VERA - Wellness Companion

Inspiration

My grandmother is active in every way that matters, except physically. Arthritis and a sedentary lifestyle mean the biggest risk to her health isn't a diagnosis, it's inactivity. I could call my grandmother myself and tell her it's time to work out. But a phone call from me is easy to forget, easy to reschedule, easy to skip on a busy day and it depends entirely on me remembering to make it in the first place. CALL-E does what I can't do consistently: show up on a structured schedule, every single day, without fail, without guilt, and without the awkwardness of a family member nagging. It also never runs out of patience, never gets frustrated after the fifth "not today," and always shows up with the same warmth on a hard day as it does on a good one.

And not everyone has a family member who can call. Plenty of seniors, especially those in nursing homes or living far from family, don't have someone checking in daily, motivating them, or noticing when something's wrong. I wanted Vera to be that presence for anyone, not just the people lucky enough to have an attentive family member with the time to call every day.

What it does

Vera places two kinds of calls to seniors: a warm, resident-led Social Check-In where they lead the conversation, and a motivational Activity call that gets them moving. Physical activity isn't just about the body, it spikes neurogenesis, the growth of new brain cells, which plays a real role in protecting cognitive health as we age. That's the real reason the Activity call exists: movement is one of the most direct things a senior can do for their brain, not just their fitness.

Each resident has their own custom weekly exercise routine, built around what's actually appropriate for their physical needs, and Vera delivers a different motivational quote each day to open the call with real energy. Rather than generic health talk, Vera connects today's activity to what genuinely motivates that specific person. That could be an upcoming wedding, a dream trip or a grandchild's game, so the encouragement feels personal, not scripted. Every call ends with real warmth: Vera asks if there's anything on their mind before saying goodbye, something I noticed was missing from early test calls and made a point to fix.

How we built it

CALL-E is the core of Vera's entire calling experience. Each call is planned and placed through CALL-E's real-time voice infrastructure, using natural-language goals rather than rigid scripts, so Vera can genuinely adapt to whatever a resident brings up mid-conversation while still hitting the personalized touchpoints, quotes, exercises and motivations built into that call. CALL-E's structured results and transcripts are what let Vera's agent make a real judgment call after each conversation: is this routine, or does it need to reach a caregiver right now? Routine calls generate a warm summary; flagged calls trigger an immediate alert — all built on the structured data CALL-E returns after every call completes.

Challenges we ran into

Early test calls felt rushed and impersonal, so I rewrote Vera's closing instructions to genuinely slow down and ask what's on someone's mind before hanging up. I also learned that staying on the line during a physical activity doesn't work well in practice, so I redesigned the Activity call to motivate and position someone to start, then end so they can actually move with a follow-up nudge to call a family member once they're done.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Getting Vera to feel like a genuine companion rather than a scripted caller was the real win — the personalized quotes, custom exercise routines and specific motivations tied to each resident's life made a noticeable difference in how natural the calls sounded. I'm also proud of the escalation logic: giving each resident their own custom-defined criteria for what counts as urgent, rather than one blanket rule, means Vera can tell the difference between routine discomfort and something that genuinely needs a caregiver's attention.

What we learned

I learned that motivation isn't one-size-fits-all. An early version of Vera backed off the moment someone expressed reluctance and it took real iteration to build in gentle persistence without ever overriding someone's actual pain or discomfort. I also learned a lot about designing for two different audiences at once: a warm update that comforts a family member reads very differently from an operational summary a facility nurse needs to act on quickly.

What's next for VERA - Wellness Companion

Vera's dual-reporting design already serves two audiences, families and facility staff. I'm excited to keep building on CALL-E's platform to bring this same companion experience further, including exploring recurring, fully autonomous scheduling for daily calls at scale. The next chapter is bringing Vera to Alexa+, expanding beyond phone calls into a full voice-and-screen companion with cognitive games, guided exercise videos, and meditations, so seniors have a way to stay engaged and active between calls too, not just during them.

Built With

• amazon-bedrock
• amazon-web-services
• call-e
• claude
• event-bridge
• lambda
• resend
• strands