Our commitments to care

The idea behind CrossSense has been maturing for more than a decade, but our company is young. We incorporated last year and have been picking up pace since winning the Longitude Prize on Dementia in March. Growing quickly brings new pressures, and we wanted to be sure that what matters most to us, and to the people we serve, cannot be quietly traded away along the way.

In June we completed the Bethnal Green Ventures (BGV) Tech for Good programme, which took us through every part of our young business, from what we offer to how we are governed. It was the right moment to make our mission binding. Emboldened by Eric Ries's excellent book Incorruptible, which shows how companies can protect their purpose as they grow, we worked with the brilliant solicitors at Bates Wells to rewrite our Articles of Association: the legal rules that set out what our company exists to do and how it is run.

Our mission, to “enhance human potential through independent and fulfilling daily living”, and the three principles that guide how we pursue it are now written into those Articles. Changing them requires the unanimous agreement of our directors and of all our ordinary shareholders, and each year we must report on how we have advanced and protected them. We are now writing a policy for each principle, so that they guide everyday decisions and are not just aspirations. Below, we explain what each principle means in plain words, and what it looked like in practice in September. The full legal text is at the end of this post.

Our first principle is that CrossSense must support people's own abilities and independence, and must never turn into a tool for surveillance.

September was World Alzheimer's Month, and it was packed with events full of hope. At the Alzheimer's Society Annual Conference, defiant speakers set out a vision of fighting dementia at every level: prevention, earlier diagnosis, drugs that slow the disease, perhaps even a cure emerging on the horizon. Much of this effort still pushes against the decline of public social care and persistent stigma, yet in the innovation zone, where we exhibited among other inspiring startups, hope continued to beam throughout the day. We are very grateful to the Alzheimer's Society innovation team, who keep making space for innovators like us.

Most technologies for dementia, however, still focus on monitoring, and no one likes to feel controlled. We understand the dread that loved ones feel when they do not know what the person they care for may be doing, particularly from far away. Yet no technology to date has delivered transformative benefits for both people living with dementia and the people who love them. We believe this calls for putting the agency of the person living with dementia first, in everything we build.

CrossSense does not monitor people living with dementia or try to control them. It empowers them. And while we recognise the inevitable trajectory of dementia once it touches a person, we aim to use the scientific principles behind CrossSense so that its benefits persist even after the glasses come off. We continue to build that evidence through our research study funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR), and we are already designing the next one.

Our second principle is that we will earn our revenue in ways that respect our users' trust, privacy and dignity. We will never sell our users' identifiable data, use it for targeted advertising, or make money by keeping people hooked.

Over the years, we have learned how strongly people living with dementia and their carers feel about how their data is used. Smartglasses can capture an awful lot of information, so wherever possible we avoid collecting it in the first place. We keep raw audio and video for a very limited time, only so that we can respond to safety concerns, and our glasses now work only in and around a person's home, so we do not risk recording people in public who are unaware of being filmed.

Nor will we trade on attention. Many apps use deceptive design to keep people hooked, because every extra minute of attention can be sold to advertisers. We have ruled that out in our Articles, because it would be paid for with our users' trust. We want CrossSense to be measured by how much it helps.

Keeping these promises also depends on where data is stored and who controls the computers that process it. People tell us they want their data kept safely in the UK, but the specialised computers that AI needs are in short supply here outside a handful of global technology giants. So it was encouraging to attend Civo Navigate in London, the conference run by the UK cloud provider Civo, which now hosts the computers for our current study in London. We have just joined Civo's generous startup programme as we work towards launching CrossSense on their infrastructure.

In the same spirit, we are building relationships with several smartglasses makers, so that CrossSense never depends on a single company. Whichever glasses it runs on, it stays under the control of the person who wears it, and of the family members or carers they choose to involve.

Our third principle commits us to fair, lasting relationships with the communities who helped build CrossSense, and to finding real ways to give back.

CrossSense will only stay relevant to the people we serve if we keep nurturing those communities. Ultimately, people tell us what to do: co-design with more than 300 people, including people living with dementia, carers, care workers and clinicians, has shaped every aspect of CrossSense.

We always see a person living with dementia as a capable member of a community: we have met so many brilliant volunteers in dementia cafés and pop-up meeting spaces across the country. We believe every single person can contribute meaningfully to their local community, and there is good evidence that doing so benefits cognitive function and wellbeing.

Leading Lives, a Suffolk-based employee-owned care co-operative, has been our long-standing partner, opening doors to memory cafés we could not otherwise have reached. In 2023 and 2024, when our glasses were still large and heavy and we could not yet demonstrate a compelling prototype, they introduced us to many wonderful people who selflessly helped shape CrossSense, knowing it might not reach them in time. That fearlessness, and a generosity that reaches beyond one's own lifespan, has deepened our commitment to the dementia community.

So on 25 September we were proud to sponsor and present the Values in Action award at the Leading Lives Annual General Meeting and Awards Night in Stowmarket, recognising one of their many inspiring care practitioners for bringing the co-operative's values to life in their everyday work.

Working with communities keeps bringing joy to our work. It reminds us that defying dementia is possible, day by day, through all the successes and daily struggles, as long as we stay committed to resisting it through care and togetherness.

In September we also joined broader, industry-focused communities, including the NVIDIA Inception programme and the Personal AI Health Alliance. As we grow, we remain committed to the communities who made CrossSense possible, and to finding more ways to reciprocate their support.

What connects all three principles is that, for us, care is a practice. We did not set out to build a product and hand it over; we set out to build something that adapts. We recognise that people living with dementia need someone (or something) that pays attention, tries things, and adjusts as their life changes. So our technology is built to tinker alongside people rather than optimise for them: to step in where it is needed, step back where it is not. The point was never to replace anyone's capabilities, but to return time and attention to the parts of life that matter: the conversation with your partner at the kitchen table, the grandchild, the neighbour and the community that holds you.

The independent daily living we hope to support is never achieved alone, which is why our companion encourages people to turn to those around them, not only to the glasses. Trust is earned by showing up, reinforcing each other's values, and being willing to be challenged: by families, by carers, by the communities that host this work, and by each other within our team. Smartglasses are still a new kind of technology, with no settled way of doing things, so the honest way to build human-centred technology is to treat the people who use it as our peers and teachers. What works will be learned in their homes, and while we are advancing our product as fast as we can, we remain committed to making it reliable when it launches next spring.

Article 2.2 of the CrossSense Articles of Association

2.2.1 User agency and dignity: The Company shall design, develop and deploy its products and services in a manner that supports users' own capabilities and agency, and shall not make any material change to its products or services that would cause their primary purpose to shift from empowering user agency to passive monitoring, surveillance and/or unnecessary dependency.

2.2.2 Ethical revenue and data stewardship: The Company shall pursue sustainable commercial revenue in a manner consistent with user benefit, trust, privacy and dignity. To this effect, the Company shall not sell identifiable user data, use user data for targeted advertising or monetise user attention through advertising-led or engagement-maximising business models.

2.2.3 Community reciprocity: The Company shall maintain active, fair and reciprocal relationships with the communities it serves, including but not limited to users, carers, researchers, care organisations and grassroots initiatives. In pursuing this principle, the Company shall have regard to appropriate opportunities to reciprocate the valued contributions of these communities through partnership, research participation, feedback, access, expertise, donations and/or other forms of support.