Developing the silver-haired industry, helping the elderly to share the fruits of the development of a smart society, enjoying the digital dividend of information development, and using scientific and technological strength to improve the quality of life have become a new topic of global social governance. Operators, as the main promoters of digital life, should actively carry out the work of technology empowerment and aging adaptation, adhere to the parallel of traditional service methods and intelligent service innovation, improve the intelligence level, practicality and safety of aging products, carry out multi-scenario pilot trials in families, communities and institutions, strengthen digital skills training, improve the digital literacy of the elderly, and meet the needs of the elderly to improve their quality of life. This paper selects the service scenarios of operators in health management, life care and humanistic care, analyzes the typical cases of foreign operators’ intelligent service for the elderly, and explores the more targeted and convenient service measures that operators can provide to the elderly by taking advantage of digitalization, so as to shorten the "digital divide" of the elderly and create a "sensible, temperature-sensitive and more convenient" intelligent service for the elderly.
managed care
Health management mainly monitors the physical health of the elderly through remote sensing equipment and smart home products, and provides health management services through telemedicine. At present, data monitoring products are relatively mature, but the supporting information platform and services are still in the early stage, the advantages of information technology have not been deeply explored, and the business model is not yet mature. Accelerating the coordinated development of health management and information technology has become a key link in the development of pension and big health industry in China. The application of advanced information technologies such as Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence can promote the orderly integration of health care informationization and health care big data, thus providing personalized, all-round and full-cycle life science health management services for the elderly.
Remote monitoring
Telemedicine and virtual nursing.Verizon in the United States acquired the video platform Blue Jeans in 2020 to carry out telemedicine, virtual nursing and other services, and announced that it would take the lead in deploying the Blue Jeans Telehealth system to several customers including the University of Louisville, Amicus Therapeutics, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and the NHS Trust of community health care in central London to promote the transformation of health care. In its proposal, Verizon mentioned that it plans to use the Blue Jeans Telehealth system in telemedicine services, communication between patients and their families, cooperation within the hospital, etc., and the system will help to comply with the relevant regulations and requirements of keeping patients’ privacy in the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) promulgated by the United States in 1996. Verizon announced in 2022 to further expand the virtual nursing function of Blue Jeans Telehealth by adding new data sources and expanding partners. Its new data sources mainly come from Apple devices sharing health program data and health record (EHR) systems of more than 85 enterprises. Based on the accessibility, ease of use, interoperability and data reliability of the platform, the new version of Blue Jeans Telehealth focuses on simplifying data integration, management and creating a seamless user experience.It aims to realize the personalized function of virtual medical treatment and make the communication between patients and clinicians easier, safer and more effective.
Remote monitoring of high-risk patients.Qure4u, an American digital health solution provider, is cooperating with AT&T and Samsung to provide First Net remote patient monitoring (RPM) service for hypertensive patients. AT&T Professional Services Company is responsible for the setup, delivery and management of Qure4u ready-to-use RPM suite, which includes Bluetooth blood pressure cuff and Samsung Galaxy Tab A7 Lite with mobile device management solution. These kits transmit important information of hypertension patients to their medical service providers through Qure4u platform, enabling nursing teams to closely monitor patients. In order to expand the coverage of remote monitoring, Qure4u chose to provide a reliable and highly secure connection with First Net built by AT&T to support RPM suite, thus helping patients in rural areas and areas with weak service signals to enjoy medical services. First Net is the only national high-speed broadband communication platform in the United States, which is specially built for American emergency personnel and the extended public safety community. It was established by AT&T in cooperation with the first responder network authority (FIRST NET Authority), an independent agency within the federal government, and it is also the cornerstone to ensure RPM operation.
Smart home
Smart home emergency call.Deutsche Telekom demonstrated its newly developed smart home emergency call system at the elderly care trade fair held in Hanover. The system aims to help the elderly living alone to get quick and effective help in an emergency. It has three characteristics: first, the system can identify the movement pattern and judge whether they fall. The system is installed in sensors at home, and these sensors are connected with the intelligent software of the emergency call system, which can automatically distinguish whether the elderly individuals are bending over to pick up things or falling through big data algorithm. After identifying the real emergency, the system will automatically use the secure network to send an emergency home care service alarm to the control center. Second, the privacy data is protected. The smart home emergency call system is developed in strict accordance with the current data privacy laws and regulations and based on the principle of data minimization. It will inform users in advance what data will be stored and how to store it, and will not store any data unless there is a fall or other emergency. Third, elderly individuals don’t need to wear any sensors. Deutsche Telekom relies on a technology that works automatically in the background to collect environmental big data through sensors arranged in smart homes, thus eliminating the cumbersome step of wearing monitors for the elderly.
Smart home home monitoring.Vodafone Internet of Things in Australia is helping the elderly to stay at home safely. AbiBird, developed in Australia, is the world’s first Internet of Things service. It is a motion sensor that uses Vodafone’s NB-IoT technology to support the elderly who want to live independently. The device carefully monitors the comings and goings in the home, and it is paired with the smart phones of family members or caregivers, and will send an alarm to the mobile phones if there is an abnormal situation. One advantage of AbiBird compared with similar products is that AbiBird can provide wireless and hidden monitoring, without the need for the elderly to wear monitoring equipment at home or make home phone and Internet connections. This intelligent and non-invasive elderly care solution effectively relieves the family’s worries about the elderly on the premise of ensuring the elderly to live independently to the greatest extent.
As mentioned above, European and American countries have initially taken advantage of the characteristics that operators are in the middle reaches of the smart pension industry, drawing all parties to jointly explore the business model of sustainable development, and expanding the industrial development space by providing differentiated services, and gradually achieving a double harvest of economic and social benefits. In view of this, China’s operators should also give full play to the advantages of channels, organically integrate various services such as medical care and health, emergency help, emotional companionship, spiritual entertainment, etc. for the elderly, and cooperate with communities, hospitals and other resources to create a brand-new online and offline integrated smart and healthy pension ecosystem, and strive to explore how to quickly transform daily research and development results into products.
Life care
Life care mainly includes the application of nursing robot and nursing service information system. In terms of emotional companionship and care, visual communication devices focusing on emotional interaction are common in the market at present, while high-end products such as companion robots are still in the early stage, and the penetration rate is low because of their high price. At the same time, the arrival of infection in Covid-19 has also posed a severe challenge to the operation of nursing homes and the management of senile diseases, but it has also promoted the development of science and technology such as artificial intelligence, cloud services, new infrastructure and new public health services. It is believed that in the near future, many enterprises will invest in the research and development of robots to help the elderly, and together with the digital medical system, they will provide more convenient and intelligent services for the elderly, promote the transformation from the traditional pension mode to the smart pension, and make full use of the smart pension scheme of "internet plus Internet of Things+Cloud Computing+Big Data" to promote the improvement of life care services for the elderly in terms of health, life, culture and safety.
Daily nursing
Entertainment escort.NTT East Japan Company of Japan will launch robot services for nursing institutions, including making robots the conversation objects of the elderly, leading them to do exercises and play games, etc., in order to reduce the daily workload of nursing staff. According to Japanese media reports, the company strives to provide related services in 10,000 elderly care institutions within five years. This service will use the robot "Sota" made by robot manufacturer "Vstone" company (located in Osaka), which can have conversations and take photos, and can also move the body according to the images. NTT East Japan Company will connect robots to the Internet to play the role of artificial intelligence (AI) developed by NTT Group. The price of "Sota" is 108,000 yen (about 7,000 yuan), and the basic usage fee of the service is 3,240 yen per month. If you add entertainment functions, you need to pay extra according to different content.
Remote shopping.KDDI of Japan has launched an out-of-sight remote control robot to help the elderly with mobility difficulties enjoy shopping for a long time. This robot has cameras in its eyes and microphones hidden in its ears. Users can see the environment around the robot and hear the sound through a device similar to VR. In addition, fingers can also be connected to the robot through sensors, and then the robot will be like a doppelganger, and the user can control the robot to complete shopping without leaving home. When shopping for good products, users can also feel the "touch" of the robot, so that they can feel the touch of objects even at home.
Digital medical treatment
Digital nursing home.In order to enhance the social activities of the elderly and improve the care system for the elderly, LG U+ and Korea Association for the Elderly will establish a "digital nursing home" based on information and communication technology (ICT), and the two sides have signed a "digital nursing home cooperation plan". In this cooperation, LG U+ will be responsible for establishing all wired and wireless communication networks, and introducing a video conference system and nursing robots into the "digital nursing home". The elderly can carry out activities in the best environment through indoor and outdoor environmental monitoring, and the AI robot will be set to communicate freely with the elderly, provide a sense of psychological stability and ensure safety through emergency call function when abnormalities are detected. In order to bridge the information gap between regions, the two sides will also introduce ICT-based education systems and distance education solutions.
Prevention of senile diseases.South Korea’s SK Telecom, together with local autonomous organizations, social value investment institutions, enterprises, etc., built the project of "A Peace of Mind Area for the Elderly with Alzheimer’s Disease" in Fuyu County, Chungcheongnam-do. This project is a part of the project of "Social Achievement Compensation for Reducing the Incidence of Alzheimer’s Disease for People with Mild Cognitive Impairment" in Fuyu County. The participating organizations include SK Telecom, Korea Social Value Joint Fund, Happiness Sharing Consortium, B-Plus, MYSC, etc. In the next three years, the project plans to carry out the prevention of Alzheimer’s disease for 100 elderly people with mild cognitive impairment every year, and carry out AI care, professional cognitive training Meta-memory classroom and other projects based on the research experience of professional medical teams, and intervene in time during the period of mild cognitive impairment to effectively prevent patients from developing into high-grade Alzheimer’s disease. SK Telecom will provide hardware support and ICT service support for artificial intelligence speaker NUGU. Social achievement compensation refers to the capital, manpower, technology and other problems necessary to solve social problems through private investment, and local governments will give certain incentives and investment support to participating enterprises according to their achievements. According to the assessment plan of social achievement compensation in Fuyu County, the transformation rate of Alzheimer’s disease in Fuyu County is measured once a year. If it drops below 7.5% after three years, the companies participating in this project can get up to 24% investment support.
It can be seen that the development of digital diagnosis, treatment and entertainment care in Japan and South Korea is quite effective, covering a larger radius, including entertainment, rehabilitation, psychological care, etc., and the services are more intelligent, efficient and humanized, which can meet almost all the needs of the elderly and make up for the shortcomings of human resources. Suppliers build the basic database of community pension through intelligence and digitalization, optimize data sharing and provide accurate services, thus effectively solving the problems of centralized supply, accurate supply and efficient supply of pension resources.
humanistic care
Humanistic care is to communicate and interact with the elderly through robots, reduce the loneliness of the elderly and realize humanized care. At present, the society is changing with each passing day, and the technology iteration is rapid. For many elderly people who have not fully mastered the use of smart phones and do not understand mobile payment, the advancement of digitalization has inadvertently caused insurmountable obstacles to their daily lives, making them "forced" to be out of touch with society. How to help the elderly to eliminate the "digital divide" smoothly is a big problem for governments all over the world, and it is also a big test for operators all over the world.
Accessible digital service
Remote health care counseling.Deutsche Telekom develops intelligent solutions to provide medical care services to overcome the physical distance between patients and doctors and maintain or further improve the high standard of medical services. For example, when patients with heart disease leave the hospital, they will keep in touch with specially trained staff in the heart center for follow-up care through tablet computers. First, patients need to complete an online questionnaire about their health status and use videos to collect information about how to get along with their illness. Secondly, the remote nurse receives immediate feedback on whether the patient has seen or completed the task at the workstation. Finally, the case manager of the heart center uses videophone to provide regular personal follow-up care for heart patients. This holistic nursing is called remote counseling. The case manager keeps close contact with patients and monitors their condition. If the development is worrying, the heart center can intervene immediately, and ideally, it can prevent critical situations at an early stage.
Remote announcement service.South Korea’s SK Telecom launched Dial Link service, which allows users to directly connect to the designated network environment by pressing the call button after entering the specific number and * number of the service provider on the mobile phone keyboard, and log in to the website without installing an App or searching the network. This service will become a new channel for local autonomous organizations and public institutions to announce matters or systems to middle-aged and elderly users, and help users who are not proficient in using computer and mobile phone applications and users with low vision to obtain officially released information. Sejong municipal government has taken the lead in applying this service. After pressing "044*" on the mobile phone keyboard, users can directly log in to the website of Sejong municipal government and access the petition system and the comprehensive reservation system for sports facilities.
Barrier-free mobile phone for the elderly.KDDI, which operates the mobile communication service brand "au", stopped 3G service at the end of March 2022, and simultaneously launched a new flip phone corresponding to 4G service. This kind of mobile phone, designed by Casio Computer Company, is waterproof and durable. Most of the mobile phones corresponding to 4G and 5G services are smart phones with touch screens, while flip phones with physical keyboards are welcomed by the elderly, agricultural and construction workers who often need to wear gloves to work.
Research on the research and development direction of helping the elderly
Virtual reality for the elderly.The American AT&T 5G network is being used to support Stanford University’s research on the use of virtual reality technology by the elderly. The Virtual Human Interaction Lab of Stanford University has announced a new study in cooperation with MyndVR, which will investigate how the use of virtual reality technology by the elderly will affect their mental health and their attitude towards new technologies.
Digital transformation of medical insurance.European Orange Business Services has made progress in the field of electronic medical care and integrated medical care activities in Enovacom subsidiaries. Health care industry is the focus of Orange 2025 strategic plan. As part of it, Orange Business Services is reorganizing its health care entities Enovacom and Orange Healthcare to fully meet the needs of participants in this field, which is currently undergoing digital transformation..Enovacom is an expert in health care data travel, responsible for collecting, transmitting, storing, processing, analyzing and sharing data, and creating value in a safe way. The newly transformed electronic medical software and services will meet four key challenges, namely, health data protection, communication and sharing among participants in the health ecosystem, digitalization of patients’ journey and utilization of health data.
Improve the quality of digital life.British BT launched the "Tomorrow Skills" program in 2019 to help British people make full use of digital technology to live. BT announced earlier in 2022 that it had completed its original goal, that is, to help 10 million people in Britain (for all groups, including the elderly) improve their digital skills, five years ahead of schedule. The key to achieving this milestone is the success of Top Tech Tips, a collaboration between BT and ITV, which helped 5.7 million people learn the important new digital skills they needed during the epidemic containment period.
Digital humanistic care for silver-haired people is a new topic with the development of digitalization. At present, the attempts of operators in various countries in this field are still at a relatively superficial level. Except for relatively simple and direct means such as barrier-free mobile phones and remote notification services, all other solutions need to ensure that users have a certain ability to apply intelligent technology. How to reduce the learning cost of digital life for the elderly to adapt to cultural life and medical care is still a long-term task.
Author: China Unicom Research Institute.