As more Filipinos grow older, families need to address an issue that falls somewhere between looking after a parent themselves and hiring professional caregivers. A newly launched Metro Manila companionship service offers a glimpse of the possibilities, and the questions that come with them.
Maria Lourdes Malipol, 27, began caring for her mother, Eleanor, after the latter had a stroke in October 2024. Eleanor experienced severe changes in memory and behavior, including impulsive actions and episodes of agitation and loss of bladder control, and she required constant supervision in the hospital, especially after she repeatedly tried to remove her IV line.
One night, Maria and her father, Saturnino, 56, awakened from brief sleep and discovered that Eleanor had pulled out the line and left her hospital bed. The incident illustrated how quickly an ordinary moment of rest could turn into an emergency.
Saturnino, a homemaker who previously ran a sari-sari store and a small computer-and-printing shop, could scarcely leave his 51-year-old wife’s side. Maria’s younger sister, Selina, now 23, was still completing her studies.
Eleanor had been employed as a factory worker since the late 1990s and lost her job following the stroke. Maria became responsible for speaking with doctors, processing hospital documents, coordinating appointments, and keeping nightly watch.
Two months after the first stroke, Eleanor suffered another. Maria, who had been working full-time as a software test engineer, eventually quit because her mother’s caregiving needs had become incompatible with her office-based job. Although she later worked part-time as a freelance content and partnerships manager, her caregiving continued to consume much of her working time. There were days when she had to stay awake all day to accompany her mother to medical appointments.
Selina, who was completing an information technology degree at Batangas State University when their mother’s illness began, eventually assumed more hands-on caregiving responsibilities after graduating.
The emotional strain was equally difficult. Eleanor’s occasional agitation could turn into physical behavior so unlike the woman who, her children remembered, raised and protected them. The family was not unwilling to provide care. It was struggling with how to sustain it.
That experience would become the starting point for Akaiin, a family-care coordination platform, and later Akaiin Companion, a nonmedical accompaniment service that was officially launched last Oct. 10. The founders hope it will help families with something both ordinary and difficult to arrange: finding someone trustworthy to accompany an older family member when relatives cannot.
Changing family arrangement
The question is becoming more urgent as the Philippines ages. According to the Philippine Statistics Authority’s 2024 census, the country had 11.42 million people aged 60 and older, accounting for 10.2% of the household population. The number was 9.22 million in 2020.
Additionally, a 2025 study by the Economic Research Institute for Asean and East Asia found that 59% of older Filipinos lived with at least one child, while approximately 12% lived alone. Most of those living alone still had children in the same barangay.
Living alone does not necessarily mean being lonely or neglected. Neither does sharing a household guarantee that an older person’s daily needs are consistently met.
The difficulty is often practical: Who accompanies a parent to a checkup when everyone is working? Who stays home when the usual caregiver needs rest? Who makes sure an older person can still visit friends, attend church, or enjoy an afternoon outdoors?
A Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS) report published in March 2026 describes the country’s formal care sector as underdeveloped, with shortages in qualified workers and unevenly distributed facilities. Much of the responsibility remains within households, particularly with women. PIDS estimates that Filipino women spend 28 hours weekly on unpaid care work, compared with 8.6 hours for men.
The imbalance is familiar to Maria. Although her father and sister shared responsibilities, she initially carried much of the work because she knew the medicines, procedures and arrangements. She worries about families in which one person continues absorbing these obligations until that person also becomes unwell.
Browser-based app
Akaiin did not begin as a companionship business. In July 2025, Maria and Selina explored a food-technology project intended to help families manage the nutritional needs of relatives living with chronic illnesses. Their concept eventually shifted toward a centralized system for organizing medicines, appointments and care records. They eventually renamed the platform Akaiin, a play on the Filipino word akayin, or to guide or accompany, with the letter “i” replacing “y” as a reference to artificial intelligence.
Akaiin is a free, browser-based application accessible through mobile phones or computers at app.akaiin.com, without requiring a download from Apple App Store or Google Play. Families create a shared Care Circle to organize medication schedules, appointments, prescriptions, laboratory results and emergency contacts.
The platform also includes an AI-assisted document scanner that extracts information from uploaded medical records, although the company cautions that automated results may contain errors and should be checked.
Through conversations with prospective users and beta testers, however, Maria and Selina encountered a limitation that software could not overcome. An app could organize information. It could not physically accompany their mother to a hospital — and Akaiin Companion emerged from that distinction.
Families begin by messaging the service and describing the older person’s needs. Maria and Selina then recommend one of three service levels. Neighborhood walks, home companionship and light errands cost P398 for three hours. Social outings, including visits to malls, parks or churches, cost P498. Hospital appointments and more demanding errands cost P698.
The introductory rates are available to the service’s founding customers until March 31, 2027. Bookings require a 50% deposit, which is nonrefundable but transferable to another date.
During a paid companionship session, authorized relatives can follow activity logs, photographs and live location updates through the platform. After the outing, they receive a summary of the session, which they can save to the older person’s records.
Companionship is not nursing
The distinction between accompaniment and medical care is central to the service, and to the safety questions it raises. Akaiin says its companions may accompany clients to consultations, assist with meals, provide medication reminders, and spend time with them at home or outdoors.
They do not administer injections, manage oxygen, provide wound care, offer medical advice, or accept bedridden clients requiring intensive assistance. Maria says her experience administering her mother’s insulin reinforced the importance of keeping medical procedures within the competence of properly trained people.
Maria said she and Selina intend to personally handle the first 100 sessions before bringing in additional companions. They are looking eventually for people with firsthand caregiving experience, patience and kindness toward older adults, but have not yet specified a formal application process, gender or age preferences, mandatory training requirements, or a system for assessing applicants’ interpersonal skills.
Nor has the company disclosed what future companions would earn. Its published terms describe companions as nonemployees, although that designation alone does not establish their legal employment status or the labor protections that may apply.
Their stated safeguards include digital consent, emergency information cards, continuous accompaniment during outings, and activity logs accessible to authorized family members. Whether those arrangements are sufficient will depend on how they perform in actual situations.
For complaints or incidents, Maria said families can contact her and Selina directly through Facebook Messenger or email at maria@akaiin.com. As the only companions at this stage, the founders would personally receive concerns, using the application’s photographs, activity logs and timestamps to review what happened during a session.
Akaiin’s published terms also provide hello@akaiin.com for reporting violations and state a general response period of 15 business days. However, the founders’ interview did not establish a separate investigation, appeals, or external escalation procedure for companionship-related complaints. The system’s effectiveness also remains untested by completed client sessions at the time of Maria’s interview with CoverStory.
Privacy presents another responsibility. The Data Privacy Act of 2012 treats health information as sensitive personal information and places requirements on its processing and protection. Akaiin says information is restricted to the client’s Care Circle and that unsaved session summaries are deleted after 30 days. Those are the founders’ descriptions; the platform’s safeguards have not been independently audited for this report.
On regulatory compliance, Maria said Akaiin is registered with the Department of Trade and Industry. The founders are also working with an accountant-consultant to prepare filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bureau of Internal Revenue, and National Privacy Commission.
Where an older person can make decisions independently, their informed consent must also remain central, not merely the convenience of relatives arranging the service.
Available care options
Companionship is entering a landscape that already includes residential homes, nursing services and community-based assistance, although these respond to different needs.
At Phil-Am Homes in Quezon City, Cheers Global Nursing Homecare is listed by the Philippine Retirement Authority as an assisted-living facility. Its publicly described services include nursing care and assistance from professional caregivers.
For older people who need more sustained supervision or medical support, such facilities serve a function that an occasional companion cannot replace.
Another model operates in San Juan City. In a 2022 CoverStory report, Linda Bolido described the work of the Little Sisters for the Abandoned Elderly at the Sta. Teresa Jornet Home. The religious-run institution provides residential care for disadvantaged older women, supported by nursing-trained sisters, caregivers and donors.
In June 2026, the Environmental Management Bureau-National Capital Region reported that the home sheltered 71 older women. Unlike a commercial companionship service, the institution serves elderly residents needing longer-term shelter and care.
The differences matter. A nursing home, a charitable residential institution, and a three-hour companion booking cannot be evaluated as interchangeable solutions. The emerging question is whether more options can exist between full-time family responsibility and formal residential care, particularly for older adults who remain relatively independent.
The need for company
Not every older person who seeks companionship is sick. Some may simply want someone to walk with them, accompany them to church, or share a conversation over coffee.
The World Health Organization estimates that roughly one in 10 older people worldwide experience loneliness. It recognizes social isolation and loneliness as concerns affecting physical and mental health, while identifying community groups, befriending initiatives and age-friendly environments among possible responses. Paid companionship could become one such option, although its effectiveness cannot be assumed from the existence of a service. Nor is affordability settled.
For Akaiin, the challenge is offering relatively inexpensive sessions while covering transportation, compensating workers fairly, and maintaining safeguards as the service expands. Its initial coverage is limited to Quezon City, Marikina, Pasig, San Juan and Makati. Families outside these cities and those unable to pay for regular assistance remain beyond its immediate reach.
That exposes a larger question for the care economy: Can personalized eldercare support become widely available, or will it remain another service concentrated in urban neighborhoods where households can afford it?
Aging without giving up independence
Imagine an older Filipino who can still manage most daily activities but has stopped going out because no one is available to accompany them.
What if attending a medical appointment did not always require an adult child to miss work? What if a visit to the park or a conversation outside the home did not depend entirely on a relative’s free time? A more developed system of nonmedical companionship could help make those ordinary activities possible.
Technology might help families coordinate schedules, share essential information and respond more quickly when assistance is needed. But the person receiving care must remain more than a profile on a screen, and a companion must offer more than automated updates.
Akaiin is still testing whether its proposed combination of technology and human accompaniment can work. Its beginnings nevertheless point toward a broader challenge. As Filipino families become smaller and their caregiving responsibilities grow, affection alone cannot supply the additional hours, transport, professional skills and support that aging households require.
Maria learned that through her mother’s illness. As she put it, technology alone was not enough for their family. They needed a person, too. The next test is whether human help can be made safe, dependable and accessible, without turning the simple need for companionship into another burden families must struggle to afford. CS
Hannah L. Tabunda is a journalism graduate of the University of the Philippines Diliman and a contributor to CoverStory. Her interests include feature writing, multimedia journalism, and “stories that explore people, culture, and lived experiences.” She also engages in such combat sports as karate, Muay Thai and boxing, and has taken up bouldering and top-rope climbing.
