How Can Smart Homes Improve The Health Of Their Residents?
27 November 2020
Happy Thanksgiving! I’m writing this while multi-tasking around Black Friday shopping. I’m looking to score as much discounted smart home gear as possible as our project moves along. I’m also fighting off the tryptophan coma brought on by post Thanksgiving leftovers and near non-stop grazing.
The usual Holiday feasting has got me thinking about how smart technology can help me through all the good food and bad decisions that will lie ahead over the next few weeks. I have a FitBit Versa 2 smart watch that reminds me hourly when I’m not active enough. I imagine I’ll be seeing that a lot. I also use the FitBit Aria scale to help track my weight. I’m one of those “you can’t manage what you don’t measure” guys but the Aria reminds occasionally to be careful what you wish for.
I’m pretty disciplined about tracking my diet though through the FitBit app and I’ve definitely seen benefits from that. I’m going to have to stay just as disciplined about getting to the gym over the next few weeks as it won’t take a crystal ball to see fruitcake in my future. How can something so good be over 400 calories a slice? And having fruit, how is it NOT a health food?
So how do my Holiday dining and activity challenges cross over with smart home? Did you realize a smart home can help improve the health of its residents? And I don’t just mean diet, exercise and monitoring.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, Americans spend an estimated 90% of their lives indoors, making their homes an essential factor in their long-term health and well-being. A Hanley Wood survey reported that 75% of potential homebuyers say they consider housing to be an extremely important contribution to good health, while 66% believe that the optimal home environment could cut their medical costs by as much as 40% per year.
These statistics show that connected living in apartments, condos and other managed property types will positively impact the value properties offer their residents. A great example of this being put into practice is the KB Home ProjecKT — an innovative approach to creating the smart home focused on keeping its occupants healthy. The KB Home ProjecKT breaks new ground in building healthy homes through partnerships and cutting-edge technology that helps improve the physical and emotional health of residents, while also being able to adapt to the needs of its homeowners.
One of the smart tech collaborators with KB Homes includes Delos — a wellness real estate and technology firm. The homebuilder will offer Delos’ DARWIN Home Wellness Intelligence Network in their new constructions. The platform passively monitors and calibrates the home environment to help support the health and well-being of occupants. The system brings together solutions across water purification, air filtration, circadian lighting and a variety of comfort features. This partnership shows that the market need for meshing connected living and healthy living is beginning to gain momentum.
The Science Behind Designing Healthier Habits
Designing healthier homes can lead to healthier habits in their residents .Healthy smart homes can support that process and set up occupants for success by providing them with the optimal environment and resources for new habits to truly stick.
Two innovative companies using smart technology to encourage healthier habits in their users are Routinify and Lark. Routinify leverages connected devices to improve the quality of life of older adults by enabling habits for aging well. With Routinify, adults can live independently, for longer, while preserving peace of mind to their caretakers. Lark harnesses the power of AI to augment the assistance of human coaches and create a hyper-personalized care platform to develop behavior change in chronic disease management and prevention at scale.
Smart technology takes the guesswork out of developing new, healthier behaviors. Bridging the benefits of behavior change platforms and smart home technology makes building healthy habits much easier in the comfort of your own smart home.
More Ways Than One to Leverage the Connected Home
There are plenty of other socially-conscious health companies leveraging connected health and the connected home and the number is growing. The reason behind the growth is that the ecosystem of health is so vast (including personal healthcare, pharmaceuticals, smart beds, robotics, biosensors, remote health monitoring, etc.) the list of IoT applications in the health space grows every day.
HopeLab is a social innovation company focused on designing new technologies backed by science to improve the health of teens and young adults. Their product, Zamzee, is a game-based product used as a tool to motivate children, families and groups to be more physically active. It combines an activity tracker that records physical activity and a motivational website where activities are rewarded with prizes and points.
This type of motivation-based model could integrate seamlessly with a smart fridge, for example. Smart fridges can be configured to be like personal nutritionists, helping you track meals and offering healthy cooking suggestions. Zamzee could play a part in this scenario by recommending food items to match your activity level or boost energy with healthy food options.
Setting a New Standard
Connected health applications are a big part of the broader value within the maturing smart home platform and the market demand for healthy connected homes will only grow over time. With the increased adoption rates of smart home technology, connected health is making managed properties more attractive to a new generation of renters and buyers. This will ultimately create a more valuable consumer experience in the home. These innovative companies are setting a high standard for more powerful, helpful and healthier homes consumers will come to expect.
It’s great to see that Debbie and I have options like these for our smart home planning. Not only will we have the ability to automate and drive efficiency but also assist in monitoring our health. I’m excited to see what the future holds here. Until maybe when my refrigerator tells me I can’t have another slice of fruitcake …
Stay tuned as we work on finalizing our floor plan and start applying specific technology planning to it. Also, keep the comments and suggestions coming as we love hearing about your ideas and experiences around smart home.
