Millions of elderly Americans live independently at home, however in many cases, there is a younger family member worried about it. They don’t want to lose the independence of living at home, yet the younger generation is worried that something could go wrong and they couldn’t do anything about it.
I’m somewhat familiar with this, because this is something we dealt with within my own family recently.
Well, technology is here to solve problems. And, we recently came across a story online which talked about Lively.
Lively is a high-tech service which allows you to keep tabs on the everyday activities of your loved ones at home. It is also marketed as a way to bring families together:
Lively offers activity-sharing products that tighten the connection between older adults living independently and their families. By giving generations new ways to share their life, we’re adding to everyone’s peace of mind.
Lively consists of a set of gear installed in the home. It consists of a central hub which resembles a kind of router, and six sensors which can be installed throughout the home. The sensors can be placed in various parts of the home which correspond to everyday activities. Say, the refrigerator door, a bathroom door, a pill box, you name it.
Each sensor has a small accelerometer in it, so whenever it is open or closed, it detects it and pings the hub. And the hub reports back to the main service so that things are logged. The communication doesn’t require any kind of cell phone plan or internet connection. It works similar to Amazon’s Whispernet. Everything is included and… it just works.
The software portion of it will learn the regular habits of your loved ones and detect any irregularities. There is no location tracking or anything like that.
Certainly, there is a bit of a “big brother” feel to this. However, the company claims that their testing shows that people don’t mind it being there. Plus, it enables the older generation to live in their homes independently – longer. And it provides peace of mind to the family.
Lively begins shilling in July, 2013. Right now, they are raising funds on Kickstarter. They have a $100K goal by May 16th. If this is something you might be interested in getting behind, perhaps consider backing them.
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