Smart home devices provide convenience for people with mobility challenges to live independently, especially for clients of long-term care facilities or at rehab centers. With these devices, they can control their living environment independently. Smart devices enable them to connect with their families, turn on lights, control their TV, adjust their beds and much more. Here are the must-have devices in a high-tech room at a long-term care facility or rehab center.
- Google Nest Hub Max: The Voice Assistant-enabled device offers features to control lights, aircon, and other devices by voice. It is also a day planner, an ultimate media hub to play your favourite music, movies, or show your family photos. Most importantly, it allows people with mobility challenges to connect with family members or friends, no matter where they are
- Voice-controlled TV: Via the voice assistant, people with mobility challenges can control their TV such as turning on, off, change the channels, turn the volume on or off, and navigate to their favourite channels
- Voice-controlled Hospital bed: enables people with mobility challenges to adjust their hospital bed by voice to the position that makes them feel most comfortable. They no longer need to rely on the bed pendant or worry about breaking it. Now, they can give commands, and their bed is repositioned to their preference
- The WiFi network: a robust WiFi network is the most crucial factor in enabling all smart technologies that serve the entire continuum of care. Within a care organization such as a Long-Term Care (LTC) facility or rehab center, several healthcare devices share the same network infrastructure. It can be this same infrastructure that can be used for residents’ rooms. But, there needs to be a wireless assessment done of each room to ensure that there is adequate signal strength and no dead spots.
Setting up high-tech rooms within a care facility is complicated. Unlike setting smart devices up at home, care facilities will need to consider several factors such as data security, WiFi network signals strength and device crosstalk among rooms. Furthermore, when these devices stop working, people tend to abandon them altogether and continue to require more support from the healthcare workers outside of their clinical care tasks. Thus, to ensure these devices work properly, it is essential to have access to remote support and troubleshooting services in addition to having a robust WiFi network.
To determine if your facility’s infrastructure is smart technology deployment-ready, download and complete the checklist below.
