Louise Callin — Dementia, Photos Sparking Conversation & Making Care More Human

Adam Walker:Louise Callin is the founder and CEO of ReelLife Conversations, a social care technology company helping families, carers and care providers create meaningful conversations for people living with dementia.

After nearly 30 years leading technology and transformation for global corporations, Louise left to build something with more direct impact. Her mum's dementia journey inspired the idea: technology should make care more human, not less. Since launching the business she has secured venture capital investment, shown real-world results and is building partnerships across the UK and internationally.

Louise Callin:I care about using technology to support human-to-human connection. I genuinely believe that technology can help social care become more human. There's always a concern that technology will do the opposite — that it will make care somehow less human. This is something I fundamentally disagree with, if used correctly and responsibly.

Louise Callin:One of the things my family has always loved is photos. I would print out a whole load of photos, or snap photos of Mum's photos, lay them out on the coffee table, and she and I would really enjoy looking at individual pictures.

I realised I had a superpower and I didn't know it. I could look at the other photos on the table and link our conversation to the next picture — a person, a place, a colour, an object. With dementia, short-term memory of what you were just talking about is often very challenging, so having photos that help you continue is a really good thing.

Then I'd leave the album on the coffee table, and the photos weren't being opened unless I was there. One of Mum's supporters told me she found it difficult because she didn't know who the people were or the story behind the picture. That was the moment. I wasn't using the photos for their context — I was using colours and objects, analysing the picture in real time and finding something to talk about.

Photographs are just a conversation waiting to happen, regardless of what you know or remember about the picture. Photos shouldn't be a memory test. They're there as a supporting actor in the conversation.

Louise Callin:How many times have you held a picture up and said, "Do you remember when..."? Instantly, if you don't, you feel like you've failed. That is not a position we want to put anybody in.

Turn it around into "Gosh, I remember when..." and you unlock the ability for that person to say "I remember that too" — and if they don't, they still haven't failed. Talk about a colour, a piece of clothing, something personal, and it's far more meaningful than a question that can only be answered right or wrong.

Louise Callin:A physical photo is tangible, but unless you've written something on the back it's very hard to do much with it. Taking a photo of a photo turns that physical thing into a digital asset we can work with.

It's all about how you present a digital photo to someone with dementia. There's no written software standard for dementia design, so accessible design has been key to our journey. We bury almost nothing in menus. The app opens and you just begin. If you touch a button, you know you've touched a button — we don't want fear of technology to stop someone using it.

The app is designed to sit side by side with someone else, because it's all about creating conversation between two people: interactive for the person with dementia, supported by the person sitting with them.

Louise Callin:Photos are added through our family admin portal. We use facial recognition to group faces, so the only work the family admin has to do is name the person the technology has grouped together. Locations can be checked and amended.

Then we run the photos through our technology and generate conversation prompts. Always being the one to think of the next thing to say is hard, and there's a reason social care has a real problem with staff retention — being a carer is a very difficult job. Any tool that supports the moment of care matters.

The prompts analyse the picture and surface the most natural things to talk about — the plants, the colours, what's in the garden. And every time you press one of those buttons, the next photo is linked to the previous one, so the conversation keeps flowing naturally.

Louise Callin:I see the pictures and the tool as the stimulus. Either the person with dementia or the carer turns that prompt into conversation and interaction.

A conversation with someone with dementia can be stilted; it can go off in different directions. But you might see a little twinkle in the eye, a smile, or a squeeze of the hand — enough of an interaction to know that photo has done something positive. The dementia journey is a very long one, and the tool is designed to be used across it.

Louise Callin:Out of respect and love, I covered up a lot of the symptoms that emerged early — offering to drive because her sense of direction had changed, helping with the planning she used to do brilliantly. She started worrying about Christmas in August. I think she knew things were changing, but we never talked about it.

Six or seven years ago things took a dramatic turn. I was going in to see Mum three times a day while still doing the big corporate job. She began to socially isolate herself because she worried people would find out.

Everybody's journey is different, but no matter what your dementia journey looks like, it will be enhanced by engaging in social connection. We're not trying to surface memories — we're encouraging interaction without fear of failure, using familiar photographs as a stimulus.

Louise Callin:Coming from corporate life is a huge transition to running your own business. Years of creating pitch decks for senior leaders suddenly had the best purpose ever — bringing the story and the reasons to life.

Talking about money and dementia care in the same breath is a strange thing. The venture return is based on volume and a very small monthly subscription, not on extracting large sums from individual families. Dementia is tragically one of the fastest growing, biggest impact diseases there is.

There's plenty of technology supporting the transactional side of care — medication tracking, food diaries, safety. What technology supports people in the moment of caring for that person? Very little.

Louise Callin:I'm not an expert on dementia — I have a lot of lived experience and I've immersed myself in this world. Sleep, nutrition and stimulation all matter enormously.

The impact on women shows up statistically because of their involvement in caring for others with dementia. Women are much more likely to be the primary supporter or carer. When we look at data showing dementia affects women more than men, we should look at the whole picture, not just the person with the disease.

Louise Callin:Dementia care is coming to the forefront of the press and it's becoming more widely talked about, which is incredibly positive — on a similar journey to mental health, where the taboo has lifted.

There has been a heavy bias towards the medical side of dementia care in the past. We're now emerging into different thinking on what the non-pharmacological approach needs to look like, and for me that's how the next 10 to 20 years transforms dementia care.

Advice to your younger self:I matter too.

Top three qualities when building a team: Honesty, openness to new ideas, hard graft.

Favourite thing outside work:The water. I love to sail — it's my mental space, where I think about everything and nothing all at the same time.

Golden rule:My dad always said, "You were born with common sense, and common sense is not very common. Use it well and use it wisely, and you will go far."

Louise Callin:Go to the website, reellifeconversations.com — my email address is on there. I'd talk about dementia until I'm blue in the face, so please reach out.