# It is incredibly hard to access dementia patients and their families as customers Dementia is a brutal condition for both the patient and their family. It’s not something people talk to their friends about, let alone strangers, especially strangers trying to sell them something. Although fern was designed from the start with my grandmother (who had dementia) in mind, I literally could not find any families suffering from dementia who were open to testing it. This presented a chicken and egg problem I could not crack: the robot at the current state of technology was suited for dementia patients but it would need to be proved out with non-dementia patients to get the dementia patients to trust it. <!-- #evergreen --> [Web URL for this note](http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/It+is+incredibly+hard+to+access+dementia+patients+and+their+families+as+customers) [Comment on this note](http://via.hypothes.is/http://notes.benjaminreinhardt.com/It+is+incredibly+hard+to+access+dementia+patients+and+their+families+as+customers)