Introduced in a sentence
“Would you like to record a few stories for your family?” That is the whole introduction. There is nothing to configure before a patient can begin.
For hospice & senior living
Something meaningful to offer, that costs the round almost nothing.
Your team already knows life-story work matters. What is usually missing is a simple way to run it at the bedside — and something real the family keeps afterwards. AfterLyfe is built to be introduced in one sentence and picked up at the patient’s own pace.
Nothing to install. No new workflow. Works on the tablet you already have.
Why it fits the way care teams already work
No operational lift
No scheduling, no equipment to check out, no training day. A member of staff, a volunteer or a relative can help work the device.
Built for real buildings
Recording is saved to the device first and uploads when the connection returns, so a story told in a back room is not lost to the wifi.
The family keeps something
What is recorded belongs to the patient and passes to the one person they designate. It is a keepsake, not a chart note.
What it looks like on the floor
These are the moments teams tell us they want a resource for — not a programme to run, just something to reach for when the opening appears.
- A patient recording messages for a child, a grandchild or a spouse.
- A family using the question cards during a visit, when nobody knows what to say.
- An activities hour where the deck does the work of starting the conversation.
- A relative asking the question they have wanted to ask for years, and getting an answer.
- A patient explaining the photograph on the nightstand while someone records it.
What gets preserved
- Personal messages for named people
- Life stories and family history
- Advice, values and words of encouragement
- Letters, recipes and documents — with the context that explains them
- The reasoning behind the choices they made
Recorded in the patient’s own voice, kept in their own words.
How a team introduces it
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Offer it, once
Mention it the way you would mention any optional comfort. Some patients want it immediately; some want it in a fortnight; some never do. All three are fine.
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Start with a card, not a screen
The printed deck is often the easier opening. A question read aloud at the bedside asks nothing of anybody’s technical confidence.
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Record when they are ready
A phone or tablet, held by whoever is in the room. The patient tells the story; someone else can work the device entirely.
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It passes to the family
What was recorded goes to the person the patient designated. Your team does not become the custodian of it.
The evidence
Why structured questions, and not just a camera
The design of this comes out of an existing clinical literature on reminiscence and life review. We are not claiming AfterLyfe has been trialled — it has not. These are the findings the approach is built on.
Across randomised trials, reminiscence work showed small improvements in quality of life, cognition and communication — with the clearest effects when sessions were individual rather than group-based.
Woods B, O’Philbin L, Farrell EM, Spector AE, Orrell M. Reminiscence therapy for dementia. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, 2018. PMID 29493789
Life-story work helped staff and relatives see the person rather than the diagnosis, and improved communication between residents, families and care teams.
McKeown J, Clarke A, Ingleton C, Repper J. The use of life story work with people with dementia to enhance person-centred care. International Journal of Older People Nursing, 2010. PMID 20925716
Terminally ill patients who produced a generativity document reported a greater sense of dignity, purpose and meaning — and said it had helped their families.
Chochinov HM, Kristjanson LJ, Breitbart W, McClement S, et al. Effect of dignity therapy on distress and end-of-life experience in terminally ill patients: a randomised controlled trial. The Lancet Oncology, 2011. PMID 21741309
Individual reminiscence delivered one-to-one was associated with improved mood and autobiographical recall relative to usual care.
O’Philbin L, Woods B, Farrell EM, Spector AE, Orrell M. Reminiscence therapy for dementia: an abridged Cochrane systematic review of the evidence from randomized controlled trials. Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, 2018. PMID 30092689
Request a walkthrough
Twenty minutes, no slides. We will show you how a patient would actually use it and answer the questions your team will ask.
You can also write directly to support@after-lyfe.com.