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Why Digital Home Health Care Technology May Be Good for Your Business
We’re getting older, and that’s good. That was the message from the dais at the Digital Home Health Panel that took place during CEDIA EXPO in Atlanta this past September. More specifically, referencing data that shows 70 million Americans reaching senior status by 2030, Ken Kerr, president and CEO at Home Controls, which distributes Grandcare, Presto, and ClearSound elderly care and connectivity devices, put it bluntly: “New needs in huge numbers in an aging population equals new opportunities.”

That was the point that a half dozen or so technology companies that are targeting the home health care industry wanted to get across. All market sectors start off small, and if home health care does develop into a major source of revenue for residential systems integrators, the approximately 50 systems specialists who comprised the panel’s audience might be looked back on as the beginnings of the small army that the product manufacturers and distributors believe will grow into in the coming two decades.

In contrast to the acrimonious health care insurance debate that took place a year earlier, proponents of home health care technology got down to the economic brass tacks early on. Kerr compared the cost of assisted living or nursing home stays–he cited the approximately $75,000 it costs to maintain one person annually in a nursing home environment–with the cost of outfitting a home with sensors that monitor, record, and transmit information about location, medications, and other key daily necessities and said it would be a fraction of the ongoing costs of living outside the home.

“That’s the value proposition to the customer,” Kerr explained. But the numbers are equally good for the integrators that will sell and install those technology products. “Digital home health products are not yet commoditized, so the margins are very, very good right now, like the home theater business when it started out,” Kerr pointed out. Continue reading →