaign – has been successfully completed with a lot of dedication. We are very grateful to have arrived this far together with you.
We are now moving forward on our roadmap: providing world’s best seizure detection, intuitive interactions with your Caregivers, and eventually the ability to forecast seizures. We are embarking on a new stage of development, for which the implementation of a subscription model is required.
As you know, we had planned to introduce Alert subscriptions with the official launch of the Embrace last year. We did not forget the patience you showed while waiting for the device, so we decided instead to give our community more time to use the Embrace.
We also used this time to improve the Product & News and design a structure that would offer everyone the ability to select what they need most, without compromising on quality and safety.
The subscriptions will help sustain the Alert service, implement new features and provide a flexible model of plans based on your individual needs.
Not to worry, it will be a gradual introduction: you will be able to test all the services and new features free-of-cost throughout a lengthy free trial period, so that you can better understand what suits you.
We have also designed a few special things for our supporters and the community that have been with us on this journey. Read more on that after the overview below.
Overview
Here are the 3 different plans:
- Lite: Alert your chosen Caregiver or loved one, who will be immediately notified in case you have a seizure. The goal is to provide a sense of freedom and independence, and peace of mind to your family. This is the most affordable plan, and we designed it to allow as many epilepsy patients as possible to benefit from seizure detection and alerting
- Standard:Simultaneously alert 3 different Caregivers. They are notified by an SMS and an automatic phone call via the Alert app upon the detection of a convulsive seizure. In addition, your Caregivers will receive your precise GPS location allowing them to request help directly where you are. This plan will also include a powerful feature: “Rest Mode” — allowing you to adapt Embrace’s seizure detection capabilities to your daily routine.
- Plus: Simultaneously alert an unlimited number of Caregivers. You will benefit from the alert SMS with location (Your Location) and the adjustable seizure detection sensitivity (Rest Mode) as per the Standard Plan. This enhanced plan will also include summarized monthly reports capturing your seizures, rest and physical activity. This ground-breaking feature stems from our years of work in data analytics, and it is the basis of our future work on seizure forecast.
Fast facts about the subscriptions
Add-ons
You can customize your plan by purchasing any of the additional features below:
- Unlimited Caregivers: simultaneously notify as many Caregivers as you’d like when Embrace detects a convulsive seizure.
- Review and export monthly reports: View a summarized report capturing your seizures, rest and physical activity. Review, edit and print each report and share it with your doctor for a comprehensive assessment of the data gathered by your Embrace. This specific feature will be integrated over the next month.
We worked on these add-ons to ensure you can tailor a subscription to your needs. For example, you can select the Lite Subscription Plan and choose to have unlimited Caregivers or monthly reports.
Free download
The Alert and Mate apps will still be free to download from both the Apple Store and Google Play Store.
Free services
Manual seizure logging, activity and sleep monitoring on the Mate app will be accessible free-of-cost!
Extended free trial
When you add your payment details during the sign-up, your free trial will automatically be extended by one more month!
2 months off on annual plans
You can choose between monthly and annual plans; with the yearly option you will receive 12 months of service for the cost of 10 months.
What’s Next
The alert SMS with location (Your Location) and the adjustable seizure detection sensitivity (Rest Mode) are the two “most-wanted” new features, that have been released today with the latest version of the Alert app. By upgrading to version 3.0.3 you will be able to start exploring right away all the new features, before the official 1-month trial will begin.
The launch of the subscriptions will mark the start of the free trial — estimated for late June.
Supporting the Community
All current users and long-time supporters will only have to pay for the Lite plan to maintain their current level of service, including Unlimited Caregivers. If instead you wish to access the newly introduced features, you will have the advantage of choosing your favorite plan while keeping the “Unlimited Caregivers” add-on free of cost! The only requirement to claim this privileged offer is to simply sign up during the free trial.
We’ll never stop offering solutions to support you.
All the 1540 people who have received the Embrace Watch through a donation (thanks to our early supporters, the generosity of our private donors and the support of the Epilepsy Foundation) will be entitled to access the services of the Standard plan free-of-cost for the first 6 months.
We’ve also worked hard to ensure we could apply a special “Buy one, Give One” campaign!
As you might remember, we’ve worked on a similar donation initiative during our crowdfunding campaign, and you should be proud of what we accomplished with your support: over 1,500 Embraces were donated.
By subscribing to the Plus plan, Empatica and you will cover a Standard subscription for one of these families in need – chosen by the Epilepsy Foundation – to receive the donated Embrace watches.
This important initiative will contribute to making a real difference, and we hope it will go a long way to support more people living with epilepsy.
We will be back soon with a new post to get up close with the newly released Alert features. Stay tuned!
A big hug,
The Empatica Team