Tips From The Top

Smart home technology is improving the way we all live at home, including those of us with disabilities or who are approaching the final years of life.

In a recent article from Health Tech Magazine, Ginna Baik details many examples of how smart home tech is giving older adults and people with disabilities addition tools for support safety, independence, and overall quality of life.

In Orange County, for example, Easterseals Southern California provides a fully-equipped smart four-bedroom ranch home for older adults with disabilities. CDW helped to improve the home’s automated platform, which now includes Breezie tablets with a custom-built interface that can allow users to control the home’s temperature, lighting, entertainment, and doors (including opening and closing the front door and locking it). The house’s Google Home tech respond to pre-set voice commands specialized to each user. And smart showers, operated by voice or touch, provides water at pre-set temperatures.

At Thrive Senior Living in Atlanta, smart speakers are being used to direct requests and questions to residential care teams. A test run discovered residents like the method, and employees were better able to assist residents with the information they received on their connected mobile app.

Baik also includes details of a recent study finding depression scores dropped 44 percent in older adults living in a residential care setting who used Amazon Echo Dot smart speakers during a six-month period. These devices can be used to confirm appointments and other calendar activities, or learn details about upcoming meals.

As smart home products become more available and more affordable, Baik reports that we will see more people with disabilities or in the later stages of life staying in their homes longer and living with more independence.

In Arizona, Splendido, an all-inclusive community for those age 55 and older, is nearly completion with fully-automated homes. This pilot program, described in an article on Tucson Local Media, explains how each smart home comes move-in ready with a platform of smart, integrated products, and a preconfigured iPad giving residents total control of their home’s automated technology. Residents can also control their home with a smart phone app. There are smart speakers in the kitchen and bedrooms, and a smart doorbell that enables residents to see and talk with people at their front door from anywhere via their smart phone. Smart light switches and smart thermostats are verbally controlled and can be pre-set.

To learn more about how smart home technology can improve the quality of life for you or someone you love, call us at Jackson Hole AV. We’d love to discuss the possibilities.