“Smarthome Features as a Service” for Older Adults

technologist-holding-the-hand-of-an-older-adult-and-helping-her-to-use-the-controls-for-a-smart-home-in-the-style-of-pointilism

Longevity Explorers have reported on how they have used different smarthome features to improve the quality of life of people with vision impairments, people with hearing difficulties, people with limited mobility, and people facing early cognition impairment — as well as people who just find these new capabilities “fun” and “useful”. However, at present there is a “barrier” to widespread adoption of smarthome features that can benefit older adults — the fact that most of the interesting applications require an element of Do-it-Yourself (“DIY”) capability.

We believe there is a big opportunity to broaden the deployment of these empowering smarthome features to others — by using a “smarthome features as a service” model. This Article explains our thinking, and describes a pilot project we are considering in partnership with one of the Villages in Northern California.

Kitchen and Night Safety for Father-in-law: Smarthome Experiments

Smarthome safe examples

  I wanted to deploy some smarthome solutions to help my father-in-law who has some physical and cognitive decline.   I started with a kitchen safety solution (stove timer), and a night safety solution (lighting). This article explains what I did and why, and how you can do it too.     My Life Situation: … Read more

Amazon Online Grocery Shopping with VoiceView

Amazon has developed a simplified grocery shopping system that works very well with their Echo Show devices with a built-in touch screen. I wanted to see if it would work for people with poor vision. The results were good.

Seminar 5: Technology to Help Avoid Medication Adherence Problems

Technology to Help Avoid Medication Adherence Problems

This is the fifth in our seminar series on Aging in Place Technology and Tools to Live Independently for Longer.   View and Listen to the Seminar     Abstract Clinicians often tell us that poor medication adherence is a big problem among their patients, and also that medication management is one of the more … Read more

Seminar 4: Smarthome Features for a Better, Safer Life

Smart home features Seminar 4

This is the fourth in our seminar series on Aging in Place Technology and Tools to Live Independently for Longer.   View and Listen to the Seminar     Abstract Richard Caro and Frank Engelman have an ongoing collaboration to publish a series of use cases and recipes for specific “smart home features” — useful … Read more

Seminars: Technology for Aging in Place

If you are looking for the Seminars on Technologies for Aging in Place, here they are: Seminar Series: Technologies for Aging in Place The Goal of these seminars: Help older adults, their families, and caregivers understand what products and services exactly to deploy to help them live the way they want for as long as possible — … Read more

Seminar 1. Tools & Tech for Aging in Place: Overview

Technology for Aging in Place

This is the first in our seminar series on Aging in Place Technology and Tools to Live Independently for Longer.   View and Listen to the Seminar Abstract Over the last few years, a number of technology products have come to market that have the potential to help older adults remain independent for longer, and … Read more

Seminar Series: Technologies for Aging in Place. Semester 1

Technologies for Aging in Place

    Which products and services can help an older adult live independently, and with autonomy, as long as possible?   Together with a community of older adults called the Longevity Explorers, Tech-enhanced Life has spent the last 8 years exploring the intersection of aging and technology, and evaluating a wide range of products and services … Read more

Smart Living Room Features for Older Adults

Smart Living Room

Photo by Jonas Leupe on Unsplash   As part of our “Smart Home Features for Older Adults” series, we are sharing some specific recipes and “kit lists” for individual smart home features — organized on a “room by room” basis. This is about the smart living room.   Overview This article covers several smart living room features that … Read more

Retirement Community vs “At Home”

Five years ago, when I started research on staying in our large home vs. a retirement community, I lost my appetite quickly about my wife & I staying in our home. I lost interest because: 1. I found local programs to take us to doctors & get nursing help at home as needed, but none … Read more