Gatineau home care company receives federal funding to add AI to its platform

Tashi Farmilo

Artificial intelligence will soon help match Outaouais seniors with home care workers, after Gatineau company Aidexpress received a $500,000 federal repayable contribution to build the technology into its service platform. Pontiac–Kitigan Zibi MP Sophie Chatel visited the company on October 16 to highlight the funding, which also helps Aidexpress expand into other provinces.

A second company, software developer Bloks, is receiving $300,000 to sell its AI-based customer relationship management software abroad and to add new features. Both contributions come from the Regional Artificial Intelligence Initiative, which Canada Economic Development for Quebec Regions manages in the province to help businesses create and adopt AI tools.

Chatel acknowledged that AI carries risks and said Canada is working with international partners, including Europe, on safety and regulation. “We can’t avoid it. We have to make use of it,” she said in French.

She said Aidexpress and Bloks show “that we have the talent here in the Outaouais, in our region, and the ambition to become leaders in this sector, while ensuring safety and confidentiality, because in home care services, that’s quite important.”

The funding arrives as demand for home care rises with an aging population. Richard Mercier, president and chief executive of Aidexpress, said the public health network lacks the staff and beds to care for everyone who is losing autonomy, and that the shortfall is more pronounced in the Outaouais than in many other regions. Chatel pointed out that every baby boomer will be over 65 by 2031.

Aidexpress runs an online platform that works much like Uber. People who need help at home, from cleaning to personal care, submit a request, and the platform links them with a nearby worker. About 13,000 workers in Quebec and 1,100 in Ontario have signed up, Mercier said. Aidexpress checks their credentials and runs background checks, and each worker chooses the services they provide, how far they will travel and when they can work.

AI will first be used to make those matches faster, weighing what a client needs, where they live and who is available. Mercier said families seeking help today face a scattered system, with many organizations offering services and no single place to start. “The question we should be asking is why there are 14,000 people in Quebec waiting for home care,” Mercier said in French. “It’s not whether they should be served by this group or that group. They should be served.”

The company’s answer is what Mercier calls an autonomy hub. Aidexpress plans to open its platform to non-profits, small home care providers, independent workers and families, so that someone looking for help can reach all of them through one system. Sharing the platform should also keep more workers available, he said. A worker in the Pontiac who wants 30 hours a week but can only get five from Aidexpress will often quit, but could stay if other organizations offer the remaining hours.

Under the hub, a person seeking help answers a short set of questions about whether they can bathe, cook and move around the house on their own, and whether they have fallen recently or are having trouble with memory, mood or sleep. Someone who lives alone with no support is marked as a priority. The request can go to several nearby providers at once or to the local CLSC, and a coordinator follows up if nobody responds.

Seniors in the company’s focus groups this fall said they were tired of explaining their situation from scratch to every new provider, Mercier said. The answers form a single record, which he calls a “living portrait,” that follows the person from one provider to the next. Chatel said AI could use that record to request the right services as a person’s needs change.

Aidexpress also plans to connect the platform to devices in clients’ homes. Through a partnership with Josephine Care, sensors learn a resident’s daily routine over about a month and send an alert when something is out of the ordinary, such as a much longer stay in the bathroom than usual. Mercier also described night lights with sensors that track walking speed to detect a growing risk of falling, and AI phone calls that remind clients to take their medication and can pick up signs of confusion. When a concern is detected, the next worker scheduled to visit could be asked to check on the person, or the family could be notified. “If we don’t want people going to the hospital, we have to be doing prevention before we’re doing treatment,” Mercier said.

Mercier said the company follows Quebec’s Law 25 and federal privacy rules, keeps its AI models on servers in Canada and shares a client’s information only with that client’s consent.

The hub is set to launch in the first quarter of 2027, starting in the Quebec City region with the Fondation AGES, a social geriatrics organization. In the Outaouais, Aidexpress is in talks with the CISSS de l’Outaouais about a pilot project, which could take place in the Pontiac.

Chatel said home care is a pressing issue in the rural parts of her riding. Seniors in the MRC de Pontiac who are placed in long-term care often have to move to Gatineau, she said, leaving their homes and friends behind. Keeping them at home for even five or six more years would improve their lives and ease the strain on relatives who care for them.

“There isn’t a single non-profit that will be able to meet this. There isn’t a single private company that will be able to,” Mercier said. “But if everyone comes together and looks at who can help, we can do this work.”

For more information: aidexpress.ca