Good Morning Inishowen, and low-end telepresence

Last night's Six One News reported on the launch of a new service to combat loneliness and give the elderly a greater sense of security. In Co. Donegal older people, many living in isolated rural areas, are telephoned regularly by the Good Morning Inishowen service to check how they are and to keep them in touch with their community. As one senior citizen says, "I have plenty of good friends and neighbours and family but they're all at their work during the day  - the phone calls are very helpful."

Most of the volunteer callers are actively retired people who have special empathy with those living alone. While other social services are available it's often the case that those called spend a good part of the day on their own. One of the volunteers says what motivated him in the beginning was the few cases of people who weren't found until two or three days after something had happened them, through simple lack of communication. Good Morning Inishowen is backed by the HSE and it's northern counterpart and funded by the EU. It will soon expand it's coverage from three to five days per week.

The reason I find this initiative so interesting is because it ties in with something I was thinking about a few weeks ago. While watching Scoble's video demonstration of the Cisco TelePresence 3000 one of the first things that occurred to me was - wouldn't it be a wonderful way for senior citizens living alone to battle the loneliness of a solitary existence.... if only they could afford and manage such a system.

But, while Cisco's product is state of the art there's no reason a more modest system couldn't be plenty effective. Beneath the sliding and swooshing gloss of Nokia's new high-end mobile family lie incredibly capable communications black-boxes. With 3.5G (HSDPA), WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, uPnP, TV-out and 5 megapixel camera sporting Carl Zeiss optics and DVD quality video capture the upcoming N95 could easily serve as the hub of a low-end Telepresence system.

Sure, video-calling has been a flop with the masses but where's the attraction for the young and mobile in ogling a 2-inch image of a friend they can meet in person  several times a week? The marketing is all wrong - it's the mobility-challenged who stand to gain most from video calling. Especially now that TV-out functionality can transform the transmission into something approaching life-like.

But regardless of how capable this technology is it's far from simple enough to use for the average person, let alone the elderly. There's a business opportunity here comprising of a hardware/software solution and service component. First we need an accessibility cradle for the phone e.g., sporting two large buttons - a green one to activate voice dialling and a red one to end calls. This would be attached to the side of the TV with TV-out extended to the socket. We could start with the operator's video-calling service but the ideal is an always-on option routed via the phone's WiFi to a DSL access point. Users should be able to sit down to dinner in the telepresence of their remote neighbours and friends.


Technorati Tags: inishowen, donegal, elderly, telepresence, cisco, nokia

Comments

[Justin Mason]

Great ideas. I wonder, though, if the network providers would be willing to make such services affordable to the elderly? A pension doesn't leave a whole lot of spare cash...

[James Corbett]

Agreed Justin, that's why the first objective would be to get around the operators by using the WiFi capabilities and perhaps piggybacking on the Skype API?

Sure DSL still ain't cheap but will hopefully get more and more reasonable. One of the time limited packages might even makes sense until such time as they do.

[Bernie Goldbach]

Would you take a phone call and talk to a podcast crew about this idea on Wednesday 13 December between 1115-1245 so we can bump up the concept through radio coverage?

[James Corbett]

Sure Bernie, I'll email you my number.

[Ann Doherty]

How could someone on Good Morning Inishowen find out personal info about senior citizens with whom they are in contact by phone?