Hear Laurie in one of the following:

2024 What's Next Longevity Venture Summit (online)

2024 Longevity Venture Summit (DC)

Related News Articles

03/22/2024

Cost of in-home care soars by double digits in just a few years.

03/20/2024

The pandemic wasn't the wake-up call elder advocates expected.

03/19/2024

Tech companies are pushing their remote monitoring service to primary care doctors.

02/07/2024

GrandPad announces Grandie, an AI-powered virtual companion.

01/30/2024

The rise of passive, non-intrusive PERS devices at CES.

Monthly blog archive

You are here

New Report: Beyond DIY -The Future of Smart Homes and Older Adults

Within five years, predictive, proactive and adaptive smart home solutions that support health and wellbeing, comfort and safety, and engagement and entertainment will emerge to meet the needs of older adults, including subscription-based services that are integrated with wearables. Remote configuration and updates will be standard, and health insurers will be interested in smart home technology as a deterrent to hospitalization. With the addition of predictive analytics and machine learning, the home can become a participating caregiver for the oldest and frailest. What are a few of the trends that will make that feasible?

  • Home infrastructure as a service. Because so much in-home tech is acquired piecemeal, the obsolescence of the pieces is known only to a vigilant owner or tech service provider. Instead, if suites of integrated technologies were offered with a service plan, the device map would be known and monitored for its own health and wellbeing and appropriate replacement dates.
  • Home as a participating caregiver. ‘One size fits all’ has been the characteristic of many individual smart home technologies. This won’t work for older adults moving forward. Instead it will be multi-tiered solutions, customized remotely, adjusted as a person becomes frailer. Smart home technology will be enabled for caregiving, used by home care companies to help compensate for labor shortages, and warn of in-home issues during those times when the care recipient is alone.
  • Mixed modalities – wearable and in-home. A smarter home is inadequate to support overall wellbeing. And wearables do not leverage any information from the home itself, for example, smart cooktops that could help prevent in-home fires.
  • An in-home team of tech-enabled services. Older adults are rightly skeptical about technology designed to monitor them – equating monitoring with spying on them and invading their privacy. Instead, tech offerings need to be perceived as an in-home team of services, unobtrusively managing features to make home a comfortable place, delivering meaningful data, and protecting the privacy and autonomy of the individual. Vendors should collaborate with trusted intermediaries embedded in the community.

To read the full report, click here.

[This is the final post in the series 'Future of the Smart Home and Older Adults.]

category tags: 

Comments

Thank you for sharing this. Prescient and valuable for updating end of year strategies.

This superb overview of the Future of the Smart Home is a must read for investors, entrepreneurs and corporate and non profit leaders in healthcare, homecare, industry. The synthesis of industry perspectives will help you to chart a plan, an investment thesis around the future of well being, engagement and safety for the longevity marketplace. 

One of the big problems highlighted by this report is that we have a vast array of products already in the market and we are in danger of overwhelming people with choice. Once again, much better #customerdiscovery and #designthinking, not to mention clearer education and messaging is crucial!

Of course, we will see a huge increase in sensors, cameras, and voice interactions in the home in the next few years -the question for me is how well integrated will it be as well as safe, private, accessible and user-friendly for #olderadults and their #caregivers! #healthequity #digitaldivide

This is a report that is well worth reading for any #entrepreneurs or #startups (not to mention more established firms) that are interested in #seniors and the 50+ population and its needs

Laurie Orlov is truly the Oracle of AgeTech! Smart home technology's migration from the one-off, DIY process to fully integrated systems is a gamechanger. These solutions will improve the quality of life for seniors at all income levels and open up choices for at home and senior living. 

Want to know the latest read on the future of #smarthomes and older adults?

Laurie Orlov asks and answers the questions we all need to understand as we conceive, develop, market and serve older people keen to age well in their homes as long as physically and fiscally possible.

Here is your go-to report outlining the key opportunities, challenges, and color commentary from key experts in the field.

Thank you, Laurie, for another insightful and pragmatic report I'll be using in the New Year...

So much here to talk about and work on - our latest research shows 22% of all broadband households are caregivers - that market alone is going to need new innovation and technologies to really be able to accomplish the health at home ideas that are really taking off. no doubt its worth it too - with lots of studies saying that people just do better off in their own home environment. some of our research is noted in Laurie's great report.

Categories