This company taps the Internet of Things to give caregivers of the elderly peace of mind
Anyone who has ever been a caregiver for an aging loved one is well acquainted with the anxieties that accompany such a role: Is Nana safe while home alone? Is mum’s bedroom warm enough in the middle of winter? Is grandpa wandering out of the house in the middle of the night?
There are currently 3 million UK citizens tasked with a seemingly impossible juggling act every day: Balancing a full-time job with caregiving responsibilities. One in six individuals in the UK, in fact, ultimately chooses to give up work in order to care for an elderly loved one —which has a significant impact upon a caregiver's ability to go about daily life, as well as a ripple effect upon families.
Howz, a startup that pairs home-monitoring technology with a routine-tracking app to keep families connected with their elderly loved ones, hopes to ameliorate some of these common issues.
The app taps into existing systems such as a home’s electricity meter, and uses machine learning and long-term analytics to track daily activity patterns — all without requiring use of a wearable or invasive devices. Eventually, the app may also pair with a variety of smart-home devices to provide a more robust activity profile.
Howz products can be purchased online, and a trained installer will come to users’ homes to walk them through the system (self-installation is also an option). Upon set-up, the Howz team speaks extensively with users to develop a custom-tailored monitoring plan based on individualised goals and living situations.
Louise Rogerson, the company’s director of service development, says that this holistic approach to routine-monitoring is not only effective, but that it’s also one of the most affordable such systems on the market today. Rogerson, who comes from a background in neurophysiotherapy, also touts the technology’s minimally invasive nature: Most of the data points that Howz monitors (electricity usage, home temperature, etc.) are already being recorded in most people's homes. More data — door movement, light levels, etc. — can easily be monitored without an obtrusive or complicated device. Then, Howz brings all of the information into a single ecosystem.
"It became very clear early on that we needed something passive that wasn’t a wearable—so that the house could do the talking," Rogerson tells Mashable. "We needed something that didn’t require a huge effort [on the part of the user]. That’s where the combination of movement, daily routine, etc. comes in—that’s the key indicator for me, as a therapist, when somebody is starting to have a problem. Way before I see anything else, I see that."
Sometimes, says Rogerson, simply making people aware of activity patterns can lead to improvements — or raise red flags before a situation becomes dire. The technology can be particularly helpful for personnes with early-stage dementia.
The Howz team comes from a varied background. Jonathan Burr, the company’s CEO, comes from a past life in finance and traffic data analysis. The team also employs a mathematician and an R&D specialist to help build out the app’s algorithms and analytics.
Obviously, as the company continues to grow — Howz currently has fewer than 100 active users, but hopes to eventually become commonplace technology in thousands of homes — it will need to scale accordingly. There are already plans in place for anticipated growth, says Rogerson.
In February, Howz was awarded the EDF Energy Pulse Award for Connected Home and Business. As a result, the company received a £30,000 grant, as well as support from Blue Lab (an innovation accelerator programme), to determine the optimal way to bring Howz into homes on a large-scale level.
"We’ve got quite a clear vision of where we can go with this," says Rogerson. "There are already countless hypotheses that monitoring [change to routine] is important — and more clinical research coming out agrees. Our product is able to do this extremely well."
