Penn Bioethics Seminar | George Demiris, PhD, FACMI

"Smart homes" for health: Challenges and opportunities

Advances in sensor technologies and passive monitoring tools have created “smart home” solutions that promote safety and monitor residents’ health and wellness. Such applications carry great potential to support aging in place and enable a proactive rather than a reactive approach to adverse health events. This presentation reviews current trends and opportunities in smart home research and outlines ethical considerations including challenges around informed consent, privacy and overall obtrusiveness of such technologies especially when designed for vulnerable populations. We discuss approaches that aim to promote patient and family engagement and shared decision making based on smart home implementations and highlight ethical challenges in sharing patient generated health data that are captured in people’s homes.

George Demiris, PhD, FACMI
Penn Integrates Knowledge University Professor
University of Pennsylvania