In the Dutch municipality of Waalre, 10 adults now live under the watchful eye of artificial intelligence. Ceiling-mounted sensors from Kepler Vision Technologies continuously scan their homes, feeding AI trained to distinguish falls from landings and automatically push a notification to family members or emergency contacts when an algorithm flags an incident. Depending on how you feel about surveillance technology, that sounds like a great way to protect independent adults living alone or like a dystopian nightmare. The tone, at least on paper and given the alternative, depends on the former.
According to Statistics Netherlands, just over a quarter of the Dutch population will be over 65 by 2040, yet the country’s healthcare infrastructure is not growing at nearly the same rate. This is not a problem unique to the Netherlands. In the US, we will reach similar numbers by 2050. Japan’s population over 60 is already around 30% today and the World Health Organization predicts that the global population over 60 is expected to nearly double by 2050. That means there is more pressure on older adults to manage independently at home, for longer, with less institutional support every year. Falling — specifically, lying undetected after a fall — is one of the most dangerous consequences of this unfortunate calculus, but the sooner a person is found after a fall, the better their chances of recovery.
The Leefsamen app automatically sends a notification to family members and emergency contacts when a fall is detected.
This Dutch pilot, a collaboration between communication provider WeConnect, care network Leefsamen, and regional partners Brainport, is designed for people already at high risk of falling who want to stay in their own homes. Hardware and software similar to Kepler’s fall detection AI systems have been working in nursing facilities for some time. Therefore, this first application in private residences is a logical extension, not necessarily a conceptual leap.
However, the idea of an all-seeing eye inside the home seems strange.
A sensor that can reliably detect a fall’s movement pattern can, by definition, detect a lot more about how a person moves around their house — when they wake up at night, how often they visit the bathroom, or whether their gait changes. Even if the system is designed to compress that data, the infrastructure to collect it is in place. If the pilot is reasonable, what happens when the commercial interests of the companies involved differ from the privacy interests of a 78-year-old person who signed a consent form that he may not fully understand? What happens in the event of a data breach?
This isn’t an imaginary concern — heck, it’s not even limited to this pilot program, as the technology is already monitoring more than 15,000 seniors around the clock” in care facilities, according to Kepler’s release. Partner companies have made general promises to protect privacy with Kepler specifying compliance with international information security standards which is somewhat reassuring, but a data breach.
None of this makes technology bad; it’s just complicated. For a loner, the choice may not be between AI surveillance and unsupervised freedom; it may be a choice between AI monitoring and falling undetected for two days. Framed that way, the hallway sensor starts to look less like surveillance and more like a smoke detector with better software.