How Memrease works

Memrease works two ways at once. A family can build a shared archive together, each person adding what they remember from their own angle. And for a relative who needs help remembering, that same archive becomes a gentle daily companion. Most families do both — the steps below are the same either way.

Step one — Your family gathers what it remembers

A memory can be a written story, a photo with a caption, a voice note, or a video: a childhood anecdote, a place someone loved, a funny story from a holiday, a note about someone who's no longer here.

The point is that it doesn't fall to one person. Several people can add what they remember of the same event, each from their own angle — what one recalls as a quiet afternoon, another remembers for the song that played twice. You don't need to write brilliantly; you need to remember something true. If you're not sure where to start, the interview asks you questions and you just talk.

Step two — Memrease threads it together

Each memory is read by an AI pipeline that pulls out the threads — the moments, details, and questions worth returning to — and maps the people, places, and eras they touch. Where several people speak to the same event, their accounts are kept attributed and side by side, not flattened into one official version.

None of this plumbing is visible to anyone using it. What surfaces is a clear archive and, for the person at the centre, a photo and a question about something they actually know.

Step three — The daily prompt, for someone who needs help remembering

Not every family needs this part — but for a relative living with dementia, or anyone whose remembering needs a hand, it's the heart of the product.

Each day they open a saved link on any device — a tablet, a phone, a shared screen — enter a 4-digit PIN, and arrive at a photo from the archive and a gentle opening question about their own life. What follows is an AI-guided conversation that follows their lead: as much or as little as they like, prompting gently, never pushing. Most sessions last five to twenty minutes. There's no login to manage and nothing to learn — just a screen to tap.

The prompt is calibrated for slower attention and the gentle rhythms reminiscence work calls for. NICE guideline NG97 recommends considering reminiscence therapy for people living with mild to moderate dementia; the fuller picture is at /the-practice.

Step four — A shared archive that keeps growing

Every memory the family adds deepens the archive. The more there is, the richer those conversations become — and the more complete the record. Contributors can see which memories have sparked the longest conversations, which topics come up again, and when the sessions have been happening.

Over time the archive becomes something permanent: a family's account of itself, told by the people who know it best, and still legible to a grandchild or great-grandchild decades from now. They're part of it too — they just haven't joined yet.

Care home and shared device support

Memrease is built to work on shared tablets in care settings. Multiple residents can use the same device, each with their own PIN-protected access. When a resident moves into a care home, their archive and conversation history move with them seamlessly.