The new sensor springs from a collaboration between the technology company Qorvo and European health insurer CZ. The two bodies have come together to develop a new type of electronic health solution, designed to improve assisted living.
The intention, from the health insurance perspective, is to lower healthcare costs and to give older people a better quality of life.
The technology is based on Qorvo’s Internet of Things chipsets. The aim is to enable elderly people to live with greater independence in their own homes. An additional aim is to reduce the need for the number of carer visits.
According to EENews, with the scheme the insurer CZ will implement the sensor system in the houses or apartment of 3,000 senior citizens in the Netherlands. The eHealth system is designed to be a whole-home sensor coverage system, allowing monitoring in every room. The sensors will detect falls and adverse changes to environmental conditions.
The concept involves fitting a series of non-intrusive motion sensors together with open-and-closed sensors that are connected to a gateway. The technology makes use of cloud algorithms from the company Sensara, which are compatible with with Qorvo’s Zigbee Green Power RF technology.
The green power element is based on the concept of ultra-low-power technology. This enables batteries to last up to ten years. Moreover, this technology provides a secure and long-range transmission through advanced radio frequency (electromagnetic wave frequencies that lie in the range extending from around 20 kHz to 300 GHz).
It is anticipated that the global electronic health market will hit $308 billion by 2022, based on an assessment by Grand View research. Within this, the application of digital healthcare solutions to assess and analyze of patients remotely is called out as one of the main drivers.
In terms of the overall electronic health market, major players include IBM, McKinsey & Co., Motion Computing Inc., Epocrates Inc., Telecare Corp., Proteus Digital Health and Apple.
