For families caring for someone at home
Dialling it is one of the most practised things your mum has ever done, and it outlasts a great deal: names, meals, whether she has already rung you twice this morning. Mine couldn't always place who I was. She still knew my number.
And you're glad she rings. When you can pick up, you can hear her settle in a minute or two. Yes, someone's coming later. Yes, she's had her lunch. Yes, everything's all right. Being able to reassure her is the best part of the call, and you'd take it twenty times a day if you could.
But you can't always get to the phone. You're at work, picking up the kids, doing the shopping. She gets voicemail: a message, then silence and no response when she talks. For someone with dementia, that can be frightening. You see the missed calls later and feel the guilt. Me too.
KindPhone answers your phone when you can't. Same number, nothing new for her to learn. It reassures her and answers her questions in a natural, warm conversation that stays within a plan you've designed yourself. Less checking your phone every five minutes. Fewer distressed voicemail messages.
KindPhone is early: a working start, not a finished product. We're covering the cost for a limited number of families to use it free, in exchange for telling us how it goes.
Voicemail plays one message and then stops. It doesn't listen, it doesn't answer questions, and it leaves your loved one in silence. KindPhone listens and answers patiently, however often they call.
Set what KindPhone knows, what it may talk about, and where a conversation can go. It stays within your plan.
Calls forward to KindPhone instead. It recognises your loved one and answers their questions.
Email after every call with the transcript, summary, and recording.
Still not sure how it works?
KindPhone has two halves. You decide the shape of every conversation: what it knows, what it may talk about, where it can go. Within that shape, an AI composes what's actually said, so calls feel warm and human rather than scripted.
You design the conversation plan: the facts KindPhone knows about your family, the topics it may talk about, and where each conversation can go: visit times, reassurance, taking a message. That plan is the heart of the service, and it's yours.
What that means: it only knows what you've told it, and it can only take the conversation places you've allowed. And you see the full transcript of every call. Nothing is hidden from you.
Within your plan, a leading AI model (Claude, run through Amazon's cloud in the UK and Europe) composes what is actually said, turn by turn. It can respond to what your loved one actually said, and vary its words when they ask the same question again, so it doesn't sound like a machine reading a script.
The risk: because the AI writes its own sentences, it can get things wrong, and in the very worst case, say something wrong or even dangerous. The risk is not zero. Your plan constrains it, every reply is automatically checked before it's spoken, and if a check fails KindPhone plays a message you've written yourself instead.
A word on privacy: calls are processed under the same cloud safeguards UK hospitals use for patient data. Nothing is stored by the AI provider: the words are processed and immediately discarded, never kept, never used for training. Processing stays in the UK and Europe, and names are swapped for stand-ins before any words reach the AI. The detail is in our privacy policy.
Some services record you and answer in a synthesised copy of your voice, so that your mum thinks she is talking to you. We understand the appeal, and we don't think families who choose it have done anything wrong. We've decided against it.
We tried it, early on. I made a synthesised copy of my own voice and played it to my mum, and it frightened her: close enough to be recognisably me, and wrong in a way she couldn't put her finger on. She couldn't work out that it was a recording, so the feeling had nowhere to go. She was just left with a version of her son that wasn't quite her son.
Partly that's the evidence. We read the research behind the idea, and it is thinner than it looks: the main review of it couldn't reach a conclusion, and in some of those trials a family member's recorded voice was no better than a stranger's. Partly it's the UK guidance. The Mental Health Foundation's inquiry into truth in dementia care, with people living with dementia on the panel, accepted that kind untruths have their place but drew a line at building make-believe worlds.
So KindPhone answers as itself. If she asks who she's talking to, it tells her. The warmth goes somewhere else: into patience, into never correcting her, into answering the same question for the twentieth time as though it were the first.
What the research actually says·How we compare to KindredMind
Recognises what the caller is asking and gives a real answer, not one fixed message, including follow-up questions within a topic.
Recognises your loved one's number. Everyone else gets a standard answering service.
"Is anyone coming today?" "What time?" Checks the diary and gives the answer you've set, as often as they ask.
You design the conversation plan: the facts it knows, the topics it may talk about, where a conversation can go. The AI speaks only within it.
Email after every call with the transcript, summary, and recording.
Your loved one just picks up the phone and talks. No apps, no buttons, no instructions needed.
KindPhone answers when you can't, on any phone. What changes between a landline and a mobile is how much control you get over your own phone.
Call forwarding when you don't answer
To change it — say, so KindPhone takes everything while you're in a meeting — you go into your phone's settings. Your network doesn't let us do that for you.
Call forwarding, or add the KindPhone Box
The Box is a small adapter between your phone socket and your phone. Two minutes to plug in, and if it ever loses power your phone works exactly as it did before.
Every family is different, but the questions are often the same. KindPhone comes with ready-made conversation topics that you can switch on or off depending on your situation. Pick the ones that apply, add your family's details, and you're done.
"Is anyone coming today?" · "What time?" · "Who is it?"
"Where are my tablets?" · "Should I take them now?"
"I'm on my own" · "When is someone coming?"
"Where am I?" · "Who are you?" · "What's happening?"
"Are the doors locked?" · "Is it time for bed?"
Add anything specific to your family.
You don't have to use them all. Start with one or two, see how it goes, and add more when you're ready. Each topic works from the details you've given, so what it says fits your family.
I'm Edward, a geek who builds tech for social good. My mum has dementia and lives alone. She calls me many times a day, often with the same question. I don't mind that. But when I can't pick up, she gets voicemail and hangs up more anxious than before. I built KindPhone so she'd hear an actual answer instead of dead air.
KindPhone is a better voicemail. It answers your phone when you can't, and gives callers the information you've prepared. It is not designed, tested, or certified for use as a care device, safety system, or substitute for professional care.
KindPhone is the beginning of a service, not a finished one. What we have works, and its limits are set out above. We can afford to cover the calls for a limited number of families, and we're looking for people who want to use it and work with us to make it better: telling us what helps, what doesn't, and what they'd need, especially as the technology keeps improving. If that sounds like you, we would like to hear from you.