The Malteser and IBM teamed up with us as an agency to develop a product for family members and primary caregivers to enhance safety in person-to-person assistance. The idea: Improve the quality of life for aging populations, with sustainable help from artificial intelligence! Elderly Care is the first Watson-based solution to facilitate seniors in living longer and more independently at home. A central tool: The Elderly Care app, which gives family members, friends or neighbours status information about the home. It works with sensor data combined with the cognitive ability of IBM technology, reacting to anomalies and potential emergencies, especially emergency situations in which an alarm cannot be activated by the resident manually.

Non-invasive standard sensors are easily installed in a home. The data provided by the sensors is processed by the IBM Telematics Hub – a platform specifically designed for secure processing and rapid evaluation of data from the Internet of Things – and interpreted by IBM Watson. Algorithms adapt to occupant behavior and daily routines to intelligently identify potential anomalies or situations and generate notifications in the event of inconsistencies. Notifications are sent to family and caregivers via the smartphone app (Android/iOS) and they get alerted in case something is wrong (e.g. water running since an hour and doors open). The app uses a traffic light-metaphor to communicate the result of the measurements. In case of anomalies the users of the app can see the details of the sensor-data, which enables them to assess the circumstances. If they are not able to resolve a potential critical situation and give “green light”, professionals from the Malteser emergency and care association get an information and handle the situation. In addition, the caregivers can talk to each other in a group chat, and see a history of the past states.

Classical alert systems for elderly people need to be activated manually. With IBM Elderly Care the sensors and the algorithms take care – a significant improvement to traditional alert solutions. Safety is enhanced for all parties, the elderly, their families and emergency services staff. The Elderly Care app was developed and carefully crowd tested with caregivers and families giving first hand insights. The first client contracts have been signed and since March 2017 Elderly Care is implemented in the first 50 apartments in Germany. With general availability and a growing number of partners from industries such as insurance and housing the number of apartments equipped with Elderly Care is likely to grow rapidly. Ultimately, this helps manage life’s vital decisions and prolong independence. Notably, the concept can be adopted for various additional applications e. g. for the chronically ill or accident victims.