Alexa for Seniors

Alexa in Senior Housing, incl Aging in Place

• see GoogleAssistant For Seniors

Feb03'2023: How we fell out of love with voice assistants (Intelligent Software Assistant)

while voice assistants may be losing their appeal for general use, in healthcare they are on the rise.

When it comes to people with dementia, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), sight problems and mobility challenges, Alexa is "a game changer", says Eric Saarnio, international business lead for Amazon Alexa.

Majesticare provides residential, nursing and dementia care, and is one of the UK's first care groups to introduce Alexa Smart Properties for Senior Living into their homes.

Residents are able to connect with family and friends. They can ask for a drink, find out what's on the menu, or ask what activities are planned that day - simply by talking.

Video calls with loved ones bring peace of mind," says Ms Boxall, "and [the residents have such] wonderful smiles when they see the ones they cherish."

Nov28'2022: Amazon Expands Alexa Smart Properties for Senior Living to UK, Parts of Europe

The service is already in use in the U.S., with previous senior living clients, including Atria Senior Living, Life Care Services and Eskaton.

Many senior living residents currently use Amazon’s voice technology to connect with loved ones, control lighting and temperature in their rooms and stay on top of current events. Operators also use it to disseminate information, such as daily schedules or menus; and improve resident safety

Jul20'2022: Amazon Announces Contest to Develop Alexa Skills for Senior Living Communities

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) is planning a new contest for developing new Alexa skills for the senior living industry.

The company is putting forward more than $45,000 in prizes for developers who can build new Alexa skills with functions that can aid older adults and senior living communities

Today, the company’s clients and partners in senior living include Atria Senior Living. The operator last year began deploying Echo devices using the Alexa Smart Properties offering, which supports Alexa-enabled tech in various types of real estate such as senior living, office buildings, hotels and multifamily properties.

Other examples include operator Eskaton, which has deployed more than 1,000 Amazon Echo devices across nine of its communities

Amazon also linked up with St. Louis-based health system Ascension last year to launch a new home-based care policy alliance called Moving Health Home, which has a stated goal of “working to change federal and state policy to enable the home to be a clinical site of care,” according to its website.

Mar03'2021: Amazon Care, Ascension Help Launch Alliance to Bring More Care Into Seniors’ Homes

The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the untapped potential of home-based clinical care, and the opportunity for a more robust set of services ranging from primary care to hospital-level treatment,” reads a March 3 announcement about the launch.

The company last November launched an Alexa app called Care Hub, and made new tools available through Alexa for Hospitality.

Nov16'2020: ‘Amazon Effect’ on Senior Living Grows With Care Hub Launch, Alexa for Hospitality Tools

Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) is continuing its push into the older adult market with the launch of an Alexa app called Care Hub, as well new tools recently made available via Alexa for Hospitality.

array of features to enable remote connections and monitoring between older adults and their loved ones.

offers an activity feed, showing how an older adult is interacting with an Amazon Echo device over the course of the day. The feed includes only basic information

Care Hub also includes customizable alerts, such as for when someone first uses Alexa during the day, or if there is no activity detected.

By the end of this quarter, K4Connect likely will have deployed more than 10,000 Alexa devices in senior living, Co-Founder and CEO Scott Moody told Senior Housing News

“For example, the ability to call the front desk via voice is a feature we have long offered,” he said. “The Amazon Alexa can also be part of our Resident Check-in (RCI) capabilities. With regards to RCI, residents can be passively “checked-in” with at any time of day, in a number of different ways, whether walking around the apartment (motion detection) and, soon, using their Alexa or their K4Community Plus resident mobile application.”

Apr01'2018: Front Porch Going Big on Amazon Echo After Successful Pilot

Glendale, California-based senior housing provider Front Porch recently wrapped a pilot program involving Amazon.com’s (Nasdaq: AMZN) Echo device and various “smart home” technologies at Carlsbad By The Sea, a Front Porch continuing care retirement community (CCRC) in Carlsbad, California

It’s believed that voice technology can both help seniors age in place longer and collect valuable health data

Feb27'2017: The 21st Century Senior Living Community: Residents Speak, Tech Delivers

from confirming dinner reservations for residents and accessing a community’s daily activities to providing life-saving clinical interventions.

Chris Guay, CEO and founder of Vitality Senior Living

LifePod, a company that offers a “voice-controlled caregiver, companion and digital assistant,” has technology that works with all voice services on the market, including Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, Apple’s Siri and Microsoft. It adds services such as medication reminders, turning on lights, and reading news and weather.

has check-in features to ask how residents are doing in intervals throughout the day

However, full integration with a community’s existing technology is still a challenge. That’s what is behind the hesitation of one Chicago-based CCRC to dive head-first into voice tech, as the CCRC has its own internal portal that residents interact with and regularly use

Beyond the clinical abilities of voice command, seniors who engage with it may be able to stay in their current setting longer.

“Visually impaired folks could have it work their lighting, the television, radio, download the events of the day, download reminders,” Guay said. “Now, someone with low vision has a lot more independence.”

Vitality, on the other hand, sees voice-command as supplementary to tablet technology.

“A tablet is always going to be something a majority of folks will want,” Guay says