Each of Atria Senior Living’s 400 “communities” has more than 100 apartment-like accommodations for its residents—places where there’s an outside chance you’ll hear someone say, “Alexa, open the blinds!”
An apartment has some combination of gadgetry: a wearable pendant that contacts emergency responders perhaps; maybe an iPad; or, for some lucky residents in the upscale living quarters, Alexa-enabled window coverings and thermostats.
As CTO at Atria, headquartered in Louisville, Kentucky, Chris Nall has to make sense of the technology options and find the ones that best support the senior residents.
“A big part of my job is standardization and simplification,” Nall told IT Brew.
In a conversation with IT Brew, Nall talks about the introduction of new technologies and the challenge of keeping everything standard and simple when you’re watching about 40,000 residents and 15,000 employees.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What are the unique risks of a senior living environment?
I think if you had to pick one risk to write about, it’s definitely the safety aspect of if our residents fall—if they have an issue, introducing technology to better manage that.
Can you describe the pendant for me that supports safety for the resident?
Depending on what community you live in, it’s either a neck pendant or a wearable pendant with push-button features that, once it’s pressed, it goes to one of our care staff or dependent on the structure of the community, it could actually go up to the general manager of the community to respond either verbally, where we do have voice pendants, or physically, where we don’t have voice pendants in the community.
What’s the next big technology project?
We’re looking to potentially test out fall-detection technology—technology that will really assess a resident’s risk [of] falls…It’s a scale combined with analytics that will assess a resident’s gait, it will assess their stability, and it’s paired with a care representative that knows how to interpret that and recommend the right level of PT or care that’s needed for that particular resident.
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And for mainstream adoption, what needs to happen?
We need to take a particular community that has a high propensity of falls, and get that assessment technology in place and be able to prove out how it prolongs a stay at a community, how it prolongs a resident’s health; then, the adoption gets a lot easier.
What is the toughest part of your job?
Since we grow through acquisitions, it is driving the standardization at the community level. I feel strongly that we’ve standardized very well on infrastructure, policies, mobile devices, but a lot of times, if there is scrappy leadership locally, they’ll bring a piece of technology in without it understanding and knowing it, and it just makes it a lot harder to support.
Is the technology setup standardized across all communities?
Currently, only about 30% of our seniors have a smart device—iPod, iPhone, [or] Amazon device. In about five years, that’s going to shift pretty dramatically to about 60–70%. So, we have to have the infrastructure in place to handle that in the future.
What technology has been the biggest hit with the seniors?
Our family app has about 30 to 40% adoption. It’s a mobile app that [allows residents to] go in and look at activities for the day. Their kids can look at activities for the day. The other big piece, I think, is music. Music is very popular through the Alexa devices.—BH
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