UC Today spoke with Jacques Der Ohanian, Senior Director, Head of Communications Vertical Solutions at ALE to dig deeper into the importance of shaping the nursing home of the future. A key focus for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise in 2018, we were keen to see what lies ahead for the future.
Why a focus on elder people and the silver economy?
In most industrialised countries, people longevity is increasing. Consequently, the number of elder people over 60 will more than double by 2050. By 2100, this figure will have tripled.
Despite evolution in medicine, this will be increase the need for long term care in public or private facilities. Seniors are, and will be, more connected. They have more spending power, and the means to subscribe to assisted living services ahead of time. This makes it possible for them to extend their autonomy and well-being. Some of them even anticipate their future dependency.
“A key trend is providing connected services to early retired people to avoid negative scenarios associated with retirement”.
What are the different needs that must be addressed?
“Needs will differ. However, the objective remains the same. Enhance well-being and provide care while keeping the contact with their family and friends. Contact is crucial. With a more active population than ever before, the ancient model of welcoming the elderly is no longer as easy.
Innovation must be centred around people. Whether it be the patient, the assisting staff or the care givers.
From the patient point of view, the main objective is to keep contact with family and service providers. Assisting staff need to coordinate with multiple service providers and care services. For medical services, think more about teleconsultation, pre and post ambulatory services and telemonitoring.
Reminder services, for example, ensuring a patient eats their meal or is active will be required. The utilisation of connected objects like smart sensors, movement detectors and electronic pillboxes will be important for the nursing home of the future”.
“Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise can enable staff to fetch patient information or be notified from anywhere and on any device”.
“For the family of for the accompaniment of the patients, beyond the ability of voice or video communications to maintain the contact when professional and personal life or distance prevent from a visit to the elder, the principal objective is about security and how to stop the guilty feelings. Ensure everything is set in place and can be controlled or monitored. The availability of information, but above all, be sure that you will be notified by the right means in case of emergency is key”.
What technologies support these solutions?
“It starts with mobiles. Once connected, triggers will be sent and the right people will be notified. In the background, highly resilient infrastructures are key. We run for text, voice, video, triggers and conferencing services.
Today, communications are not only for people, but also for objects and processes. For example, natural language and artificial intelligence can evaluate change of usage. This is based on analytics from location services, smart sensors or biometrics.
Beyond network and communications infrastructures, we provide a CPaaS platform. This enables connections of people, objects and processes like directories and databases”.
What are the key takeaways for the nursing home of the future?
“We are moving from person to person to IoT. Analytics will move us from reaction to prevention. The possibilities are infinite. But, there will be some blocking points.
Services must be user friendly and simplicity is the key for success. Services must be user centric. The economic model is also important, and the ability to mass deploy a solution. This will mean longevity of the solution and its cost effectiveness are key”.
