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The customized home security solution of the future
Considering the advances in technology and an increasingly sophisticated society, it’s no wonder that today’s top security solutions are customizable and flexible to protect against multiple classes of personal and asset threats. It is no longer sufficient to simply provide perimeter protection and intrusion detection. Security and safety professionals as well as consumers are looking for complete and scalable solutions to address all of their peace of mind and security concerns. The number of applications are endless, and the opportunities abundant.
December 12, 2014 By Staff
Three specific customizations for future security systems that we’ll be seeing more and more of before the end of this decade include:
1. Personal health tracking and emergency alerting
2. Cyber security and data integrity/privacy protection
3. Advanced threat protection and emergency preparedness solutions
Let’s look at personal health tracking and emergency alerting in more detail.
The digital health opportunity is a natural extension to the standard home security solution. Initially security systems were designed to protect occupants from harmful threats at the perimeter to the home. While this is still very necessary, many times harm to an occupant can come from within the home, and further, from within the occupants themselves. Real time digital health data (for example, a household accident or a recurring medical event) that is collected in the home and passed through to monitoring services is a serious shift in our home security technology strategy for the years to come.
A variety of manufacturers are coming up with cloud connected bio-sensors and smart devices that capture our health data in real-time for processing. Combining data collection and analytics with real-time notification and alerting to first responders, doctors, or family members allows these types of products to help the increasingly aging population live longer, independently in their homes. As a society, we will need to develop more self-service and automated healthcare options in order to keep up with the increased need for medical attention and to triage medical events in the home to restrict only the highest priority cases making their way into our hospitals and health care centers. To provide the best care possible with the lowest overall expense, we need to provide more medical services in the home.
Providing real time data to practitioners is an important part, but not the only part, of the role of the security system of the future. As interfaces improve and network technology speed increases, we can envision more tele-health services surfaced through our security systems and also an industry evolution or new branch of monitoring companies and services that can provide 24/7 assistance and support for medical alerts or emergencies generated in the home.
Some of the most popular tele-health services at present include:
• Individual and group psychotherapy, behavioral counseling, and nutrition counseling
• Tele-health Pharmacologic Management
• Consultations, emergency department services, or initial medical assessment
We are in a very exciting period of innovation, invention, and intervention when it comes to smart home security solutions. Part of the challenge will be to develop solutions reliably at an affordable cost that integrate well together to ensure that the majority of the benefit lies with the consumer, not with the manufacturer.
Jason Falbo is vice-president, engineering, Mircom Group of Companies.
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