Digital Catapult Showcases Kemuri

The KemuriSense smart power socket was invented because it did not exist.  Older people living alone are not all the same, you would not expect this with 2.5 million over the the age of 75.  Some will refuse to wear telecare devices and most will not accept continuous video surveillance.

One is now on show in the Digital Catapult in 101 Euston Road. It has been honoured by the presence of at least three Government Ministers: Francis Maude, Vince Cable and Ed Vaizey.  Look at the Digital Catapult Showcase presentation.  It gives the rationale for passive predictive monitoring for reducing the risk of hypothermia, dehydration and immobility.  And it has a ten year vision for ubiquitous networked power sockets for offices, industry and smart homes.

KemuriSense Smart Power Socket

Kemuri: Funding Awarded

The Technology Strategy Board has conditionally awarded 60% funding for the Proof of Concept for the Kemuri Smart Power Socket.  This is the public description.

A need has been identified for a Smart Power Socket, permanently fixed to a wall that has sensors for temperature, humidity, motion and power usage. It has to send data continuously via the Internet, including during periods of power outage.

No compact and tamperproof Smart Power Socket is on the market to satisfy the need. The design is unique and capable of being developed into versions for Europe and the rest of the World.

The concept was awarded a prize to build the first demonstrator. This was built and successfully tested. This project takes the demonstrator through more stages of development to prepare for larger scale manufacture. This includes professional design of the enclosure, internal electronics and a set of new prototypes. It requires funds for IPR registration and certification for safety and radio frequency emissions.

The use case is in the kitchens of vulnerable people living alone. They must consent to sharing data with family members or carers.

The POC also includes setting up test software for data collection, predictive analytics, identity management and smartphone visualisation. The results are a prototype system that gives hourly and daily indicators of wellbeing without any active input from the older person using the kitchen.

It’s good news for the millions of older people who would prefer to live alone in their own homes with non-intrusive support from their families.

Data Privacy: Put ASHs in the bin

There’s a consultation about the regulations for protecting personally identifiable data. The government proposes allowing a number of local organisations to create secure Accredited Safe Havens (ASHs). They will have access to information from peoples’ personal care records, which could be used to identify an individual.

The consultation assumes a solution that there is a need to transfer such data into an ASH.  Quarkside suggest that an alternative is inherently safer. Instead of moving data to an ASH, it stays put in a Personal Data Store (PDS). A PDS resolves the problems of consent by only releasing data for analysis without personally identifiable data.  This could be controlled by Mydex.

The back of a beer mat design goes something like this:

• People control their own health and care records in a suitably encrypted data store.
• Data is held in 5* format in triple stores and using URIs appropriately (ask Sir Nigel Shadbolt how to do it).
• Explicit consent has to be given for the extraction (or viewing) of any attribute. This avoids any data which could lead to identification being stopped at source. The consent could also be given by an Accredited Data Attorney (ADA). An ADA could be the person or any single person who has been trusted to give consent to release data for sharing purposes.
• If an Accredited Data Processor (ADP) wishes to use anonymised data then temporary rights are given by the ADA. Data may be given an expiry period after which any copies of the source data are destroyed. The ADP would be allowed to stored summarised data for analytical purposes.
• Any joins of personal data are done within the domain of the PDS and the method of performing those joins and hidden from the ADP. The risks are reduced for loss of privacy. If you go back to the principles of FAME you will see the nine principles that can make this work. The Identity Management problem is solved at source. Sharing data from multiple agencies is logically performed in an infrastructure that is like a walled garden.
• Each time data is released to an ADP, then the source identity would be irreversibly hashed by the ADA. The regulations would be so much simpler to implement.
• The ADA can release personally identifiable data to multiple agencies, such as health and social care. Again this must be time limited and the agencies would be obliged to destroy data, without any rights to store archives that contain personally identifiable data. A PDS is the repository for health and social care records.

Big data technology has advanced to the stage where this has become possible. Give control of sharing to the citizen. Acknowledge that people have ownership rights to their data, even if it is collected and stored by the NHS (or any other ADP). If you don’t create ASHs, you don’t need to regulate them

Value of Predictive Analytics: Kemuri

A report “Challenging Innovators: Matching offerings to the needs of older adults” has a diagram to locate Kemuri in a quadrant:

Value of Predictive Analytics

Kemuri is high value and high function with predictive analysis, pattern detection and motion.  Fall detection is indirect, but better than nothing.

There’s lots more to digest in the publication by Laurie M. Orlov, Boomer Health Tech Watch

 

Kemuri: The Disaster Movie

Fire, Police, Ambulance, Army and any emergency service can get a real-time movie map of a disaster area.  Remember the floods of 2014.  Who knew what was happening where?  Were local communities upset when the emergency seemed slow to respond?  This isn’t a complaint, it is an offer to help.

After a National infrastructure of Kemuri sensors are installed in the homes of vulnerable people living alone, the data could be used to show a minute by minute map of power outage, humidity, temperature and movement.  It would not need any public or emergency service input.  A moving picture would make good TV, too. We could imagine the speed and spread of a flood as power fails, humidity rises, temperature falls and people are moving around their kitchens at 3am.

As an example of how it might look, here is a video of minute by minute activity in an area the size of the Isle of Wight.  A day’s data in 30 seconds http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDB5Nt-3h_8.  It is big data in action.  Kemuri plans to use this technology.

The Kemuri infrastructure could provide information to a COBRA committee.  The network, given sufficient resilience, could become part of the Critical National Infrastructure.  The beauty is that the sensors will already deployed for a different function for families and carers; the emergency services may choose to add sensors at key locations and pay £400 per year for the privilege.

All Kemuri needs is some funding to kick-start the development of production quality sensors and shared national infrastructure.

UPDATE: 22/4/14

Kemuri entered a hackathon “to develop prototypes that can support communities to be resilient to and adapt to environmental crises and change.” with £5000 first prize.  The event was cancelled; apparently there weren’t enough competitors.  Are we that short of innovators in the UK?

 

 

Kemuri: IoTLondon Showcase

The buzz at the IoTLondon showcase demonstrated the huge energy of entrepreneurs.  Kemuri was able to demonstrate tangible progress since the original presentation in February.  The strapline was a bit tacky, “Granny Monitor”, but all better suggestions are welcome.

People were interested in poking their fingers into the working demonstrator, thankfully it was in battery powered mode and not connected to the mains.  It contains:

• Temperature sensor – for hypothermia risk
• Power sensor – for dehydration or nutritional risk
• Motion sensor – for immobility or fall risk
• Controller board – to schedule data transmissions
• Communications board and aerial
• Power socket

All fitting into a UK standard double socket enclosure.  Mission accomplished.

We had genuine enquiries about selling to the general public.  The answer has to be “No”.  The equipment must be professionally installed and the first units will go to telecare companies or care agencies.  Furthermore, it was just a demonstrator and it has to go into a prototype, certification and pilot phase before it should be introduced at scale.

As pointed out in the Marketing Flyer, we are “seeking supporters, collaborators and funders” before taking the next steps.  Tell your friends.

Care Bill: LAs should prepare now

The Care Bill will need massive ICT change within Local Authorities (LAs) by 2016.  The Department of Health (DH) have issued, for discussion, a guidance note on social care information and technology (DH Care Bill Guidance).  Priority actions are:

1. Roadmap: Plan with suppliers to satisfy a new charging regime by 2015.  Back office systems will need updating.  LAs will also have to provide information and advice to citizens – especially signposting citizens to care services.
2. Self-Funders:  Consider on-line assessment for self‐funders within wider changes in information and systems.
3. Better Care Fund:  Use the NHS Number as the primary identifier to comply with Integrated Digital Care Records Guidance.  There is capital fund open to NHS providers applying for resources to support the development of Integrated Digital Care Records, including with adult social care.  The second round will open shortly and LAs are strongly encouraged to work with NHS providers to make a compelling proposal.
4. Open APIs:   Think about embracing open APIs when procuring, renewing or refreshing its IT systems.
5. Technology Enablement:  Work with DH and national partners, to develop technology that drives improved outcomes, citizen experience and efficiency.

LAs should take this opportunity to consider joining forces to support a social enterprise that provides a national infrastructure with Open APIs into citizen controlled Personal Data Stores, keyed on the NHS number.  Co-production is the best opportunity in decades to provide interoperability between health and social care records, including self-funders recording expenditure against their Personal Care Budgets.  A social enterprise, such as Kemuri, could provide such an infrastructure, with suitable funding.

Ageing: What do People Need?

Ageing impacts everybody in civil society.  We all grow older; we observe the ageing process with mild disinterest until it affects us personally. Who are the key stakeholders in sustaining a reasonable quality of life for our ever increasing ageing population?

• Older people living independently
• Relatives, who may live many miles away
• Carers providing voluntary or commercial services
• Local Authority Social Services officers
• Voluntary Sector advisors

At the Health Technology Forum (November 20th, 2013), Mike Clark informed us that there are 1.5 million people employed in the Social Care industry.  In addition, there are about 5 million more providing unpaid care to relatives, friends or via voluntary work.  Before may years have passed, more then 9 million of the UK population will be personally involved in providing social care.   It is beginning to have a major impact on UK productivity with so much time and effort being deployed in caring. Technology enables people to do more, with less effort, improving outcomes in health and wellbeing.

Before rushing into a care technology solution, Quarkside recommends taking stock of what each stakeholder group needs, with answers to simple questions for each group:

• What are the benefits of monitoring activity in the home?
• What are the risks?
• How much activity should be monitored and stored, if any?
• How much data should be shared, and with whom?
• What are the critical privacy requirements?
• What is affordable?

These questions are being posed at Kent County Council (November 23rd, 2013).  The results should should inform any care ecosystem design for the technology products that will largely have to be self-funded.  The State will not provide for things that only provide peace of mind and improved levels of wellbeing of older people and their relatives.

Nuclear Power needs Governance too

Quarkside has focussed on Information Governance.  But there’s a bigger world outside and far more important is the governance of world energy.  The different methods of production have different impacts, but the battle to reduce carbon dioxide emissions must be high priority.  The technology most likely to succeed is nuclear fission – currently based on Uranium and pressurised water reactors (PWR). Hinckley Point will the next in the UK.

The new kid on the block is Thorium based energy production.  The main reason for the lack of development is that it does not produce Plutonium, necessary for nuclear weapons.  In the ’60s electric power was not the priority for government grants.  Now, Thorium reactors could steadily consume the stockpile of unnecessary Plutonium – making the world a safer place.

The UK Parliament is now taking an interest via the All Party Parliamentary Group on Thorium Energy. They have an important job to make people aware of the advantages of Thorium energy and dispel some of the fears of “Nuclear”.  Visit the site to find references to more information, such as the Weinberg Foundation and the Thorium Fuel Cycle.   It may take 20 years to make an impact on fuel poverty, but better later than never.

 

IoT sensor price crash

TI is producing a sensor device with six functions for $25.

• Temperature
• Humidity
• Pressure
• Accelerometer
• Gyroscope
• Magnetometer

That’s less than $5 per measurement.  Most would be useful in a home environment connecting to a smart phone or personal computer.

Such low cost equipment could be part of an infrastructure that helps families to support independent living of older and other vulnerable people.  The data from such a device could be combined with data from smart meters, and other equipment monitors, to give insight into daily behaviour patterns.