Supernova Award Category
The Problem
America's population is aging. It is estimated that by 2050, people over 65 will represent more than 20 percent of the population, up from an estimted 15 percent today. Seniors want to live independently (and safely) for as long as possible. IoT offers significant opportunities to enhance senior safety, security, and quality of life. By gathering and analyzing valuable data, clinical and management staff in residential settings will be able to enhance resident health, provide better services, and engage in earlier interventions, when needed, and seniors living out in their communities will be able to remain independent longer.
The process of retrofitting the Proof of Concept Smart Home apartments provided many insights into near-term opportunities, as well as identified areas that remain challenging. These insights may provide guidance for other industry partners who wish to leverage the Internet of Things both in a residential community setting, as well as in individual homes.
The Solution
Our team has been actively working with the best and brightest minds and technology companies in Silicon Valley and beyond to retrofit two Proof Of Concept “Smart Home” apartments – living spaces retrofitted with cutting edge technology, designed to be inexpensively integrated into existing architecture. These proof of concept Smart Homes provide a glimpse of how new technology tools may be able to work together to improve resident safety and quality of life: A sensor triggers soft floor lights when someone gets out of bed in the middle of the night, to light a safe path to the bathroom, helping prevent falls. A sensor automatically switches the living room lights off upon leaving, and back on upon return. Environmental data is sampled and correlated with sleep patterns, to improve sleep quality.
Some of the tools that these concept Homes demonstrate are already widespread in the consumer market, but are just now being considered as solutions in senior care.
The results
While we are just in the early days of testing this exciting proof of concept, there is already significant interest and involvement from across the technology industry and in Senior Care. Tech companies are interested in this large and growing demographic, and are actively collaborating. Senior care orgs see the value immediately. Partnerships have already been formed, technology integration is an active work in progress (with many participants!), and the future looks extremely bright, as long as security and integration challenges continue to be addressed.
Metrics
Primarily qualitative metrics at present are focused on interest, and generating a rapid feedback loop between the providers (tech co's) and the consumers (seniors). Quantitative stats are in development, as they are key to illustrating the impact on health and welfare. As this is largely uncharted territory for this industry, the most important metrics are partner engagement (high), and Senior satisfaction with the solution (moderate, and growing). Eventually, we will have risk reduction metrics that illustrate how these solutions actually impact health, safety and quality of life, but we're currently working with the tech partners to develop these metrics, and the measurement tactics.
The Technology
IoT. Wearables. Software. Hardware. We brought a number of different individual solutions together, from the Amazon Echo to IFTTT to Samsung's Smarthings technologies to the Breezie platform, which both provides a friendly front-end for the seniors while also automating trend and activity gathering and alerting on the back end, and many others (smart beds, sleep sensors, smart switches, etc.). Adding new technologies monthly.
Disruptive Factor
One of the greatest challenges is the lack of standards, in many areas. Many competing RF standards, for example. Lack of standards for integration (other than via IFTTT). Lack of consistent and well-defined metrics around units of measurement and myriad methodologies for everything from evaluating sleep quality to security best practices. We have challenged the status quo by becoming the connective tissue, the proof of concept that brings these disparate companies and technologies together to solve a real problem - how to keep seniors safely living independently for longer.
Shining Moment
Finally getting the demo's (which involved many different tech co's) to work seamlessly and demonstrate in a compelling fashion that began making believers of those who were skeptical. Definitely took much more work than anticipated!