Technology for Healthy Ageing
A smart home and wearable sensor platform, co-designed with older adults to maximise their long-term health and independence.
What is the problem we are solving?
We are living longer now than we ever have done. The average person in the United Kingdom is now living until 81, already 10 years more than they were in 1970 (1). Despite this increase in lifespan, the average person has never spent so many years in poor health. In the UK, the average person spends 12 years of their life in poor health - almost 2 years longer than in 1990 (2).
Clearly, there is a need for healthcare solutions that support older adults with living well and independently for longer, and which enable early detection of risks before they threaten long-term health.
This project aims to prevent physical and cognitive decline, thereby increasing healthy lifespan and maintaining independence.
Signs of physical decline can include loss of muscle mass, slower walking speed, and fatigue. However, we can prevent this and enable people to age healthily with appropriate interventions such as exercise, improved sleep, and increased social connection, especially if addressed early.
Our solution
We are developing a platform and programme that older adults can use to monitor their own health at home and which will encourage them to adopt healthy behaviours. This consists of a selection of sensors, worn by people and placed around their home, and an accompanying user interface that will provide personalised feedback about their progress.
We expect this system to support people to proactively manage their own health and independence, thereby improving health outcomes including frailty risk, quality of life and mental wellbeing. Furthermore, it could enable early detection of any deterioration through analysis of sensor data.
Testing one of the sensors with participants in our co-design process.
Our approach
We kicked off the project with a series of workshops attended by 35 people aged 65+, with the aim of exploring their perspectives on engaging with self-directed healthy ageing activities. These workshops generated qualitative insights on people's motivations for wanting to stay healthy, what information would be of interest to them and which types of wearable or home-based sensors they would find most and least acceptable.
These insights guided development of an initial 4-week pilot where we installed a selection of sensors into the homes of 6 older adults, and gave them some wearable and interactive devices to try and provide feedback on. This participant engagement highlighted key opportunity areas to improve the experience for the second phase of the project.
A motion sensor in situ.
These opportunity areas are being addressed in a “Design & Feasibility'' study, in which we co-design, test and iterate our platform and participant experience before a clinical trial planned for 2025.
The Design & Feasibility phase will also include comparison of the sensor data against "gold standard" clinical assessments, alongside initial testing of intervention programs to improve health outcomes.
One of a series of workshops, where older people were invited to share their views on healthy ageing and technology.
Impact so far
The project has seen 6 pilot participants opt to continue trialing sensors and providing feedback on their experiences in the next stage of the project, where they will be joined by another 24 adults aged over 65. When surveyed, these 6 adults aged over 65 felt their health had benefited from the experience, with the majority noting a change in their health-related behaviour. Their feedback also led to changes in our sensor and device package and improvements to our content. The Design & Feasibility phase is now underway, with a further 6 participants trialing the package so far, and the intervention programme under development.
In the future, the potential impact of this work spans various areas, from improving the engagement with sensors among older people, particularly those who are not technology-confident, to improving their overall quality of life, physical health and mental wellbeing. The knock-on effects of this on reducing care and hospital admissions could have profound implications for reducing the cost impact of an ageing population on healthcare services.
“I kept an open mind and I was surprised how easy it was to monitor my health via these devices”
User feedback following the first phase of user testing.
More information
If you would be interested in hearing more about our Healthy Ageing research, including hearing about opportunities to get involved, please sign up to our Healthy Ageing mailing list.
We are open to future opportunities to expand and/or apply our expertise in human-centered design for the purposes of facilitating healthy ageing, and in the coming years will be continuing to develop our portfolio of projects. If you are interested in opportunities in this area, contact the Healthy Ageing project lead, Alex Dallman-Porter, on a.dallman-porter@imperial.ac.uk.
