- Financial services companies: With the remote help of a family member or through a service provided by the financial institution, financial companies could help elderly people manage their finances and pay bills.
- Healthcare: More accurate and less expensive care resulting from better preventive care information. Home visits could be revitalized by the use of activity monitoring tools, enabling greater vigilance
in patient care.
- Insurance: Accidents could be prevented by the assurance of a safer home environment, with greater efficiency around incident reporting and health standards.
- Media and entertainment companies: Interactive objects could be turned into new avenues for entertaining the homebound population. Elderly people could join in an online bridge tournament or read bedtime stories to their grandchildren.
Let’s look beyond the elderly scenario. Imagine how industries might develop Intelligent Home Services further:
- Financial services companies: Becoming a collaborative partner in financial management could put banks, insurers and others in the role of a trusted advisor and give them opportunities to offer new products or services.
- Pharmaceuticals: Constant, contextual medical insight leads to benefits such as a greater understanding of the interaction of drugs or the long-term effects of drugs.
- Resources: Energy usage could be controlled based on clearly learned behavioral patterns, better balancing home energy consumption.
- Retail: Customer behavior could be analyzed to better optimize space or presentation, leading to increased sales. Or even “try on” your favorite store’s spring collection by standing in front of an interactive mirror.
- Surveillance: A classic application for traffic management or warehouse/factory safety.
- Telecommunications and Utilities: Already tied to people’s homes, but with closer home monitoring, companies could actually introduce additional safeguards to help save lives, while maximizing bandwidth and infrastructure to increase services within the home.
Technology innovations drive high-performance business
The technologies used for Intelligent Home Services offer vast potential for virtually any home or work environment. As the Accenture Technology Labs prototypes show, they could be used to optimize physical processes, help people collaborate or socialize, boost sales, maintain safety and security, and more.
High-performance organizations understand that it is technology innovation, the innovative application of new technologies, that will produce the most distinguished competitive advantages, whether the goal is to improve operations, cut costs or deliver new products and services. At Accenture Technology Labs, we explore existing technologies to improve performance today and deliver breakthrough products and services tomorrow. Our Intelligent Home Services research offers industry insight to handle a fundamental societal shift—the ageing population—that may ultimately challenge every organization.
Complex Questions
Many questions remain around fully embracing a solution like Intelligent Home Services, such as:
- How much will it cost?
- Who will pay for installation and maintenance?
- Is it reliable and robust?
- Where does privacy begin and end?
The answers are far from simple. But if technology can improve the well being of a growing sector of the population and simultaneously position industries for higher performance, shouldn’t the marketplace welcome the opportunity?
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