By 2025, 700 million people in Asia will be over 60 years old. According to Eduardo Klien, the East Asia/Pacific Regional Director for HelpAge International, older people are more likely to experience health concerns, face memory issues, become frail, undergo mobility problems, and find it challenging to manage daily activities. Thus, elder care startups in Singapore are coming up with various solutions to improve the quality of life for senior citizens.
Healthtech in Singapore is helping the ageing society through safe and independent web-management health systems, wearable devices like smartwatches that monitor heart rates, and medical alert products that send notifications in case of emergencies. Additionally, robotics, assistive devices, smart mobility, and AI-powered innovations enable seniors to move around, track their medication usage, and generate medical data insights.
We examine how innovation in technology is helping an ageing society in Singapore
Here are five tech companies benefitting older people in the city-state:
Homage
Caregiving solution Homage uses technology and over 15,000 trained professionals to offer seniors on-demand holistic home and community-based care. It empowers older people with mobility and medical conditions like dementia to age and recover with grace, dignity, and control. Its client base includes the government, health organisations, and financial institutions.
Homage works by users downloading the app and setting up a care plan. They are assigned to a care professional and make payments for the service through the app. Seniors can use the service with flexible subscriptions or pay for long-term care packages. The company currently operates in Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia and has received funding from investors like Alternate Ventures and Sheares Healthcare.
SoundEye
Social enterprise SoundEye provides innovative smart safety products for everyone, everywhere. It benefits seniors because it offers a state-of-the-art, sound-activated emergency 24/7 monitoring system, which can alert caregivers when something goes wrong. For example, its audio analytics detects when older adults are coughing or making abnormal sounds, while its lasers and radar sensors detect abnormal movements, such as falls.
Funded by Quest Ventures and Toyo Kanetsu Corporate Venture Investment Partnership, SoundEye’s research and development team consists of a researcher, a software engineer, an electrical engineer, and an industrial designer from the Agency of Science, Technology, and Research (A*STAR). In 2019 the company expanded its products and services to Japan, Thailand, and other regional countries.
EloCare
Chronic and ageing care platform EloCare uses the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) to enable older people to use connected and smart healthcare devices to address multiple chronic illnesses and advancing age. Singapore General Hospital (SingHealth) estimates that by 2030, a quarter of Singapore’s population will be above the age of 65.
Artesian VC funds EloCare’s IoMT to provide a cloud dashboard for processing and analysing data to detect symptoms and connected medical devices that allow real-time information access. Moreover, it offers notification and intervention solutions, like a smart pillbox that helps keep seniors compliant with their medication schedules.
Jaga-Me
Online platform Jaga-Me provides on-demand, personalised, safe, and dignified home care services. It brings professional medical, nursing, and specialised supporting services like doctor house calls, injections, wound care, and home health screening, among others, to its users. It uses a team of licensed, experienced, compassionate, and competent doctors, nurses, and care assistants to watch over its customers.
Through Jaga-Me ‘s digital platform, users can book appointments, begin their care journey and navigate the complex healthcare system by partnering with insurers and providers to lower costs and aid high-risk patients. Jaga-Me is part of the integrated healthcare service provider Alliance Healthcare Group (AHG).
Alphind Healthcare
Alphind Healthcare, a disruptive Whole Person Care Intelligence company, seeks to address crucial gaps in the health ecosystem and maximise the benefits clients—payers, providers, or individuals—receive. It has an empathetic approach focused on patients’ medical experiences and wishes to improve their health. Moreover, it applies pragmatism by giving clients insights into people’s wellness, ensuring they can provide predictive and preventative care.
Recently, Alphind Healthcare opened its APAC Headquarters in Singapore to accelerate healthy ageing. It’s a hub for collaborative elder care, which will include the establishment of a regional Advisory Panel and a caregiving research and development centre (R&D). The company has also adapted a solution from its US base: a smart enterprise workflow platform connected to motion sensors where caregivers can proactively intervene and respond to potentially harmful motion events like falls.
The elder care startups in Singapore outlined above are just part of the necessary steps needed to give dignity to the country’s ever-growing population of senior citizens. The growth of the digital treatment and care market in Southeast Asia indicates the impact of technologies on the region, providing convenience, access to remote care, monitoring health symptoms, and purchasing medications online.
Healthtech in Singapore is proliferating and will need continued government support, funding, and clear policies to enhance community-based care for the older adults in the community.