The Potential for the Use of ‘Smart Home’ Systems in Meeting the Care Needs of People with Disabilities: Strategic Issues and Opportunities
Introduction
At the Robert Gordon University Faculty of Design we are primarily concerned with the production and maintenance of high quality built environments which can meet the needs of the widest possible range of people. Our involvement in ‘smart’ or ‘intelligent’ housing does not stem from a commitment to the technology per se, or a perception that ‘high tech’ solutions to problems in the built environment are necessarily desirable or preferable to ‘low tech’ solutions. Rather it has arisen through an interest in ‘universal’ or ‘barrier free’ design and a desire to push these concepts way beyond the mere removal of physical obstructions like steps and narrow doorways. The idea of the ‘barrier free’ home can be a much more proactive one and ‘smart home’ technology can play a part in the removal of barriers to independent living for a wide range of people currently restricted both by their own disability and the environment around them.
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To this end we have become involved in leading a research and development project, entitled ‘CUSTODIAN’ funded by the European Commission. This project aims to ensure that the rapid pace of technological change, which is beginning to impact on the home and which will inevitably affect public sector organisations involved in social housing and care provision, is properly understood by that sector and controlled to its advantage.
The Robert Gordon University is co-ordinating an interdisciplinary consortium on this project and provides expertise in built environment and social sciences. For the development of software the consortium relies on the University of Reading department of Cybernetics and the University of Porto in Portugal. Our technological and market expertise is provided by our industrial partner, the European Installation Bus Association (EIBA). EIBA, which has a UK branch, is a trade organisation representing over a hundred of Europe’s leading manufacturers and suppliers of ‘smart home’ systems and devices. Experience of the use of ‘smart home’ systems in the service of people with a range of different disabilities is provided by Edinvar Housing Association, based in Edinburgh. Edinvar are recognised leaders in the field of ‘smart home’ technology, with National awards for their demonstration house, as well in universal design, having published what amounts to a standard text on the subject.
‘Smart Home’ Technology
The technology involved in ‘intelligent homes’ has a market which is currently growing exponentially. To date this market has been led predominantly by the provision of luxury leisure goods to sectors of the population with large amounts of disposable income. ‘Intelligence’ has been incorporated into the Ł500,000 home as a marketing device, just as it is in prestigious, top-of-the-range cars. This development has, naturally enough, been led by companies with a vested interest in marketing technology for profit. But as with other technologies, from the telephone, radio and television to the home computer, that technology is now diffusing down to other markets involving lower income groups, as it becomes cheaper and more generally available.
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There is little doubt that, over the next very few years, the intelligent house will have become, if not integrated into normal life for all income groups, then at least a common, well understood and desirable consumer good. The question is not whether ‘smart home’ technology will become a standard in ordinary housing for ordinary people, but whether we can ensure that such technology is harnessed to meet the genuine social need of groups which would benefit the most from its use. The intelligent home should be able to improve the quality of life of very many people. If it is to do so however, it is important that the technology can be delivered affordably at low cost or, taking into account its potential to defray the cost of some care, at a saving over current operating costs in the social sector.
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As with other recent developments in information technology, the rate of diffusion is rapid and the potential to tap a large market in the social and care sectors, as well as in the mass market for owner-occupied homes, is not lost on the commercial concerns involved in manufacturing and supplying the technology. ‘CUSTODIAN’ is partly a response to this supply-side push, in recognition of the danger of a technocratic fix dumping what might be inappropriate or ill-affordable housing on the social sector.
The CUSTODIAN Project
CUSTODIAN aims to empower strategic decision-makers, carers and medical practitioners and facilitate communication between these sectors and the designers, providers and installers of ‘smart home’ technology. The end product of the project will be a software tool designed to ensure that the needs of individual end users are sensitively met in a way which reflects their social circumstance, care, medical and institutional needs and resource constraints. The project is aimed at meeting the needs of people with disabilities, most of whom will already be in receipt of publicly provided care services.
The use of the completed CUSTODIAN tool will involve evolution from the analysis of individual user need, to spatial and network design, product specification and, importantly, the costing of ‘smart home’ systems. The project will also involve the establishment of a network of ‘Process Facilitators’, with backgrounds in the care sector, who will be able to make informed decisions on the design of systems for individuals with particular disabilities.
The Proposed Demonstration House
Whilst the primary role of the ‘CUSTODIAN’ Team is the production of a design tool, the validation of this tool involves actual design and testing of demonstration houses. One of these demonstrators is already in place in Edinvar. The other we are proposing for a Consortium within Tayside.
The project has a budget for the physical installation of a ‘smart home’ network and a series of devices which, it is proposed, the Team will design and install in a demonstration house to aid in the validation work. On completion of the project this house will become a permanent assessment facility for the Consortium.
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Whilst the remit of CUSTODIAN is to be able to deal with a wide range of different disabilities, the initial focus of the Dundee demonstration facility will be on facilitating the rehabilitation of brain injured patients. There is the possibility of future expansion to explore the role of the intelligent home for adults with learning difficulties. For us, the most exciting and original aspect of concentrating on these user groups lies in the potential to push back the boundaries of universal design, allowing it to become more proactive and creative. That is, the smart home becomes an active tool in rehabilitation and learning, rather than merely a passive support for the activities of daily life. To what extent this is a practical goal in the short term is a subject of our current research into user needs.
The Market for ‘Intelligent Homes in the Wider Social Sector
Whether or not such a demonstration facility becomes a precursor for a large amount of ‘intelligent’, social sector housing which will meet care needs in the community, depends on a number of factors:
Diffusion of the technology may rely on a continued fall in real prices of such systems, which seems immanent given the technological precedents, the downward trend in the price of devices and industry’s plans in this area.
It relies on demonstration of the benefits to different groups of people with disabilities, the information on which is growing but partial and still only related to selected disabilities.
Perhaps most crucially it relies on economic scenarios demonstrating that hardware and support costs can be offset by savings in institutional care costs.
In simple terms this last condition requires that we ask the question: ‘By allowing someone to remain independent in their own home, until later in life than they would otherwise be able to, can the hardware and support costs be offset by the savings in, for example, sheltered housing and nursing care costs?’
If this condition can be met, ‘smart housing’ has the potential, in the short term, to reduce pressure on existing stocks of warden-supported housing, for example. In the longer term it requires a radical reappraisal of current scenarios for housing demand, which envisage greatly increased demand for supported housing and care, but which are based on the assumption that the nature of the house, as a passive construction of ‘bricks and mortar’, is an immutable, fixed entity.
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The reality is that the home, even without ‘intelligence’ is not so much ‘bricks and mortar’, but increasingly a series of personal care services. With the advent of the ‘smart home’ the range of services which the home provides may be about to undergo a radical change. The nature of these services can either be dictated by the supply side; the manufacturers and suppliers of the technology; or can be mediated by the demand side; the care sector and the end users of the housing; to ensure that technological solutions are tailored to the real needs of people.
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