Robomotic is developing a product called EMMA (Elder Mobile Monitoring Assistant), a health care platform designed for autonomous monitoring of the elders.
Across the developed world, the demographic profile is changing: the proportion of the global population over 65 years old will triple between now and 2100, from 7 percent to 21 percent. For instance, in the UK, the elder population is over 4 million and over 80% of them are single and living an independent life style.
Falls accounts for 10% acute hospital admissions, with the total cost of NHS amounting to £1.7bn, with EMMA the NHS can cut their cost by reducing the medical complications for post recovery after a non detected fall.
The primary function of EMMA is to detect and possibly predict falls by using a wrist sensor that learns the user behaviour and discriminates between nominal and dangerous activities including falls. The wrist sensor is paired to a base station called the EMMA Hub which provide connectivty for notifiying alarms to the carer by means of phone calls, SMS and emails.
The pioneer companies in the market of home monitoring are mainly BrickHouseAlert, AlertOne (USA),Tunstall and Tynetec (mainly UK) and just recently Halo monitoring and Zenio.
The USP of EMMA compared to the current market competitors are:
Accuracy: the potential accuracy which can be achieved with adaptive algorithms can outperform any simple heuristic based approach used by the competitors.
Vibra feedback: most elder users have hearing loss and impairment. Therefore the vibra feedback is a very important function to get their attention when the carer wants
Comfort: the wrist solution is the best approach for the detection task. Belts, necklaces and similar pendants are easily forgotten by an elder person
Price: the packet comes with one off fee. The user will only pay the alarm calls made on the phone line or GSM network. Other products are based on call centers, hence requiring an annual or monthly subscription fee
Connectivity: EMMA can be plugged on a traditional telephone line (POTS) or to the GSM network. This configuration provides full coverage even for users living in rural areas where internet or GSM connections are usually not available.
Installation: no installation fees required. Most of the products nowadays requires installation fees which varies from £ 90 to a max of £ 1000
Support for home security and safety: the EMMA hub can be interconnected with existing home monitoring and alarm solutions to cover the 90% of available devices (see Appendix for the product supported).
Support for bio-medical sensors: the EMMA hub already supports pulse rate monitors such as the BM-CS5 and the BM-CS5SR and is going
EMMA is the evolution of anti-panic buttons used already by 1.6 million users only in UK with an existing market value of £ 800 k. We expect to sell EMMA globally to reach a target sales of 3 million units in 5 years.