Readers, on Tuesday the doors of the Broward County Convention Center opened. The Smart City Event is in full swing!
Through Thursday, February 13, thousands of attendees are joining us for the #TECHSUPERSHOW experience, which also features IoT Evolution Expo, ITEXPO, the Industrial IoT Conference, Future of Work Expo and Enterprise Cybersecurity Expo, to name a handful.
Yesterday afternoon, I had the pleasure of attending a Smart City Event session titled “Healthcare from the Home: How Connected Care and AI Affect Better Health Outcomes.” The experts leading it were Alan Bugos, CTO/COO/Board Advisor of LifePod Solutions, and Greg Jones, CTO of Kajeet. The session was moderated by Jennifer Morgan, Virginia Program Lead at RIoT.
While I can’t share every insightful morsel and tidbit that Bugos, Jones and Morgan dove into, here’s a summary with details I can provide:
- The conversation began with a reality check about aging. As the U.S. population grows older and the number of chronic condition diagnoses climbs, issues surrounding aging-in-place, safety, and the evolution of patient compliance becomes even more meaningful. (As, of course, has the necessary access to care solutions that lead to all-around improved health outcomes.) In short, tech must evolve alongside accessible healthcare and the demands therein.
- “If you’ve got a mom or dad in their 80s or 90s,” Jones explained, “and especially if you’re one of the eldest siblings, as I am, taking care of aging parents is so important. And so too, then, is meeting their needs when they want to age (and live out the remainder of their lives in) their own home, rather than at an assisted living facility.”
- “To support them,” Bugos said, “aging-in-place technologies — much like the medical alert pendant I’m currently wearing, for example — really do enable seniors and other patients to live out their lives safely. Be it pendants, smart lights that come on during certain times of night (and in strategically pre-designated locations within the home), or senior-friendly/caregiver-friendly wearables, these leaps make a sizable difference in the quality of care.
- “My father has since passed,” Jones added, “and my mother is in her 90s and lives alone. She wants dignity, as would anyone. However, hospitals — while invaluable in many ways — admittedly aren’t always the safest places for people like my mother. At home, some issues are actually more preventable. The value of being able to accurately simulate hospital-adjacent care in one’s comfort environment cannot be overstated. When done right, it’s a tremendous investment.”
From there, Bugos and Jones identified the following:
- Specific home healthcare technologies (e.g. remote monitoring/AI-driven solutions)
- ML algorithms designed to track a patient’s state of care, leading to supportive suggestions from providers assessing the data
- Disease management programs (e.g. for diabetic care), particularly in underserved communities
- Applications that enhance proactive care (e.g. “fall prediction” — not just detection — that tabulate patients’ mobility histories; if their gait changes or vitals dip, for instance, better-informed actions can be taken)
- Preconfigured “plug-and-play” smart kits loaded onto tablets (i.e. for those less technologically literate) for tracking glucose levels, chronic systems, other biometrics, etc.
- Miscellaneous telemedicine systems that send alerts, help ensure proper patient engagement while reducing costs, and generate roadmaps of healing for more vulnerable patient scenarios
“The COVID-19 pandemic changed everything for remote healthcare,” the speakers concluded. “Compatible home healthcare components are now more readily available, and it’s high time we put more of them to use to ease patients’ circumstances and, ultimately, help save lives.
Learn more about what’s going at this Smart City Event here.
Edited by
Alex Passett
