Smart home is a home monitoring and control system, which helps in the monitoring of home when the resident away, and also simplifies the switching appliances on and off automatically. The smart homes have the ability to monitor and control home from the convenience of smartphone or tablets.
In the healthcare sector, the smart home technology is combined with innovative and advanced monitoring technologies that are designed to detect health status changes. Moreover, the combination of smart home technology with healthcare technology is likely to be an effective approach to prevent nursing home placement for frail older adults. Additionally, the home-based smart home technologies allow aged people to adapt to changing physical and cognitive function, and preserve living in a familiar environment within an established social network.
The popularity of IoT devices in home healthcare sector is increasing tremendously. For instance, Edisse developed a wearable sensor for instantaneous tracking, alerts and fall detection. Similarly, Withings has developed a set of internet/app-enabled scales, a BP device or app, and a baby monitor. In addition, a Chinese company has developed miPlatform, a medical imaging and information management platform. Garmin’s Vivosmart is fitness band or smartwatch that can issue smart notifications to the user for taking action. Moreover, an iHealth Lab team has also developed a set of IoT healthcare devices including a wireless BP wrist monitor, a BP dock, a wireless body analysis scale, iHealth Lite, iHealth Edge, a wireless pulse oximeter, iHealth Align, and a wireless smart glucose-monitoring system. Thus, the increasing popularity of these devices in home healthcare is one of the major trends witnessed in the global smart home healthcare market.
Geographically, the European smart home healthcare market is growing, mainly due to improved healthcare infrastructure, increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, and growing demand for remote monitoring services. The healthcare sector is one of the largest and fastest growing sectors in the European countries, such as Germany and the U.K. This is due to growing aging population and increasing adoption of IT in the healthcare facilities.
