Improving life of elderly with an intelligent home

Intelligent homes, described as the next stage of evolution beyond connected, smart and automated homes, incorporate learning technologies that constantly learn consumers’ mood, patterns, and behaviour and adjust their own ‘behaviour’ accordingly.

By using multiple data sources and machine learning to understand habitation patterns and behaviours, the house gains the intelligence to automatically take actions and make your life easier and better without you having to tell it. Especially for elderly people, this will make living in an intelligent home even better and easier than living in a smart home that needs to be told everything.

Many are the scenarios where an intelligent home can benefit you without you having to ask it.

One of the most significant contribution is made for elderly people, in particular for those who live independently in their own houses and apartments.  

The intelligent home can detect accidents and when the occupants need help.

Imagine your elderly relative Betty usually gets out of bed every morning at 7.00am. The house however detects that she is still in bed at 11.00am. This is clearly not the normal behaviour so the home will raise a notification to warn you or a neighbour or carer that Betty is potentially not well and you can get in contact to check in on her. An intelligent home can go a step further and look at patterns of behaviour and compare them to patterns known to indicate the onset of illness. For example the early onset of dementia is marked by random and unexpected movements such going repeatedly back to the same room, which is recognised by the home and raises a notification that Betty is potentially unwell even before she herself is aware.

Elderly, people with chronic illness, disabled people can all benefit from an intelligent home, which will make them feel safe at home without intrusive supervision. Intelligent homes can assist in numerous ways; from doing shopping and housekeeping, to help with personal care. They can help occupants feeling safe knowing that the home takes care of them 24/7 all year long while they are inside of it.

BENEFITS OF LIVING IN AN AUTOMATED HOME

Besides all the pros specific to the assisted living technology, we don’t have to forget about the positive aspects of living in an intelligent home. An intelligent home will automatically control heating, lighting, safety and security system. Occupants won’t need to stand up from their bed to control these feature. Actually, they won’t even have to remember doing it, since the home will do this automatically without any input.

Finally, also voice technologies play an important role, since they allow elderly to control features and devices in the home just by talking to the house from any room they are in.