Technology is revolutionising healthcare in many ways and one area in which it’s already being used extensively is to provide care alarms for dispersed (home) and group (care home) living . This is a rapidly growing segment of the developing telecare sector. According to a report from Market Research Future, the Clinical Alarm Management Market will be worth $5.35 billion worldwide by 2030, growing at a rate of 18.8% a year.
It’s easy to understand why specialist developers of all kinds of devices and software are getting involved. As well as buttons and alarms, there are IoT sensors that can be used to monitor beds or the environment in a room, specially-adapted IP cameras and audio equipment, and touch-pads and tablet devices, along with accompanying apps, designed specifically for use in care alarm systems.
Technology challenge
While it’s great that all these new options are being made available, it also presents the companies providing care alarm solutions with a major challenge, as Gunnar Reinholdsen, Co-Founder, iotcomms.io (IOT Communications), explained ahead of the company’s attendance at the ITEC Conference and exhibition in Birmingham.
“There is growing demand for technology-enabled care, but the technology is fragmented and specialised, something which puts a great deal of the onus onto the telecoms competency of the care alarm solutions provider.”
While they might want to take advantage of the new and enhanced capabilities that IP- and cloud-based alarm, voice, and video communication offer, these providers lack the expertise required to bring this to market at pace. This is where iotcomms.io’s technology has a really important role to play, providing a proven technology and communications platform that can enable solution providers to introduce modern technology without having to develop it themselves, saving valuable time and cost.
Don’t do it all yourself
“You need to disrupt the traditional do-it-all-yourself model and make use of existing and already proven technologies provided by third party communications specialists”, said Reinholdsen. “We are a technology partner with deep expertise and experience in building scalable cloud-based alarm communication. Our platform has the domain specific capabilities needed, such as supporting the analogue and digital protocols used in the sector.
“Care alarm solution providers can be confident in letting our communications platform run their alarm communication, removing the cost of developing their own, simplifying their operations, and enabling a modern alarm communication.”
Improving the customer experience
The approach many care alarm solution providers have taken up to now has, by necessity, been quite monolithic. Adding support for new capabilities is not easy when the systems are pre-defined. With iotcomms.io’s microservice and cloud-based services, it’s much easier to adapt. Providers can get to market faster with a modern, cloud-based alarm solution, giving them a real advantage in this competitive sector.
Reinholdsen told us about one scenario that iocomms.io has already seen in a Scandinavian deployment. “When someone presses an alarm button, that goes up to the receiving centre and the agent might then want to trigger a video call to the person who triggered the alarm, perhaps an elderly person who has fallen. That sounds simple, but it’s actually quite a complex communications process. Protocols need to be handled and bridged, codecs need to be transcoded and so on. That’s what our platform provides. Our flexible APIs provide you with all the building blocks, so there is no need for the solution provider to take a do it yourself approach.”
Push to digitise
Reinholdsen emphasised that there is a real need for players in the care alarm market to modernise their systems. New and more agile competitors are emerging and the push to digitise is relentless in healthcare. Old public switched telephony systems are being turned off.
“The monolithic construction of these systems will be harder to support and the new players want to use modern cloud-based technology to provide the best care alarm solution. They want the kind of agility and quick time to market that we can provide with our cloud-native platform.”
While Scandinavia has taken the lead, iotcomms.io already has customers in the care alarm sector in several countries and sees strong growth potential all over Europe. It’s one area in which it’s flexible APIs and modular approach is really delivering tangible benefits.
