Summary:
The digital divide is real and is widening as technology advances. The difference in experience between those without and without reliable internet during the Covid-19 pandemic has shone a light on how fundamental access to the internet is to support our daily lives.
Reliable and affordable internet access to all homes provide more equitable access to work, schooling and communications but could also open up opportunities in smart homes, effectively creating homes that can care for us as we age, moving the focus to wellness rather than illness and being proactive rather than reactive. Empowering the individual to age well.
In order to achieve this there are a number of focus areas:
– Define minimum standards for internet connectivity, incentivise property developers to achieve or exceed this.
– Engage smart home specialists to ensure homes have reliable signals across all rooms.
– Empower individuals to adopt smart home technologies through education and subsidising adaptations which enhance wellbeing.
Full Answer: How might we ensure that all homes have reliable and affordable internet access to support wellbeing? Noting that reliable connectivity is not just about the supply but also the distribution within the property.
In 2008 only 17% of people in the UK owned a smart phone, but today over 95% of UK households own a mobile phone. In ten years, smart internet connected homes will be the norm. For many the smart home is still regarded as an extravagance, but there is huge potential for the smart home to support healthy ageing and our wellbeing. Voice assistants have been shown to alleviate loneliness and can be very supportive providing a means of communication with family that is easier to use than a tablet device.
There is a lot of focus on developing new hardware solutions for assisted living and technology enabled care. However, without good internet infrastructure these solutions will be constrained. There are no minimum standards for internet connectivity.
Currently property developers are not incentivised to consider this in the design of the homes that they build and renovate.
There are some really interesting projects emerging that are looking at technology integration to the home and the role that it plays in healthy ageing. The UK doesn’t need new technologies, we need to get smarter about how existing technologies are implemented. This starts with internet connectivity, but also spans greater support in educating and supporting people to adopt smart home technologies.
We need to get away from the mentality that healthy ageing is about being old and that loneliness only affects elderly people. Healthy ageing is not just about supporting people in later life but supporting people to age well. There is a strong link between earlier lifestyle choices and health in older age. A smart home should be able to adapt and care for us as we age and move through different life phases.
Caring, both paid and unpaid, can be an isolating and challenging role to take on. Often support provided to unpaid carers can be limited and the person providing care will often put their own needs last, and mental health can suffer. Could smart homes to help support us through these times?
Loneliness and declining mental health are now affecting a much broader population due to the extended periods of working from home and the need to reduce physical contact. Mental health support was difficult to access even before the pandemic, with long waiting lists.
Declining mental health is not limited to any one demographic or consumer type, it can affect anyone. Consumer surveys by Voxly Digital show that over half of people are using their smart speakers more frequently now than before Covid-19, and that 3 in 5 users agreed that their voice assistant helped them to get through isolation. Are voice assistants a potential solution to support better mental health and access to on demand personalised therapy?
Smart homes have the potential to create significant impact in promoting self-care and supporting the delivery of health and social care. The top priority to enable this vision is providing equitable access to a reliable internet connection. To support this, stakeholders in the housing and home services supply chain should be engaged and brought together with experts in health and social care to define how the design of homes can be improved to take advantage of the smart home technologies that already exist. Smart home integration specialists are currently being excluded from important development work around telecare, with solutions to the analogue phone switchover not being treated as an opportunity to look at other technology solutions outside of the incumbent telecare providers.
There are of course challenges with a caring smart home, particularly around data management, privacy, interoperability and compatibility of hardware/software and obsolescence. However, at the heart of this, it should be about empowering the individual to make actionable improvements based on their data and allow them to safely share data where it benefits their care or rehabilitation.
Action needs to move from an experimental approach to looking at the supply chain practicalities of applying smart home technologies at scale and empowering the consumer to be able to choose the system and provider that best suits their needs. Some of these solutions will inherently be part of the fabric of the building and some will need to be retrofittable within existing housing stock.
A tool which helps to educate consumers about smart home use cases and their smart home options would be hugely beneficial. The cost of adaptations to integrate smart home technology specifically for enhancing wellbeing and preventative care should be subsidised to encourage uptake prior to support needs reaching a crisis point. This would result is significant cost savings overall, similar to the benefits seen from regular dental check-ups and hygienist visits reducing the likelihood of tooth decay and requirement for more expensive restorative treatment, the home supports wellbeing, potentially preventing and slowing the development of health conditions. This would see a fundamental shift from reactive to proactive care in the home.
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