Making every living space better with assistive technology

by Brett Savill CEO of ASX-listed Quantify Technology

Quantify Technology is focused on making lives better in homes, workplaces, and communities with their smart home technology.

Assistive technology helps people living with disability in three specific ways: it enhances quality of life; reduces costs; and improves safety. According to the World Health Organisation, accessible and assistive technology-enabled homes improve the health, wellbeing, and daily life activities of people with disabilities.

It has been around for at least twenty years as a complex and expensive option that was really was only for the wealthy. However, costs are declining rapidly, and complexity is being engineered out of products to make them truly mass market. This means the benefits can be more broadly shared.

Take smart home automation, which is exploding to a large extent because of voice activation. In Australia, the smart speaker market is booming (no pun intended) with penetration growing from 20% of households in 2019 to over 40% in 2023 .

The cheapest Amazon Alexa now retails at less than $50. At the same time, products are becoming simpler, meaning that purchasers can pick and choose the most suitable technologies for the circumstances.

In the residential housing market today, smart home automation provides a way for builders or developers to differentiate their properties; in the future, they will not be able to sell them with automation. After all, who would buy a car today without airbags, collision avoidance and anti-locking brakes?

Disability living is rapidly revolving in the same way:

1. ENHANCING QUALITY OF LIFE

In 2019, Victorian-based disability services provider St John of God Marillac (Specialist Disability Accommodation provider) in partnership with St John of God Accord (Supported Independent Living provider), built a five-bedroom, technology-enabled home to meet the needs of their clients with intellectual disabilities and complex needs, as set by the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) Specialist Disability Accommodation (SDA) design category.

St John of God Health Care Projects and Technology Director Nicole Jahn said the house featured an all-inclusive technology solution, designed to match the needs of the clients.

“It includes smart home automation, facial recognition, and access control to reduce restrictive practices, enable independence, and digitise work processes to allow a new level of independence for our clients,” Nicole said.

According to St John of God Accord CEO Lisa Evans, the completion of the innovative accommodation home aligns with St John of God Accord’s disability and inclusion strategy.

“It is a significant initiative to raise the profile of, and advocate for, people with a disability,” Lisa said.

“Any technology that assists us to improve the lives of our clients to enjoy their independent living is very encouraging for the future of disability.”

The smart home solution featured in the home, developed by West Australian-based Quantify Technology, enables clients to trigger customised living experiences such as morning and night-time scenes, using easily understood sun and moon-symbolled buttons.

The technology provides lighting, blind and door control, which can be adjusted via touch, app or voice, using Amazon Alexa. The integration of Quantify’s smart home solution with Amazon Alexa has enabled St John of God Accord to build routines that can help clients with simple things like waking up in the morning or going to bed at night.

“Where our clients experience a more stable environment in their daily routines, we have found that clients are happier and more content in their home,” Lisa said.

2. REDUCING COSTS

However, smart home automation does more than improving quality of life for the residents, it reduces running costs as well. When looking at the cost of disability living, it is important to understand that cost savings can be taken as savings to be invested elsewhere, or reinvested by enabling carers to spend more time in primary care, and less on secondary tasks.

The ability to monitor power remotely enables the simple detection of where energy is being wasted and where there is a need for routine or corrective maintenance. Routines such as a good night scene can automatically switch off all stand-by power.

The ability to introduce facial recognition saves time and smart speaker technology reduces the sense of isolation meaning more residents can live autonomously.

3. IMPROVING SAFETY

With improved automation comes improved safety, exactly as it does in the modern car.

In one example, data from the sensors alerted carers to the fact that one of the residents had gone to the bathroom thirty times in the night after being “successfully” treated for a bladder infection.

CCTV can reduce the likelihood of external intruders. Intercom makes it safer to live in apartments and some monitoring can provide early warning signals – like falls – that are critical to improving safety.

In these times of pandemic, it is important to consider limiting the possibility of infection as well.

With smart home automation, “scenes” can be set up to control multiple devices at one time, meaning less physical touching. Moreover, with voice activation and app control, residents do not need to touch the devices at all.

With less touching comes a lower risk of infection, both for residents and for those caring or visiting.

Harvey Norman Commercial Division Smart Technologies Manager Kris Leffler said the emerging cross-pollination of voice control and smart home solutions with carer-enabled technology, such as nurse call systems, is becoming increasingly important to the safety of residents in NDIS specialist accommodation.

“Residents have an additional layer of security, with the ability to call for help in case of emergency, in circumstances where they are unable to access wall alerts or pendants,” Kris said.

Heat sensing cameras are moving from the hospital setting to many other locations as well, in an attempt to get an early warning signal about potential infection. Again, this helps not just residents, but also carers, loved ones, and other staff such as cleaners.

Many organisations worry about implementing technology, seeing it as either a nirvana to solve all their challenges or, a black hole that will suck vast quantities of money and time, ending in disaster.

Quantify Technology’s smart home solution enables clients to trigger customised living experiences such as morning and night-time scenes, using easily understood sun and moon-symbolled buttons.

Instead of being daunted, it is important to start with a mindset of marginal gain, taking proven technologies in measured steps. In the early 2000s, British cycling was revolutionised by this approach which, Sir Dave Brailsford, describes as ‘the doctrine of marginal gains.’

Small incremental improvements added up to a significant improvement, when added together.

The same is true of automation, a five percent improvement in a carer’s productivity means an extra two weeks a year on primary care. Or as Brailsford explains, ‘forget about perfection; focus on progression, and compound the improvements. 2 ’

Quantify Technology’s smart home solution includes a 3-button Touch Panel, which meets the NDIS SDA requirements.