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Eldercare Review | Tuesday, March 15, 2022
IoT is playing a significant role in reinventing senior living communities by eliminating operational costs, making IoT technology safer and more independent, and helping senior living communities design maintenance schedules based on real-time usage data.
It has never been more exciting to live in the Internet of Things (IoT) era. In every aspect of our daily lives and routines, IoT provides us with greater comfort, convenience, and efficiency.
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It's not just millennials or even gen-Xers who benefit from IoT's comfort, convenience, and efficiency. As a result of IoT's seamless connectivity, it's improving the lives of all generations, but seniors stand to benefit most from its real-time, interactive capabilities.
IoT-enabled senior living communities not only offer residents improved comfort and care but also allowed operators and staff to collect actionable data on residents and infrastructure. Senior living is being completely reinvented by IoT, from operations to resident care.
Smart HVAC energy management: In senior living communities, climate control is a fixed overhead cost. Providing a comfortable and safe living environment is crucial. Senior resident operators can monitor, manage, and reduce their heating and cooling costs with IoT.
Property managers can monitor and respond to fluctuations in room occupancy with occupancy sensors and smart thermostats. Smart energy management has also been adopted by the hotel industry in order to save money.
In addition, IoT smart energy management systems provide remote management features so that property managers can monitor HVAC output and ensure that the facility runs efficiently. When the HVAC system isn't operating correctly, diagnostic alerts are sent.
Not all smart energy management systems are the same. Residential smart thermostats cannot manage occupancy patterns over large groups of rooms in commercial properties.
Costs associated with operations: A senior living community's profitability increases when operational costs are reduced, freeing up resources for resident care and well-being. In addition, IoT is helping senior living community operators manage their operational costs on two levels: energy management and predictive maintenance.
With IoT technology, senior living communities can reduce operational costs in two main ways: energy management and predictive maintenance.
Smart Lighting: Energy Management: Smart energy management systems go beyond HVAC. Lighting is a significant energy expense for a commercial property, such as a senior living community. It is equally important to understand lighting energy needs, automate consumption, and react to changes in resident occupancy patterns to curb unnecessary and costly energy consumption.
With smart lighting systems, seniors are provided with a seamless, comfortable, safe, and convenient experience by using occupancy sensors and time-based lighting schemes to reduce extraneous energy consumption.
Insights into the future: A resident operator's maintenance costs can be a major pain point. In general, neglected maintenance can not only lead to negative resident experiences but also to inflated repair costs or interruptions.
Smart IoT energy management systems enable property managers to monitor, track and optimize energy consumption just as predictive maintenance uses sensor data to identify wasteful or hazardous trends and alert maintenance staff before a problem escalates into a more costly one. An HVAC system, for example, might not be performing as it should. Smart energy management systems can alert maintenance staff so that the malfunction can be fixed while residents are not in their rooms. Before residents even realize there is a problem, it is resolved, and the property manager avoids incurring exorbitant repair costs.
Care & Experience for Residents: There are a lot of IoT technologies available that are aimed specifically at improving the resident experience in senior communities and assisted living facilities. By monitoring and predicting resident care, labor costs, and increased revenue can be reduced.
Monitoring of resident activity: IoT technology has progressed so far that caregivers can now measure activity levels, oxygen levels, heart rate, blood pressure, and even bone density. Because almost 15 percent of the American population is over 65, technology that measures senior activity is becoming more prevalent and more powerful every day.
With this technology, caregivers and seniors are notified when they need to rest their knees or drink water, allowing caregivers to spend less time on the details of senior care.
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