One thing was paramount to product designers at two-year-old San Francisco startup Lively: The safety-alert system they were making for independent, older adults had to be impeccably ease to use. They knew that if the solution—which is based on a series of Bluetooth sensors, a wristwatch and a central hub within the home—was even slightly difficult or unclear to get up and running, they’d lose customers. They also knew that a goodly slice of the octogenarian-and-older demographic they would be targeting does not have, and never plans on having, an Internet connection. Enter: global telecommunications firm Vodafone.
“The thought process around using a SIM [subscriber identity module], as opposed to Wi-Fi, to connect Lively, is that users just get a device, go home, plug it in and it’s connected,” says Andrew Morawski, who leads Vodafone’s machine-to-machine business arm. “The Vodafone SIM inside the hub is pre-provisioned, so it’s automatically connected to the Lively network as soon as the hub is plugged in.”
The Lively system design also benefited from a focus group of target users, says Iggy Fanlo, Lively’s CEO. “We showed them prototypes of other makers’ safety-alert pendants and our wristwatch,” he says, “and 96 percent of them wanted our watch. Why? For reasons of vanity.” Fanlo believes that the creator of Life Alert, which sells a pendant that can be used to call for medical help—a product made famous through a series of television commercials punctuated by the line, “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up!“—is a victim of its own marketing. “No one we interviewed wanted to be the person at bottom of the stairs who has fallen and can’t get up,” he adds.
The Lively system’s physical components include the central hub, sensors and the wristwatch. The hub is linked to Lively’s Web-based back-end software via the Vodafone cellular network. The Lively watch and sensors—which are intended not only to detect if users have fallen, but also if they are carrying out important activities, such as taking their medications—communicate to the hub via a Bluetooth connection, and contain accelerometers to detect movement. Lively recommends attaching the sensors to a user’s refrigerator and pillbox, bathroom and shower doors, and the main entrance and exit points of the home.
Over time, the Lively software creates a typical profile of how often a user opens and closes his or her pill dispenser, refrigerator or other doors within the home. A Web interface helps family members ensure that an elder user’s activities are in line with her or his normal routine, based on the collected sensor data. The wristwatch will alert the user, via an icon on the watch face and an optional vibration alert, if he or she has not opened the pillbox on schedule. The Web interface also alerts family members and sends an SMS text message and e-mail whenever something appears to have gone awry with the user’s daily routine—such as the pillbox remaining inactive despite reminders being sent via telephone, or if the user does not appear to be eating or leaving the house on a normal schedule, based on the sensor history.
The wristwatch includes a safety button that, when pressed, sends an alert, via the hub, to a third-party health-care services company, which calls the user on the telephone. Pressing the button does not immediately trigger a 911 call, Fanlo explains, in order to avoid false alarms if the individual has pushed the button inadvertently, or if he or she is experiencing a problem that the support service can address via the phone, or by contacting a member of that person’s family. If the service provider determines that the user does require an ambulance, the representative makes a call to the 911 dispatcher, and also remains on the phone with the user until paramedics arrive.
The face of the wristwatch can be removed from the band and placed in a clip to be worn on the body. In this way, the watch’s embedded accelerometers can detect if the user has fallen, and will issue an alert if it detects such an event. (When the watch is worn on the wrist, Fanlo explains, a fall cannot be reliably disambiguated from other arm movements.)
Because the Lively watch and sensors are dependent on the Lively hub, they function only within the home or surrounding area. But through the use of a proprietary antenna inside the watch, Fanlo says, as well as increased amperage of its embedded Bluetooth radio signal, the watch remains in the hub’s read range to up to 1,500 feet.
Starting this spring, Lively users will be able to utilize the wristwatch’s Bluetooth radio to pair the watch to a smartphone, thereby extending the Lively service beyond the home—for users who own a smartphone, of course. Fanlo says the company is also in the process of formalizing partnerships with a number of home health-care providers that sell wearable Bluetooth-enabled sensors to monitor vital signals, such as EKG sensors and glucose meters. Using an application programming interface, these sensors will transmit data to the Lively home hub, thereby providing a clearer picture of the user’s health, accessible via the Lively back-end software.
Lively’s products and services are currently available in the United States and Australia, Fanlo says, and the company is busily arranging for health-care support services so that it can offer its technology in the United Kingdom and other countries as well. Since the hub is small enough to pack in a suitcase, users will be able to travel with the system to nations where the health-care support services are established. According to Morawski, Vodafone’s global GSM coverage means the hub’s SIM will operate in just about any country around the world.
Based on the length of the subscription, the Lively service costs from $34.95 to $27.95 per month. The hardware (wristwatch, hub and four sensors) costs $49.95. According to Fanlo, the watch and sensors run on replaceable CR2032 lithium batteries. The watch’s battery lasts for six months of normal use, and the sensor batteries should last for one year.