Assisted living systems are not available to more disabled people because of official inaction and a lack of collaboration among organisations involved in developing and applying the technology.
The technology is mature, say experts who took part in a recent conference called Smart Living – The Way Forward for Disabled and Older People, organised by communications charity Phoneability.
Speakers argued systems for monitoring people in their homes; delivering healthcare and improving the quality of life are on the market and will work.
Virtual wardens, energy management systems and systems for monitoring air quality were among other applications discussed at the conference held in London.
However, speakers are frustrated that such systems are not in wider use. Participants underlined the potential of technology to cut the cost of caring for increasing numbers of disabled people.
Martyn Gilbert chairman of OpenHub compared the £5,000 annual cost of providing a community nurse for an individual with the £500 to £4,000 it cost to deliver a range of services electronically to that person.
He has identified 103 different types of service that can be delivered with the help of technology.
Dr Brian Collins, chief scientific advisor to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, said there was huge potential for the exploitation of web based services and the delivery of information, providing it was integrated socially.
Collins acknowledged there was a debate in Whitehall about the trade off between people making available personal information about their habits and health and the well being they might gain from doing so.
He detailed a wide variety of technologies that could help disabled people ranging from advanced GPS able to track individuals to within 10cms to vehicles that could respond automatically to the presence of disabled people by, for example, putting down a wheelchair ramp.
It was up to politicians to decide to spend the money on implementing assisted living, Collins told Ability.
“We are working in partnership with builders and healthcare providers on how to best develop a whole range of technologies around telecare and telehealth,” said Peter Bonfield, head of the Building Research Establishment.
“We have to persuade government to invest in this. Government needs to get collaboration going because we need to integrate (the application of technology) across departments.”
Other contributors claimed advocates of assisted living had to overcome official inertia.
“I can’t tell you how many meetings I have attended where there is a big dog on the block who says no,” Gilbert told Ability.
“The old behaviours can’t stay as they were. All you see is snippets in the UK. We have a collective duty to get off our backsides and do that collaboration.”
Nonetheless, local authorities have implemented assistive living schemes. Kirkless Council, for example, has helped to develop a national digital television project called DigiTV to deliver information via interactive television and mobile phones to people who do not or cannot use computers.
“What’s good design for the elderly and disabled is good design for us all,” said Dr John Gill, who chaired the conference.
Researchers make smart homes smarter
A group at the University of Portsmouth has won a £128,000 grant to study ways of capturing more information about how we live in order to make smart homes more effective.
A team led by Dr Jim Briggs is working with Newbury-based Smart home technology firm PassivSystems to take some of the ideas to market.
It is important to ensure sensors can recognise the difference between someone falling over and someone having a nap, for example.
Eventually Dr Briggs hopes to use artificial intelligence to make the systems capable of 'learning' when to trigger an alarm and when to wait.
He sees two main customers for the new technology -- statutory carers including councils; and those choosing telecare in their own homes.
Government ploughs £10m into research
The Technology Strategy Board is to invest up to £10 million in research that will help to underpin the development of new services for independent living.
The government body, which promotes technology for business, is looking to fund research into ways to encourage investment and implementation of the technology and studies of the interactions between assisted living technologies and those who rely on them.
"Understanding the market for such products is a key step towards meeting the needs of users and service providers, so we need models that show the potential impact of such technology, in order to demonstrate their social and economic value,” says the Technology Strategy Board’s chief executive Iain Grey.