Smart Sensor System Set to Supervise Seniors

Seniors sometimes need help, especially to maintain independence and continue living at home into later years. The IoT is proving that it can help, and there are several M2M solutions on the market to monitor for trouble using wearables or video cameras. Well, sometimes folks can’t or don’t want to wear a device, and sometimes the camera misses something. A new product, announced March 30 in China, seeks to overcome those problems.

The ZTE Health Senior Lifestyle System, designed by semiconductor fabricator GreenPeak and tapping into the cloud-based algorithm by networking solutions provider Sensara, is designed to be intelligent and to learn for itself how to detect problems or emergencies in a client’s home. It does this not by monitoring video or a wearable, but through motion sensors and its advanced behavior pattern recognition capabilities. It memorizes the normal, everyday patterns of activity in the home, and notifies caregivers if there is a major change or alteration of activity.

The announcement was made in Shanghai and was witnessed by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. In his speech, he said that this solution will address the care for the world’s growing elderly population, starting in China. The Chinese government has been looking to M2M solutions to meet several social and infrastructure challenges recently, and this is the latest iteration of that.

“ZTE Health strives to pursue a long-term cooperation with GreenPeak to provide Smart Home solutions and services that go beyond our customers' expectations. The Senior Lifestyle application will allow elderly people to stay at home for 5 to 10 years longer, which means huge savings for families as well as for the governments on investments in nursing homes,” said He Shiyou, President of ZTE Health and Executive Director of the Board of ZTE Corporation. “By taking advantage of information technology and cloud services, we increase the efficiency of the healthcare industry and support of elderly people to meet the high level and personalized requirements of mass consumers.”