COVID 19, Wi-Fi Sensing, and Aging in Place Monitoring

At time of writing, a third of the world’s population is living under some form of lockdown. In the United States, that ratio rises to three out of four people. Broad as those restrictions are, they particularly target the elderly as among the most vulnerable members of the population. Elderly people are twice as likely as the younger, healthier population to get severely ill with the coronavirus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the mortality rate from COVID-19 reaches 15% for those over 80, according to some estimates. At the end of last year, the United Nations estimated that the global population aged 65+ living alone or with a spouse reached nearly 280 million. Elderly monitoring or Aging in Place (AiP) systems have long offered ways to better manage and integrate isolated elderly individuals with relatives and healthcare services. Is the current situation enough to push new technologies and new players into the AiP monitoring mainstream?

In January 2020, Wi-Fi mesh networking and network management company Plume made Wi-Fi-enabled motion detection available to its Internet Service Providers (ISP) partners and their customers. Plume currently manages over 700 million devices in the Plume Cloud in more than 14 million homes worldwide. Its OpenSync technology has been licensed or deployed by ISPs and device manufacturers including Samsung, Comcast, Liberty Global, Bell, Charter, J:COM, and NCTC affiliates in deploying products. Plume licenses its technology to a host of telos including Comcast, Liberty Global, Bell Canada, and Shaw.

Plume’s Wi-Fi motion detection offering enables home Wi-Fi routers to detect motion through changes in the radio waves within the home. They can also turn other devices attached to the router into sensors to extend and localize monitoring to rooms throughout the home. This delivers the kinds of motion sensing traditionally carried out by motion sensors that have been installed throughout a home and connected back to an often-dedicated gateway.

Key to the feature is the ability to deploy motion sensing through a software update without new hardware. Plume open-sourced its Customer-Premises Equipment (CPE) middle layer, OpenSync, in October 2018, as part of its push to deliver an “app-store” environment for a range of smart home services that could be supported on compatible CPE equipment. The Wi-Fi motion sensing supported in the Plume environment comes from Cognitive Systems, which first launched its technology as a hardware offering back in 2016. That strategy transitioned into partnerships with Wi-Fi chipset vendors to ensure the technology is supported and a licensing program for ISPs, Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs), and Original Design Manufacturers (ODMs) that leverage the service on their products. Cognitive has partnerships with Qualcomm, Broadcom, and ON Semiconductors. Cognitive’s technology is set to be deployed by network infrastructure provider CommScope by the end of the year and ISP rollouts should start to flow this year. 

Plume and Cognitive are not alone in the market. Another Wi-Fi motion sensing company, Ariel Technologies, has its offering adopted by SoftAtHome and Juniper Networks unit Mist. More recently Ariel released a hardware play with smart plug devices to deliver Wi-Fi motion sensing and the system is being trialed by Canadian telco Videotron.

Although no company wants to be seen to be directly benefiting or marketing based on the upheaval of COVID-19, an opportunity clearly exists for systems to help ease the burden of caring for those at risk during a period of isolation. Existing AiP monitoring players such as Grandcare Systems and Independa have been highlighting the role that their systems can deliver in maintaining contact during COVID-19. But the AiP market is no longer the preserve of dedicated technologies.  Amazon has promoted its Alexa platform to help with COVID-19 but was already pushing into the AiP monitoring space with its Drop-In feature and the ability to initiate and carry voice calls from its Echo voice control front-end devices. Those devices with screens have the additional value of simplifying remote video calling. Multifunction wearable devices such the Apple Watch from Series 4 onward can help in fall detection as well as monitoring and remotely sharing an individual’s physical parameters.

Last year we assessed in detail the potential for smart home providers to leverage their existing offerings and services to deliver AiP applications in our Leveraging Smart Home to Drive Connected Elderly Care (AN-5108) Application Analysis Report.. While many of the long-standing factors that have held back adoption of AiP systems (i.e., fragmented supply chain, high monthly subscription fees, low consumer awareness, and a split between those benefiting and those paying for the service extending into spotty reimbursement support from healthcare providers and insurers) remain, much of the connectivity and sensing used in smart home can provide the foundation for AiP monitoring. Smart home motion sensors—typically part of a home security implementation—can be leveraged to deliver monitoring data to trusted providers and family member. 

However, even with the pressing demand for AiP monitoring systems brought on by current conditions, restrictions on home visitors and in-home installations clearly impact the ability for AiP systems to be deployed immediately. In addition, onboarding new self-install monitoring devices can be hampered by the technical abilities of the individuals at risk to install their own systems.

Where smart home deployments exist, existing providers can leverage those systems to overlay applications that can offer varying levels of AiP monitoring. Wi-Fi motion sensing has the potential to support the rollout monitoring services to the even larger footprint of homes with a capable Wi-Fi router, typically from Wi-Fi 11n onwards. Rolled out with Over-the-Air (OTA) upgrades to home routers, the technology significantly lowers or sidesteps may of the commercial barriers that have hampered the broad adoption of AiP so far.

ISPs, interested in the potential for additional revenue streams extending their customers’ Recurring Monthly Revenue (RMR), have long looked to AiP monitoring as a potential new market. The COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the growing momentum behind Wi-Fi signal monitoring, may not only pull telos into AiP application offerings but also help educate potential end users about the value of monitoring capabilities.

Even with lower cost to leverage Wi-Fi sensing over existing methods, proponents will still have to educate consumers about the way sensing works and the limitations that limit the collection of private or personal data. That sensing is carried out without cameras or cloud data processing—everything is carried out locally at the router—will help with some end user concerns, but the security concerns that were raised by Amazon Drop-in functionality showed how sensitive parts of the market remain related to new technologies and in-home monitoring.

Although Wi-Fi sensing was already drawing telco interest in North America and Europe to add value and new recurring revenue opportunities to their broadband offerings, ABI Research believes that this should be elevated further by the changes brought by the disruption and impact of COVID-19. Even after self-isolation requirements have been lifted, the crisis will have highlighted the need among families and healthcare providers for a better way to support those who are vulnerable and living independently. This period, combined with the availability of Wi-Fi motion sensing, may also prove decisive impetus for telcos and cable players to finally push into mainstream AiP support.