TruSense unveils smart home technology for seniors

CINCINNATI—TruSense, a company focused on smart home technology for seniors aging-in-place, recently announced that its TruSense system is now available. The company provides a platform that integrates with various devices to passively monitor seniors' activity.

“What we think is different than what's been out there up to this point is: a lot of these solutions that are out there to help keep seniors safe have been single-type solutions, like pendants that would detect a fall,” Rob Deubell, TruSense's VP, told Security Systems News. “But, what TruSense was built to do is be able to give multiple layers of protection in helping keep seniors safe in their own homes, and doing that through a combination of different technologies and then this intelligence that we've built up in the background.”

TruSense will go to market both direct-to-consumer and through working with channel partners, such as traditional home automation companies or home health companies.

TruSense incorporates a variety of sensors including activity, contact, and visitor sensors, a hub and an Amazon Echo Dot. TruSense can send caregivers notifications for certain events like prolonged inactivity. “That could be a text message that goes to the sibling, the adult children of the senior parent, it could be an automated phone call. It can also go to our 24/7 monitoring center,” Deubell said.

The hub can provide a variety of information, such as when the senior woke up, their movement path throughout their home and when they left the home. The system will also track trends over various time frames. This could be helpful in identifying a problem that might not have triggered an alert, Deubell said, and the information can be brought to a doctor's attention as well.

“The physician will ask a lot of questions [such as] 'What's your activity been like lately?' And, to try to remember what it's been over the last week or the last month is very hard to do and we have all of that information captured,” Deubell said.

Caregivers can set alerts if a senior has been in a room for a long period of time, “which is really key for things like detecting if there is a potential fall or if they've had a medical event,” Deubell said.

In the event of a fall or other event, seniors can vocally call for help through TruSense's Amazon Echo integration. “We believe there is a place for pendants, but one of the facts is that seniors don't always wear their pendants. Studies show that they take them off during the day at different times, and that time that they take it off could be the time that they fall,” Deubell said.

TruSense can also track temperature thresholds, water leaks, visitor arrival or departure and frequency of bathroom use. “We've even extended this to outside the home,” Deubell said; TruSense can monitor automobile driving or, with the GPS SmartSole, track the senior's whereabouts when walking outside of the home.

“Our strategy is, instead of TruSense coming out with its own hardware for the sensors and for things that can be integrated into the platform, our plan it to go best-in-class for virtually any device that's out there that can be tied in,” said Deubell. “I think that gives us a lot of flexibility because we're not tied down. There's always a better hardware device that comes out.

The development of TruSense's platform began a year and a half ago, Deubell said.

Integrating home security is a part of TruSense's roadmap, according to Deubell, “Because it really is a logical extension of what were doing now. We've already got the sensor technology in the home, we've got the intelligence on the back end. We believe that there could be features that could be enabled that are unique … as we extend into tying into existing home security solutions,” he said.