Futuristic House for Assisted Living Built in England
This article from The British Journal of Healthcare Computing and Information Management (I know, it's a mouthful) is about an "intelligent house" built for the elderly. I hope we can have these in the U.S. soon!
Intelligent house for care at home launched in West Brom
28 April 2008
An intelligent house designed for sustainable and assisted living for the elderly, chronically ill and disabled will be launched in West Bromwich on Thursday, 1 May by industry specialists Medilink West Midlands.
Iain Gray, Chief Executive for the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) will officially open the i-House, a unique technology demonstrator in West Bromwich, in the English midlands. To prove that the technology can work in real housing situations, a traditional Victorian terraced house has been refurbished using intelligent healthcare technology and access-focused building design concepts.
Built on the key principles of cost-efficiency and sustainability, the i-House includes specialist insulation and ventilation, automated lighting and heating to maximise energy efficiency. It also features level, keyless entry with widened doorways, helping visually impaired residents to access the house, as well as hands-free and scald-free taps and a master control computer to monitor activity in the house to ensure the wellbeing of the resident. It will even turn the taps off if they are left running.
The aim of the home, created with the help of partners from health and social care, housing associations, industry and people living with physical or sensory impairments, is to help participating companies refine, improve and develop their technologies while raising awareness amongst health service providers and create demand from the public. The i-House has been refurbished with support from West Bromwich Building Society, Sandwell PCT, Urban Living and Black Country Housing.
Rob Chesters, i-Health network manager for Medilink West Midlands, said: “While the Government is ensuring that new houses will be built to become lifetime homes, capable of accommodating technology to assist living in the future, the i-House addresses more immediate needs, retro-fitted, scaleable solutions.
“As a high profile element of the i-Health initiative, it will also ensure that more innovation and new product development is focused on assisted living in the future, to meet the needs of the aging population.”
Currently there are 17.5million people living with chronic conditions in the UK and recent estimates published by the Department of Health state that by 2030, incidences of chronic disease in the over 65’s will more than double. The Government has recently announced its national strategy for housing: ‘Lifetime Homes, Lifetime Neighbourhoods’ and the UK charity Help the Aged is backing plans for new lifetime homes standards.
Against this backdrop, a YouGov survey was commissioned by i-Health in June 2007, which revealed that 87% of people said they wanted to remain in their own home after retirement, with less than 1% wanting to live in a care home. With this clear public backing for assisted living, the i-House will showcase technology for monitoring and accessibility, as well as memory aids and safety devices that will be vital to enable people to stay independent.
The West Midlands is fast becoming a ‘centre of excellence’ through the ground-breaking efforts of Medilink West Midlands’ i-Health initiative, which focuses on promoting the role of partnership, best practice and modern technology to support independent living. i-Health enables designers, manufacturers and health specialists to work together to produce cost effective and user-friendly solutions to the looming crisis of the UK’s aging population.
Christina Keey-Andersen, Medical Technologies Cluster Manager, Advantage West Midlands commented: “Intelligent health is an area of huge potential for our regional industry to develop new products for a rapidly emerging market. The i-House marks a great step forward in the future delivery of healthcare and this is the first time that healthcare specialists, local authorities and businesses across the UK can see and learn from the techniques and technologies in development. Then we can all begin to invest in sustainable, lifetime housing for our aging generation.”
Rob Chesters added: “The West Midlands is known for its world-leading products for assisted living, its forward-thinking health authorities and its active housing associations. It’s ideally placed to develop existing and future solutions for the UK through an innovation partnership. i-Health has the collaborative framework to make it happen.”
