EquipMeOT’s Lindsay DeLong Uses Social Media to Make DME Less Intimidating

In the early days of her career as an occupational therapist, Lindsay DeLong never imagined she would become a prominent social media figure.

DeLong is the founder and face of EquipMeOT, a social media account that helps caregivers and patients navigate their experience with home medical equipment (HME) through fun videos created by DeLong and her husband. She started out as an occupational therapist in inpatient rehab, but five years and a second child later, DeLong decided to transition into home health, something she said was a natural fit for her since she loved the idea of helping people where they most feel comfortable.

She then found a job working with patients who had experienced complex injuries from car accidents—mostly younger people with injuries ranging from spinal cord trauma, brain injury, stroke recovery and other severe multiple traumas who were returning home from the hospital post-discharge.

“I was really getting a look at what the needs were for people living in the home with pretty profound and complex needs, and with that I was able to explore adaptive everything, like equipment, certainly, but also how you navigate with those needs,” DeLong said. “I think that’s where the necessity of being extremely creative with my approach to therapeutic intervention and my love for assistive technology and adaptive equipment really blossomed from, because it was necessary in order to accommodate the substantial needs of those types of patients.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, she lost her job and found herself fielding an influx of questions from former patients and their families who needed help learning how to use their durable medical equipment (DME) devices and other supplies correctly. DeLong said she saw inconsistencies in how patients received information, so she decided to develop content that could help answer the questions she was being asked.

“I started making these simple videos about how to install and assemble the rudimentary adaptive equipment my patients were receiving but not necessarily getting much information about,” she said. “That was really to fill some space before I went back and found another home health gig, which was always the plan.”

The videos, which she launched on YouTube, started garnering more and more views. DeLong’s husband has a background in film, which helped her create videos with a good production value despite being filmed in their house until a year ago. As her views continued to grow, DeLong realized she was able to fill a desperate need in homecare.

In her content, the information is presented as if she’s talking to a caregiver or an end user who will need the information. Over the years, she’s covered a variety of types of equipment, with the functioning of mobility aids being one of the more popular topics.

EquipMeOT took off. Over the years, a huge range of people have told her how important her videos are in their lives. Many students have told her they use her videos to help them get acquainted with the equipment they’ll have to use in a home environment, and even to study for exams. She has also received praise from young people with disabilities and from young caregivers, including teenagers caring for their parents.

DeLong said she wanted to remove a veil over DME that can make it intimidating or feel taboo to discuss.

“When I transitioned to more short-form content, it became more playful,” she said. “That allowed me to show things that I think are completely normal, completely reasonable to talk about and deeply stigmatized for no reason. We want to say, ‘Hey, a raised toilet seat doesn’t need to be something we all shy away from.’ You should know it exists. It’s not scary. It doesn’t have to be something you’re embarrassed about … it’s just life.”

EquipMeOT’s popularity growth led DeLong and her husband to start EOT Wellness, their product company, which began with a scrub brush and scalp scrubber. DeLong said fills a gap in the market for tools for people to wash their body and hair if their shoulder is locked up after a surgical procedure.

“Every handle was straight, which prevents you from being able to reach the area safely,” she said. “So, I was like, ‘Why don’t we put a solid metal core in the middle that bends and reaches those spaces?’”

DeLong said the scrubber has been very popular, and they followed that with a lotion applicator and a specially made support pillow, as well as a modular pillow that helps prevent injuries for bedridden individuals.

“We aren’t making products we come up with on our own—we make products that people ask for and (then we) figure out what’s possible,” she said. “It’s been an incredibly satisfying experience.”

But even as they’re in the process of developing two new products, DeLong said, they have no plans to stop making videos. They plan to continue them as long as they find a home on people’s screens.

“One of the things with DME is it takes time,” she said. “It takes time to order, to test, to establish whether or not it’s the right piece of equipment. [DME] has the potential to be so greatly impactful, and that’s the motivation and our ‘why’ to continue to do what we do. We want to fill a gap in the healthcare space, which is that most people end up having to tackle it themselves, and then they order the wrong shower chair, so they give up entirely on sitting in the shower and then they fall. There’s preventative medicine right there.”