An app that will take care of your family when you are gone. Episode 89

Monika Rachtan
Hi Monika Rachtan, I would like to welcome you very warmly to another episode of Po Pierwsze Pacjent. On my programme we very often talk about various illnesses, and today we're going to talk about death and why it's a good idea to get your affairs, documents, business affairs in order, in case something bad could happen to you. With me in the studio is Pavel Soproniuk. Hi, a very warm welcome, the creator of the app. Tell me, what did you have in mind and in general what made you start working on an app that allows you to put your affairs in order?

Pavel Soproniuk
You know, it was a very life story. In fact, the thought of doing an app like this came to us at the time because I have three kids, the first time my wife and I went away after these kids were already born to us, they had grown up a bit. My youngest was two years old and we decided to go on this kind of bigger holiday, leave them for a week these kids.

Monika Rachtan
Honeymoon, I understand. Yes, the honeymoon.

Pavel Soproniuk
Honeymoon week. And it was such that of course we were really looking forward to it, but the day before we left- But you were flying on a plane. Yes, we were flying on a plane. And the day before the flight we were already so packed, because my parents just stayed with all three of them. We suddenly started thinking, well, what if something happened to us? Would they even have a chance to grasp all this reality?

Monika Rachtan
But you know what, this is the normal thought in general of all responsible parents. Like I had the same one when I first put my daughter down and flew on a plane.

Pavel Soproniuk
And that's when we started writing. That is, we took a piece of paper and started to write, and started to think about what we should actually leave to such parents so that they would embrace our lives a little bit. And that made a few pages. And then suddenly my wife says to me: "listen, but you know what, I don't know half of these things that you've written down here. ' And I say, 'And you know what, I don't know the other half of you really, because everyone .... In a lot of families it's like we're responsible for something there, right? Especially if the family is actually bigger, yes, we're already professionally involved there, we're working at something, well we share those responsibilities, because it's impossible to take care of everything. And it's very comfortable. And then we came to the conclusion that we really needed to sort it out. And then, two years later, we realised that the next time we were going somewhere on our own, these sheets of paper became outdated and we would have to update it all again. And then it occurred to us that it would be worth it, that maybe we weren't the only ones with this need. Somewhere we nurtured that thought for a while, and then it happened so happily that with a couple of people with whom I had done various business projects before, we came to an agreement that it would be worth doing something like that simply as a project, as a company.

Pavel Soproniuk
So it took some time. Between In total, that it took, if I remember correctly, about five years between that first write-up of the cards before the holiday and the creation of the app. But eventually there came a point when we came to the conclusion that we had heard so many stories among our friends, among people in general, about someone thinking that such an app would be useful, that we finally made one. Also, the idea really came from life.

Monika Rachtan
You know, because it's also so common sense to think about the fact that something could happen, because people don't want to talk about such topics. Like when we're 20, 30, 40, 50 years old, we're generally immortal after all and nothing bad can happen to us. And I often, when I talk to my mum, and this might be a bit of a pet peeve now, but my mum, for example, says to me that 'oh, don't go on holiday so far away because you're leaving your child with me, well that's a bit more of a risk that something will happen. And I say 'gee, mum, but I might be walking down the street and a brick might fall on my head, even if there's no building there, and all sorts of things might happen, and I might even die as a result. And we don't think about that on a day-to-day basis, or maybe we do, we just don't talk about it, we don't want to talk about it, and it's generally the case that death will come to us at some point, it's a normal thing and it's unlikely to call us three days before and say 'hey, you're going to die in three days', it's just like you have to be ready at any point.

Pavel Soproniuk
You know, on the other hand, however, I'm more inclined to think about the fact that we are thinking rather than talking. Because see, it's hard to imagine someone going skiing and not buying insurance, for example. So we have somewhere in the back such an awareness that something could happen to us. And what's more, we think about the fact that if something does happen to us, we want to be safe, so we have health insurance, so we want to know that this helicopter will pick us up, yes? And that someone will scan us and take care of us. And on the other hand, we also have this thought, okay, and if something really happened, we want our family to be protected. That's why we buy life insurance policies. For example, we want to feel good about it, that we've taken care of the essentials. It just seems to me that times are changing and more and more of our valuable assets are actually tied up in intangible things. Because we've got, I don't know, it used to be when we bought some savings, well let's just say it was some tangible stuff, it was cash that was lying around in a pile somewhere tucked away or bullion. And today you just see that we hardly use cash at all anymore.

Pavel Soproniuk
All our money, everything we have, is in some digital form. Somewhere it's functioning in the form of information. And as we started to analyse it, it turns out that an increasing proportion of what we have and what we dispose of is actually in the virtual space, yes? It's all moving around.

Monika Rachtan
For which you need to know the password.

Pavel Soproniuk
Which you have to get to. And at some point, if something happens to us, and those are the stories. I think we're actually at a point where it's going to change rapidly. I mean, today we're still living in the old way, because we still have this sense that we're at a turning point between what is virtual and what is so material. That is to say, the bank still sends us something on paper Still the most important documents get signed, but see how this digitalisation is moving forward. "m-citizen, "You know, "All the services, now we're moving to "E-Delivery, where there won't even be an "Avizo anymore. ' The 'Avizo, right? It's all going to be in our email inbox, it's all going to be digital somewhere and you have to start managing that.

Monika Rachtan
Today we're recording an episode, and as my viewers know, we never record it live, we just do it beforehand, so we can safely say we're recording an episode of 'Granny's Day.' And today I heard this research on the radio just about how seniors navigate the web and how they use virtual financial products. And it was about this, and it turned out that there, more than half, probably about 60%, I can't remember now exactly 60 how many, but more than 60% of seniors have a virtual bank account, one that they can go to after logging in, after accessing the bank's website, after logging in, and dispose of their money there. And now let's think that senior citizens are not just people who are 60 years old there, but they are also people who are 80, 90 years old. And such people are also online. It's amazing It's amazing, and I think in a while, like you said, it's going to be 80, 90%, because we're getting older, we've got an ageing society and we're kind of getting those years going too, we don't notice it so much. And yet everything that concerns us today is in some kind of system, it's inaccessible so materially, as you said.

Pavel Soproniuk
That's right, and it has very such, I would say, tangible consequences, because there was a very nice article on money.co.uk last year about the fact that, for example, there are several hundred million zlotys in Open Pension Funds at the moment that have gone unclaimed. I don't know if you know that every one of us who is employed puts money aside for our retirement. At some point we had a choice whether to leave our share after the liquidation of OFE in ZUS, whether to leave it in OFE or transfer it to ZUS. And we simply forgot about such things And in the meantime, the second pillar of our pension is inherited, i.e. from all those contributions we make to ZUS or our employer, some part goes to our individual account in an open pension fund. And these funds are inherited, so that when something happens to us, it is the OFE that creates a sub-account for our heirs. And some of these heirs do not know that their money is there. That is to say, after people who have died, at the moment there are several hundred thousand people and several hundred million dollars that are simply waiting for the heirs. In the United States, $70 billion is lying in the accounts of people who have passed away and for which no one has come forward.

Monika Rachtan
This is good information In general we are passing on today that maybe somewhere out there is waiting for us.

Pavel Soproniuk
You know, it's so that you can actually look at what the phenomenon is from the perspective of death, of the fact that we're going to be gone one day, because really that's the only certainty, isn't it? But like you said, as long as we're in our 40s, we don't think about it, but really that aspect of putting things in order around us, of knowing where what is, of not looking for those documents in a panic, of when a cool opportunity comes along to book a flight, we just have pictures of all the family members' passports on hand on our phone and we know it's in the right tab. It's just a super convenient thing.

Monika Rachtan
I also remember, I'll go back to family stories again, but for example my mum always carried her pesel in her wallet on a piece of paper written down, you know Well we did that too, didn't we? Because it's just in some other form, and the moment we have an app where it's all there and we have access to it, because I don't know a person who doesn't have their phone with them all the time. Maybe not all the time, but in most situations we have that phone with us that it serves as a form of entertainment, it's a tool for work, so we just use it every day. And having that information always with us, well it's very convenient, because also sometimes see, it's not even like you said, it's not about death, it's about sometimes we're just not able to get something done because we're missing a document. And today having a scandium, having this information just with us, we are able to settle many things much faster and for example instead of going to the bank twice, we can go once, having such things just with us.

Pavel Soproniuk
Or a story I personally experienced. My dad ended up in the hospital because he fainted and the ambulance took him away and he still managed to call my mum, to say that he was unwell, to say that he had called an ambulance, but we couldn't get through to him after that. And when I tried on the emergency number to find out, because it is indeed possible to find out such things, and I introduced myself, I said there was a man with this name, whose ambulance had taken him more or less from this place. And when I asked them to tell me to which corner he was taken, the dispatcher told me that, first of all, I had to be authorised to do that.

Monika Rachtan
Secondly, you need to verify.

Pavel Soproniuk
And secondly I have to give his PESEL. And And now, do we have the PESELs of all the people around us, yes, the family, because actually that's the information that we should have. And so, where to write it down, where in some email again. I keep coming back to the fact that this document order, it's really super important in everyday life and it gives such a big comfort. It's like a flat. You can live in a flat that's cluttered and it's manageable, right? There's no problem with that. But if you clean the room, that's something my daughter says, there are benefits. Firstly, it's more pleasant and it's a very pleasant and satisfying feeling when I walk into such a tidy room, and secondly I know where what is. That is, when I'm looking for something, I can just look and find it. So one thing is this Pesel, still going back and so closing this topic, and the other thing is that just in this digital world in 30 seconds, and it's even in the conversation we had together in turn at our live at Legacy Up, I don't know if you remember that I was telling you about the fact that in 30 I according to citizen, I at this point in time am able with em citizen to authorise my wife to access all my information, documentation.

Pavel Soproniuk
It's a matter of logging into the app and simply entering the relevant person. So this sorting out, it doesn't just mean that it's worth having an app like ours, because of course it is, and we encourage everyone to have it, but there are many more things that you can do on an ongoing basis, if you get into the habit of taking care of it and sorting it out, then things just start to come together very nicely.

Monika Rachtan
We're getting into a podcast that mainly talks about health. We rarely talk about death, because those are quite difficult topics, but I think they're also very necessary. And I wonder about how people react when.... You know, when I was talking to people about who's a guest on my show, I would say, well here comes a guest, Paul, who's done an app from death. Because that was somehow the best way for me and it was easier to remember. And I think it's easier for people too... And also explain, because if I gave the name, and there.... All right, yeah. So you're the man who did the app from death. And now, how do people react to you in general when you start talking about this tidying up that if something were to happen, they don't tell you that you're some kind of fatalist in general and that you did something like that? Are they open to talking about death at all? Yes.

Pavel Soproniuk
What people are saying. I think we don't have a problem. I mean, yes, actually talking about one's death, thinking about one's death, when we just start imagining it like that, it's a difficult subject, yes? But on the other hand this death, it's not some taboo subject. See, if you look at the media, after all, they flaunt it. We find her interesting, interesting. These are the kinds of things, I would say, often associated with some kind of accident, they attract our attention. So it's not that we- We like sensations, no? We like sensations, but it is something that I would say interests us. Whereas we don't really think about it. I- We wonder why that is. Why do people... We have this belief, death is not something we want to talk about. And I come to the conclusion, after all these experiences with different conversations, that it's a bit like talking about taking care of your health. When you start talking about taking care of your health, diagnosis and so on. It's people who suddenly understand that they should do something. That in relation to that. Because they should. Because they should, because, you know. It's just that yes, you have to go to the doctor, you have to sign up for some diagnostics, maybe get your blood tested, or maybe do some other thing.

Pavel Soproniuk
And all of a sudden talking about this topic makes me feel so uncomfortable that I have something unsettled. And in the context of just all this inheritance stuff and this sorting out of documents, I also have this feeling that we avoid talking about this subject because it automatically reminds us of all those things that we haven't done, that we've been promising ourselves for a long time, that we're going to write this matrimonial will, for example, which is the simplest will that anyone who is married and has children should do to make life easier for the other person. That is, if something happens to us, so that the other party, the spouse or the spouse can, for example, sell the flat without any problem. Because I don't know if you know that if there's a married couple and they have children, and something happens to you, so you leave, well, in order to sell a flat that's jointly owned, you have to give permission to the court that has custody- It's also an asset that kind of belongs to the children at that point. Yes, to that child. So there is such a thing as a sort of simplified matrimonial will that you can write yourself in five minutes. And there's a lot of these things that I can see such a check-list in general that I could do with you. You know, we have such a check-list in the app, just when you download, it's just there step by step, you can open up different categories of things and see what's worth throwing in.

Pavel Soproniuk
And this doesn't have to be done all at once. It can be done to yourself over the course of...

Monika Rachtan
Like you say, we put off topics like that because it's also, well that's what's in my head, isn't it? Putting down the idea that I've got something undone, that it's hanging over me and that, well, it's sort of got to be done, and it's really a life or death thing sometimes, because when I imagine, for example, an entrepreneur who runs a big company, and I'm not thinking of a big company that employs a staff of people, so that there's a hundred, 200 employees there, but a big company of, say, 20 people, it's very often the case that everyone is responsible for everything. A lot of things are done now and here, because I can do it. And if, for example, such an entrepreneur, because I'm not even talking about death, but let's say he has an accident and falls into a coma. And the world goes on, doesn't it? And the tax office doesn't sleep and you have to explain all this.

Pavel Soproniuk
I- This is in general probably the most difficult scenario you can imagine, that someone actually loses touch with reality, and they haven't died. And it's a drama in general, because then everything is paralysed, because various financial products don't start up you can't get to the bank for example and so on. So again sorting out such information, where, what I have, setting up the succession. Again, I come back to 'M-Citizen.' If we start thinking about things like that, what will be important if something were to happen to me, then all of a sudden we realise, and you can very easily find such information on the internet, that you can log into M-Citizen. If I have a sole proprietorship, to give such a special entitlement, that is to say, it designates a successor in a small business, what with the result that.... What I also did before one of the webinars where I spoke to a lawyer about this, and he said: "listen, it's very simple. In five minutes you log in to your profile and you indicate the person, you indicate the PESEL, of the person who will be the successor of the sole proprietorship. And then what we often hear about in the media, that the owner of the company has died and at that moment this company dies with him, will not happen. And there is a whole avalanche of different consequences, just with obligations to the authorities.

Pavel Soproniuk
This is very difficult to organise. And if we appoint such a successor, our TIN PESEL goes to the person and they have a while to get it all sorted out.

Monika Rachtan
You see, which means that this app is also such an educator, because these things that you're talking about are not things, it's not the kind of common knowledge that we have at all. And even if someone would like to get their affairs in order, writing it all down on a white sheet, like you said, one, that sheet might be out of date in a while, and And two, that there's no such clues on there as to what else is worth taking care of, because we're just not aware of all the things.

Pavel Soproniuk
Yes, and we have this ambition to do this kind of educational work as well, because of course it will attract applications, but it is just very much needed. Very, very much so. We are under-educated in this respect, nobody talks about it. Like you say, we kind of push that thinking away because it means we have to do something, but at the same time there are very many things that we can do very easily. And we don't have to do them all at once, we just sit down, remind ourselves, just throw in some application documents already have something done, write something. Writing that marriage will, if you have a model. Yes, we have, for example, made such a PDF that you can download, and there is just a template of such a will, but with one proviso that it has to be handwritten. And, in other words, to transcribe. And that's very important, so you have to take it out, transcribe it and file it somewhere, and preferably still take a photo and upload it to the app, and tell it where we've stashed it, because the acct will has to be on paper. A photo from the app is not enough. But we need to know where it is.

Monika Rachtan
Well, yes, that's right. And tell me, when, for example, we change phones, does this data, I understand, also calmly all the time the applications stores and on the new phone everything will continue to work.

Pavel Soproniuk
This was a fundamental assumption. I mean, such an app only makes sense if it is independent of your phone, that is, if you change your phone or, for example, if something happens to your phone. Well, because what would my wife be after if my notes were lost somewhere along with me, right? So the whole idea is that we actually care very much about the confidentiality of the data and we know that people are sensitive and rightly so, because we have such times that you can actually see that these data are leaking, someone is hacking into some servers all the time. So we, being aware that we are giving users a tool to actually put their different private information in there, we wouldn't want to have that data. And this whole project is structured in such a way that all the information that you put into this app, they're just in your smartphone, but every time you add or delete a note, the app asks you: do you want to update the backup of this information? Because the whole packet of your notes on that phone, every time you wish it, is encrypted with such a super strong encryption algorithm, and then it is stored on your cloud. And everyone has a cloud. Maybe some people don't even know we have one, but if you have a smartphone, on an Android you have a Google account and that's where the cloud is, and on an iPhone you have either google or iCloud.

Pavel Soproniuk
And with two clicks you actually store the entire click of your notes on your private cloud.

Monika Rachtan
That is, all the time with this administrator and no one else-What's more we don't even have access to this data of yours, because this information only circulates between your smartphone and your private cloud.

Pavel Soproniuk
She doesn't go through our server. The only information we have is actually whether you regularly confirm that you're alive, because the app will ask you from time to time if you're ok, and a notification pops up. And as long as you confirm that you are ok, then nothing happens. You don't even have to tell your husband that you're collecting data for him. And we have this information about whether everything is ok with you. And we have the information about who you want this information to go to after you leave or after you stop confirming that everything is ok. If your smartphone breaks down, well I the app will see that these notifications are not, it will still send you an email asking first. And if you don't even reply to that email, then you can set up another mechanism for yourself, which is that you can nominate such a trusted person. And we send an e-mail or text message to this person first, asking if everything is OK with Monika. Only when she says that she is not OK, does this information go to the person you specified. So you can collect all this information without even telling the person you are collecting it for.

Monika Rachtan
But it's very interesting what you're saying, that you've structured it in this way, because it's data security that's very important today though. And for many people just using such applications, the barrier to using such applications, can be uncertainty about their data. On the other hand, if these security features are actually so robust, then there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of here and it is simply worth doing.

Pavel Soproniuk
You know, it was important for us because we also knew that if we kept this data at home, it would be like a sticking point for hackers. Because if we had it all on our server, well, after all, it would be natural that we would become a natural target for attacks and we wouldn't want to do that at all costs. We would also not want, for example, that some service could come to us and say: "And I'll ask for this and that user's information. We simply do not have it physically, and therefore we cannot give it out, it cannot be stolen from us.

Monika Rachtan
All in all, that people in general are aware of the importance of organising this information, of collecting it in some place? Do people generally grasp how many things they have done, how many things they have not done, or do they not think about this on a day-to-day basis?

Pavel Soproniuk
You know what, they don't think about it. We even did a survey before Christmas itself and there among these surveys were two questions. We did them on a representative group of Poles. And we asked two questions. The first question was: do you think you have your documents in order? Do you know where, what goes where? Itd. And to the 85% question formatted this way, almost people answered yes: I know where what is, I have everything well organised. And then we asked a second question: has it happened to you in the last year that you felt that you couldn't find some document, some important information. And two-thirds of the respondents answered this question in the affirmative. So. Please, please tell us. You know, that's the turnout, right? We like to think of ourselves as having everything sorted out, until you suddenly find yourself checking, yes.

Monika Rachtan
Because I just wanted to say about myself that I also always have this feeling that when the summer ends, I put the sunglasses in the same place. And that all winter they sleep there, they overwinter, it's all right. And I don't know why it is that in spring, when I go to that place and look for those sunglasses, they are not there. And it's a very similar situation here. But I sort of a huge amount of documents that we're concerned with today, yes? And some messages, emails. And I also often have such a situation that, for example, I'm arranging something somewhere in some office, or I don't know, I'm signing some agreement and I'm looking in my head whether it was on paper, whether it was electronic, whether it was signed in some application. And there's so many of these possibilities that it's sort of getting harder and harder to find it. And the fact that once everything was actually on paper and we had these folders, our mums had folders, signed everything with markers and you knew what was where, now it's difficult to function in such a system, because I, for example, am not in the habit, if I sign something electronically, to print it out, put it in a folder, then put it on a shelf so that it's available, well, it just usually stays on this e-mail and probably most people around me don't believe that such a thing has happened, so here it seems rational to move it all to one place.

Pavel Soproniuk
There will be more and more of this because there is a fashion to go paperless. Financial institutions are bragging about it, they have ESG reporting coming in. Another thing, yes? Institutions are even going to be forced to emit less carbon, waste less resources, so everything, everything is going to be moved into this virtual sphere. So it will certainly become more and more convenient, but on the other hand it will become more and more difficult in terms of the avalanche of such digital information. And there is another phenomenon. Regulation. Look and see that we have to sign more and more, declare various documents for every transaction, because with such a drastically increasing amount of regulation, every provider of various services is trying to protect itself. How does it do that? Well it does it in such a way that it takes various statements from us that we have read the regulations, that we are aware of something and so on. And simply the amount of documentation that comes with even simple purchases swells up for us. And now... The consequence of this is that our emails are overflowing by the thousands. Check for yourself, all of you who are listening to this, how many emails you have in your basic email inbox and since when you have had it.

Monika Rachtan
I have a thousand unread Well, that's right, and I have tens of thousands of emails because my Gmail inbox is a dozen years old.

Pavel Soproniuk
And there are tens of thousands of emails there. As I try to search for something in it, it just starts to get harder and harder. And this is just the beginning of it. We will be massively inundated with this information in 10 years' time. And now, if we don't sort it out for ourselves on an ongoing basis, that means picking out the really important things, that is, signing an important contract, a deed or a life insurance policy. Many, many of us, for example, have life insurance policies connected to different products, so for example, with an employment contract someone gives us some sort of small policy, we buy motor insurance, somewhere in there is everything. If we don't have that place where we collect even a screenshot, Because if it's coming on the phone, the most convenient thing would be to take a screenshot of that first page where it says who the beneficiary is, what the number o the policy is, what the name of the insurance company is. That's really enough. Because if something happens to us, my wife will take that information, she'll have a tab of my app, here are all my life insurance policies that are active, well, and she'll go through these three, four, for example, companies. It is difficult for me to imagine that she will run blindly through all the insurance companies in Poland, especially as some of them are small or operate under some brand names.

Monika Rachtan
But also another issue is that, you know, for it to go to these societies at all, it requires a lot of documents, getting a lot of documents. And it all takes time, because you know how offices and courts work in Poland, that it's not done in one day, so in a situation where it comes to a situation where you pass away, you're ill, anything happens, this wife has to wait first until the court makes a ruling, until she authorises until she does some thousand other things there. And you're destitute for four months, for example, because it was on you. Yes.

Pavel Soproniuk
And these are authentic stories. And if you talk to people, because, you know, it's the kind of subject that when you start talking about it, every now and then we hear, someone adds their own story, because they've heard, because someone in their family passed away recently and there was a huge mess. I'm saying, now there are still people passing away who have a lot of things on paper, yes? But that's going to change a lot in a while. Another thing, because you know, it just builds up in layers. We think about the kind of thing that's closest to us, it's let's say a life insurance policy, but all kinds of investments. If you think about it, banks today have a system and a register of accounts. If something happens to me, my wife will go to the bank, produce the appropriate document and the system will spit out all the bank accounts that are registered in my name, but that is purely a banking system. There is no system like that for bonds, for example, for brokerage houses, where maybe someone has bought some shares. Cryptocurrencies forget completely. If someone has bought three there bitcoins at certain times. He's a rich person. But again, you know, it's that these things are so complicated that often some IT people are dealing with it and their relatives have no idea. They don't even have a clue that they have them.

Pavel Soproniuk
Yes. And it would be nice just to keep that information somewhere just in case, because otherwise it's going to hang around on the web somewhere and it's over and it's gone.

Monika Rachtan
And tell me, what attitude do you have to talking about your app with sick people, for example a person with cancer. Have you had any such conversations at all, reaching out to such a target group? Yes.

Pavel Soproniuk
I have a very personal story of my colleague Magda, who I encourage you to support by the way. We might be able to throw in a link to a collection for her, who has just been affected by cancer. And I've had this experience that she's told herself about. Because she knows about it. It happened to be a colleague I worked with in another company, but when she found out about her illness, she herself asked me to give and such a premium version and so on. Because she said that this is actually the thing that takes the stress levels down a bit. At the moment when we are ill, when we have these things around us that are just so many and so to deal with, putting things in order makes us calmer, yes? And pleasantly... It's a pleasant feeling in general when we have these things sorted out. And it's... I'm sharing this not even to advertise, although of course I encourage and invite everyone to use the app, but believe me it's just a bit like that housecleaning thing. The moment you finally get those few things done and so one at a time, for the few months that I've had this app and because I have those on there, like a lot, it gives a lot of comfort.

Pavel Soproniuk
And I think that if someone is in a situation where they are ill, because just because someone is ill doesn't mean they are going to go away. Lots of people get ill, there are a million people in Poland with cancer. At the moment it is about a million people. And a great many of these people will get well, or will be ill, but will live for many years, yes? Exactly. And again, at a time when we have so many different burdens associated with the fact that every now and then we're landing on some, I don't know, some chemo somewhere, yes? And of course those thoughts come up, the kind that you don't know what it's going to be like, well it's that comfort of embracing certain formal things, yes, the fact that at any time I can update myself, add something to myself. I think that is important. I don't have the research for it, I've had that one piece of feedback so far and I imagine it might be something that just helps.

Monika Rachtan
You know, when I talk to, for example, psycho-oncologists, who have also been guests on the couch here on my show, but also just talking, doing different projects, and I ask them what exactly for cancer patients is the most burdening thing besides the disease itself. This they say is just the thought of leaving their families with all these issues. And today it is not only older people who get cancer, it is not only people in their 70s whose lives are limited to going for a walk, meeting their family and friends, and some minor activities, it is also people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have families, who have young children, who have what almost every Pole has, which is a mortgage on a flat. And I was saying that what scares them the most is that they will pass away, and that life will go on and it won't just be nice moments that the family will encounter, but also various difficult situations. And that kind of certainty that everything is sorted out, that everything I could have done in my lifetime to make it easier for them later on, is something that cleanses them a lot. And I also remember when we were talking about sick people, about cancer patients, and I said to you that I'm quite radical here, and that I think it's necessary to go to these people with this application and simply tell them that, yes, listen, this needs to be done, it needs to be sorted out.

Monika Rachtan
And then I started talking to these people a little bit, you know, and asking them what they thought about it. And I was saying that they were the ones who would like someone to come to them and tell them, you know, that kind of fooling them and themselves that everything's going to be okay is something that's most annoying, that they're aware of their illness. I was talking to a young girl who has breast cancer. She said to me 'you know what Monica, but after all I know I have cancer, So that my mum, for example, who is an elderly person, we live in a small town, would come and say to me 'hey, come on, let's embrace your life, then it'll be easier for me, I'm old, you know, I'm not going to go to these banks, yeah?' It says: "then it would be easier for me. And so she says And I don't want to go to her and tell her 'you know, mum I've got cancer, I might die, so come on I'll sort all this stuff out so it'll be easier for you, because she's also very burdened by my illness and they're going through even worse than I am. And she says: And it's great that you're telling me about this app, I'm going to download it and I'm going to do it at all without her knowledge and it empowers her to do all this, because she says: "I, the old one, I want to live.

Monika Rachtan
Like I'm getting treatment, see, I'm a cheerful person in general, everything is good, I don't have a recurrence and so on. But you know, as I'm sitting in this chemotherapy chair and I'm thinking about my credit and my mum, I'm just daydreaming about taking that money out of the collection that I have, for the treatment and paying off that credit, just to know that it's out of my head. So it seems to me that we have this thing that it's with sick people that we're afraid to talk about death, that death for a healthy person is a huge taboo subject when talking to a sick person, but that putting things in order and putting things in order nevertheless allows that person, the one who is sick, to breathe a little.

Pavel Soproniuk
We also have this intuition, as I say, for now we have some feedback from such people. It's not that we've created these apps just for such people, but we feel somewhere instinctively that simply someone who has this thought that something might happen, it's exactly the same as, for example, with the people we talk to who are police officers. There are some professions where you go out to work in the morning and you don't know if you're going to come back from that job. Miners. Authentic. Miners, yes. And indeed what you just said even about like this girl you're talking about said: 'I don't even want to talk to her about it, but I would like to sort it out.' And that was also somewhere, this whole mechanism that we're talking about, that you can sort it out, It was only ever before the times of an application like ours, it was that even if you sorted it out, you eventually had to tell someone where all these files were. And so, on the one hand it makes you uncomfortable, because yes, if I want to put really such personal stuff in there and very confidential stuff, you know, well, because you don't know if it's going to be useful or not useful, well there's always that hesitation.

Pavel Soproniuk
Am I sure I want to show everything there, even the super-secret stuff and the confidential stuff, and those are always the most problematic, right? That is, the things that we just want to tell, those are the ones that we have the most trouble with after something happens to us. So this idea about there being no obligation, that there's no need to inform the person for whom it is that we're collecting this information for them, that was one of those fundamental assumptions in general. And it's exactly the same with these miners, with these police officers, as we talk to them, they're aware of it, that this is the kind of profession where and they even like it, because it's a certain emotion. I'm not saying they like the fact that you can get killed, but that responsibility, yes, and the fact that I'm doing something really important for other people, that's part of the ethos of this And at the same time, as I talk to them, they don't want to scare this family that something might happen. So that luxury of the fact that they can put different information together and even update it every day, and it's always up to date. Today I'm going to a business, I don't know, I'm taking out a loan at the bank because I need it or I'm taking out a credit card, I can add that information to the app, I don't have to do it every time or I'm doing some kind of just investing in bitcoin.

Pavel Soproniuk
I don't need to talk about it straight away and update my loved ones every day that we have this kind of information.

Monika Rachtan
You know what, I imagined myself with a conversation like that. Excuse me, a policeman. A policeman with his wife who says: "You know, Klara, I have this drawer where I'm putting together things for you that you don't know about me. And Klara says: "Sebastian, but what do you mean, you have some secrets from me. Sebastian leaves for work, and Klara opens the drawer, looks through Sebastian's shared photos.

Pavel Soproniuk
But you know, that's exactly it. We had a conversation with a very famous Himalayan. We had a very cool live with I that too, and it was a very interesting conversation in general, because we often think of people like that, that they're such risk-takers. And when you talk to them, it turns out that they have a lot more things sorted out than such a You know, ordinary person, because they say that when I go on an expedition, I just have these things sorted out. And Jarek said that he's been doing exactly that for years. If he goes on an expedition to the Himalayas, if he climbs K2 and other great peaks, his colleague always has all the information in an envelope. Just the way I talk to him, he says: "gee, it's nice that I finally don't have to entrust all my secrets to some colleague, because we trust each other, but still, yes, it's still a certain luxury that it's with me on my phone and that's where I have everything. And it's only when something happens that it's released, that information is big.

Monika Rachtan
Well, yes, there are two things certain in our lives: taxes and death. And death is probably not something to be afraid of, it is something to be prepared for, and getting the most important things, the most important information, sorted out for ourselves can be crucial for our loved ones. If you do not want to do it for yourself, it is for your loved ones that you should do it. Today my guest, but above all your guest, was Paweł Soproniuk. Thank you very much for our conversation.

Pavel Soproniuk
Thank you for the invitation. It was a great pleasure and I'm glad we were able to have such a deep chat about it all, because I'll admit frankly that there is rarely an opportunity for such a longer conversation.

Monika Rachtan
Yes, I, in a fast-paced world, encourage my guests to have longer conversations and to reflect. Also, thank you very much for accepting the invitation. We thank you for your attention. This was, as always, the First Patient programme. My name is Monika Rachtan and I invite you to follow me on my social media. See you there.