Volume 23, Number 4: April 2022
Empathy: A US loss companion for the bereaved
By Romayne Gallagher, MD
IAHPC App Reviewer
Anyone who has experienced the death of a family member or someone for whom you are legally responsible will recall the grief, but also the countless tasks that came with settling the estate. Arranging disposition of the body and a funeral, closing accounts, paying bills, sorting out possessions and property—the list goes on and on. Trying to take care of multiple, time-consuming tasks while grieving is challenging, to say the least.
Ron Gura, an Israeli entrepreneur and tech expert, is CEO and a cofounder of Empathy. He describes Empathy as “an application that combines technology and human support to accompany grieving family members along the journey they face after losing a loved one, ensuring they don’t have to face this difficult process alone.”
Gura credits a mixture of personal and professional experiences with motivating him to innovate.
“When I was a child, my brother passed away at just eight years old. I saw the ways it affected my family, particularly my mother and eldest brother.” He understood the emotional hardships from his personal experience, but it was only as an adult and an employer that he came to understand the logistical burdens. “It is like working two jobs at a time when you are at your most vulnerable. It was at this point that I had the idea for Empathy, and made it our mission to change how the world deals with loss so that bereaved families don’t have to feel so alone.”
The 28MB app, available only in the United States, won a “Best Apps for Good” spot in Google Play’s Best Apps of 2021. It can be downloaded from the website, as well as from Apple and Google USA app stores. Empathy staff arranged for me to access the app through TestFlight, as it is not available for my country, Canada.
The app has a pleasant interface and works without a hitch. It asks what your situation is—dealing with a loss, preparing for a loss, or working with bereaved people. From this, it anticipates what information you are looking for. If you are dealing with a loss, for instance, it asks further questions to determine the legal jurisdiction and a few details about the death. The tasks identified start from “immediate arrangements” through to “taxes,” with the app walking you through in an informative and thoughtful way; it thinks of things like prevention of identity theft, dealing with social media, and digital accounts to the logistics of scattering ashes on a windy day. The app allows five collaborators to share the account (family or friends) and keeps track of who is dealing with each task.
The app checks in daily to see how you are feeling, allowing you to express and document your feelings over time. It has an extensive library of audio and written episodes about the symptoms of grief, the process of grieving, unexpected death, the experience of grief on important dates, and finding help for grief. Meditations for bedtime, sitting with your grief, guilt, and hopeless feelings are topics that are handled tastefully. There is a library of supportive articles and audio segments.
The app is free to download and use, however automated timesaving tools, the document vault, and 24/7 access to the Empathy’s care team requires a premium subscription, which costs $8.99 USD monthly or $64.99 USD for a year. This expense can be recouped from the estate. With premium level subscription, you can access personal emotional support and the team can complete some of the tasks for you. Some organizations/companies have partnered with Empathy to provide access to the full app for their clients and employees.
I can think of little to improve the app except to use the words “die and died” more often than “pass.” That’s my bias in thinking that saying the word, without whispering, helps others to be comfortable and see dying as a part of living. In my experience, conflict within the family about religion, past events, relationships, and money springs back to life when the equilibrium of the family is shattered by a death. More about this on the app would be welcome.
Empathy is a significant innovation bringing support, education, and order into the difficult time following a death of a loved one. It will help relieve some of the angst over tasks, introduce useful knowledge about the process of bereavement, and provide personal support to those who use these services. It would be very interesting to do a trial comparing those who use this app versus those who do not, to see how well it can do!
Editor’s note: Residents in the United Kingdom can access a free death-notification service— linked to many banks, some mortgage lenders, and others—and Tell Us Once, a free government tool that allows residents to quickly inform most government services about a death.