Surprising Benefits

As technology advances, “smart home” solutions for living in place are becoming very nearly (if not completely) invisible. The impact they can have, however, can be profound — and even unexpected. A study from Harvard quoted by the residential tech trade publication CE Pro noted how the right lighting could reduce falls among seniors:

The results show a decrease of falling incidents by as much as 43% — however, rather than it being a case of making the environment brighter, the lighting focused on mimicking a natural circadian rhythm throughout the day. The reason for this lies in the main strength of circadian lighting: promoting a healthier sleep schedule. This in turn helped to foster a greater alertness in residents, which then led to reduced falls.

Lessons Learned from Care Facilities

Dan Sanderson, who’s the senior business development manager for residential and hospitality solutions for Crestron, has done quite a bit of work on creating these kinds of assistive technologies. A striking example is a project in the UK in which tech was transformative for the residents of an extended care home. Sanderson told the EMEA-based publication Inavate about the project:

We’ve outfitted one facility where the residents are heavily disabled or seriously injured. They've lost the use of their hands, their limbs. So we use voice control to handle control of some basic functions: lights on, lights off, shades open, shades off. The residents also have crane lifting mechanisms that come over to the bed and assist them with trips to the bathroom and so on.

Sanderson went on to note that the technology was equally important for caregivers — assistive technologies lessen some of the burden on a healthcare system facing less than full staffing. What’s more, voice control can be deployed in a manner that’s practically invisible. What Sanderson is driving at is bolstered by the results of an integration at Fellowship Senior Living in New Jersey. “By outfitting these new spaces with advanced, unified technology, we are able to eliminate any daily complications and offer our elders and team members a seamless experience,” says John Dalton, principal consultant at IT Initiatives, Inc., the firm that handled the tech in that elder care facility.

Everyday Solutions

The middle ground between complete assistive care and a home with zero amenities is where most of the demand lies, of course. “Tweaking the fundamentals of lighting, shading, HVAC, and power management for older or special needs individuals is a great start,” says Sanderson. Lighting that comes on at low levels in the night when it’s triggered by a motion sensor, for example, is a great feature for anyone, regardless of needs.

Those motion sensors can be expanded to detect falls, too — that eliminates the need for wearable sensors (something any of us would find a bit bothersome). There are also behavioral modeling systems that can be tied to a sensor network — they’ll pick up aberrations in activity after learning what a normal baseline is for a resident. The ability of a system to not just monitor but adjust can provide other benefits — powering down lights or other electrical draws when a room’s determined to be unoccupied is a cash saver.