Academic research

There is a great deal of research being conducted into the use of technology to help older adults stay safe and well in their homes. Here are some links of the published results.

• UK National Innovation Centre for Ageing
• Stanford Medicine Healthcare Innovation Lab
• Oxford Institute of Population Ageing
• Wearable devices to predict illness (April 2020)
• A Smart Home System for Information Sharing, Health Assessments, and Medication Self-Management for Older People: Protocol for a Mixed-Methods Study (April 2019)

Over half of people aged 80 years and older suffer from two or more diseases… and the interaction between the aging process, diseases, medication, and related side effects leads to complex health conditions that are difficult to assess and communicate. Moreover, since care professionals are not on-site around the clock, they receive only partial information throughout the day about older adults living at home. This makes assessing and making correct decisions about the older person’s health difficult.

• Health management and pattern analysis of daily living activities of people with dementia using in-home sensors and machine learning techniques (May 2018)
• Personal emergency alarms: do health outcomes differ for purchasers and nonpurchasers? (December 2017)
• Automated Health Alerts Using In-Home Sensor Data for Embedded Health Assessment (April 2015)
• A Survey on Ambient-Assisted Living Tools for Older Adults (May 2013)
• Intelligent Systems for Assessing Aging Changes: Home-Based, Unobtrusive, and Continuous Assessment of Aging (July 2011)
• Smart homes for the elderly dementia sufferers: identification and prediction of abnormal behaviour (January 2011)
• Satisfaction and use of personal emergency response systems (July 2010)

24% of the participants reported that they never wear the alarm button, and only 14% wear it 24 hours each day. After falls [the alarm button] was not activated by 83% of the subscribers who fell alone and lay on the floor longer than 5 minutes.

• Inability to get up after falling, subsequent time on floor, and summoning help: prospective cohort study in people over 90 (November 2008)

Of these 141 falls, 38 resulted in lying on the floor for over an hour, despite an installed alarm system, and in 97% of these “long lies” the person who fell alone did not use their alarm to summon help.

• Falls in Older People: Epidemiology, Risk Factors and Strategies for Prevention (October 2006)