Page 18 - Green Builder Magazine May-June 2019 Issue

“New tech can replace old
16 GREEN BUILDER May/June 2019
14-27 GB 0519 Staying Home.indd
teeth with new ones, repair and
augment aging eyes, vastly
improve lost hearing—and still
many more advancements are
forthcoming.”
DORA’S WORLD
Before we launch into prescriptive ideas on how to help the aging
stay home longer, let’s dive into a real-world situatixon. I spoke with
Gary Krause recently. He’s an engineer in Michigan, who is caretaking
his 80-year-old mother—we’ll call her Dora—with the help of several
connected technologies. Krause has set up a small accessory dwelling
unit (ADU) for his mother near his house.
“I’ve got her set up with Amazon Alexa, and she loves it,” he says.
“It allows her to do certain key things, [such as] the ability to change
the channel on the television.”
But that’s also a problem, he con‰des, “because if she doesn’t get
up to do things every day, then she loses mobility, which makes her
more likely to fall and hurt herself.”
Krause says he feels somewhat cornered. “Any time she gets up
to do anything, such as turn oŠ a lamp, that’s a risk,” he says. “She’s
not very mobile, and if she falls, she can ask for help [using] Alexa,
but that’s really her only option.”
Krause deals with other basic life-related problems, such as how
to keep an eye on Dora without making her feel she has no privacy,
and keeping her refrigerator stocked with food. “I can buy her some
groceries,” he says, “but at present, I have no way of knowing whether
she has anything to eat in the house, or whether she’s eating at all.”
He also doesn’t know when or if she has taken her medications.
Without tools to help him, Krause says he has had to come up with
his own system of checking up on Dora. “Because the Alexa account
is in my name, I can actually see what and when she is saying to it;
what commands are given. I’ve found that this is a way of tracking her
mental acuity—although I’d be happy for a less-obtrusive way to do it.”
Another problem is climate control. “She’s always cold,” he
explains. “But dealing with a thermostat across the room is beyond
her. My thought is to put in a Nest thermostat. You can control those
with voice.”
The good news for Krause and his mom is that technical
solutions—in most cases, better than what he has—already exist.
What’s missing is a ‰lter to sift the novelty junk from the useful stuŠ.
That’s my job. From smart fridges that keep track of food to passive
water-use observation, the assisted living market needs exactly what
certain tech makers have to oŠer.
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