AI is making significant strides in lots of industries, but its adoption in long-term care facilities stays slow and difficult. While AI has the potential to revolutionise patient care through fall detection, bedsore prevention, and sleep quality assessments, the road to widespread deployment has been anything but fast. That is a problem of great importance for investors, care home managers, and system integrators, all of whom are keenly aware of the transformative potential AI offers. Yet, despite its promise, AI in long-term care shouldn’t be being implemented on the speed or scale we’d expect.
That isn’t to say AI needs to be thoughtlessly embraced with none safeguarding or checks, but there may be a transparent apprehension within the care industry that’s causing the sector to fall behind with the times. Should you look elsewhere, there may be more openness to AI coming from other industries, even in numerous health sectors. AI is being utilised increasingly more to diagnose diseases, or to coach medical examiners and to make their lives easier, so why should it not be the identical in long-term care?
What Enterprise Capitalists Should Know
For enterprise capitalists, long-term care AI is appealing for several reasons. First, healthcare software is usually sold through recurring licensing agreements, which makes corporations offering these solutions prime acquisition targets. Corporations with recurring income streams, especially in a sector as robust as healthcare, are attractive for acquisition at premium valuations. Recent market activity underscores this: as an example, in July 2024, Nordic Capital acquired Oslo-based Senso, while Avasure picked up San Francisco-based Ouva, signalling a hotbed of investment within the long-term care space.
But despite these market drivers, VCs often ask, “Which technology will dominate?” There are lots of contenders – wearables, radar, and optical sensors—but identifying the winning solution shouldn’t be easy for them.
Care Home Managers: Navigating Competing Agendas
The core issue for long-term care providers is a growing staff shortage. AI may help by increasing caregiver productivity by 20-30%, making it an important tool for maintaining quality care within the face of resource constraints. Nonetheless, managers need to concentrate on the competing agendas amongst suppliers. Many system integrators have established long-term relationships with care homes, and they won’t be fully incentivized to embrace AI. The rationale is straightforward: their revenue is determined by selling and maintaining current, often outdated, systems. These systems are starting to be overshadowed by the introduction of AI, that simplifies the whole lot and uses less equipment, reminiscent of just one camera where it will probably be combined with computer vision learning.
Long-term care facilities rely heavily on these outdated technologies, often installed by system integrators with vested financial interests in maintaining the establishment. The list of products currently in use includes infrared motion sensors, door contacts, acoustic monitoring, bed sensors, and wearable devices. While these systems are functional, they’re removed from optimal in that they generate so many false alarms that care givers develop alarm fatigue. The advantage to the system integrators is that these systems require frequent maintenance and support.
For system integrators specialising in security, the long-term care market presents a promising opportunity. Security is an overcrowded, competitive space—a “red ocean”. In contrast, long-term care facilities represent an emerging “blue ocean” because of the introduction of AI. There’s money to be made by those willing to pivot to this burgeoning market, but they have to understand the unique challenges that AI brings to the table.
The Overwhelming Problem in Care
The issues facing the long-term care sector are immense and twofold:
- Increased demand for care, driven by a rapidly ageing population and longer life expectancy.
- A dwindling supply of caregivers, exacerbated by declining birth rates over the past several a long time. A recent evaluation found that the UK fertility rate is falling faster than another G7 nation, dropping by 8%.
Globally, the marketplace for care beds is ready to blow up—from 63 million today to 121 million by 2050. The challenge is tips on how to meet this rising demand while managing limited human resources. Care staff across the globe are already overworking, with long working hours, poor pay and high stress, causing increasingly more of them to understandably leave the industry.
Why AI Adoption Is Taking So Long
The slow uptake of AI in long-term care boils all the way down to 4 key aspects:
- System Integrator Resistance: AI threatens to switch the multiple sensors currently utilized in care facilities with a single, camera-based solution powered by advanced computer vision. This, in turn, threatens the revenue streams of incumbent system integrators. In some ways, this case mirrors other well-documented business battles—like Netflix vs. Blockbuster or digital cameras vs. Kodak and Polaroid. The disruptive potential of AI is obvious, however the reluctance of existing players to embrace it’s equally evident.
- Hardware Lag: MIT robotics expert Rodney Brooks points out that while software adoption happens at lightning speed (consider ChatGPT reaching 100 million users in two months), hardware takes far longer to implement. AI-powered solutions require physical cameras, cabling, and installation, which inherently slows down the adoption process.
- Training and Cultural Barriers: In long-term care, young caregivers learn on the job from more experienced staff. While this mentorship model has its benefits, it also creates a major barrier to adopting latest technologies like AI. Caregivers trained in traditional methods are sometimes immune to learning tips on how to work with advanced systems, which might decelerate integration.
- Perception: AI has come under immense criticism, sometimes understandably but sometimes attributable to a scarcity of education on the topic. There’s a fear that AI goes to switch jobs in healthcare, taking away income from hard-working people. Nonetheless, when AI is created and applied accurately, the goal shouldn’t be to remove jobs, but to reinforce and make people’s jobs easier and permit them to concentrate on the vital parts of care work.
Conclusion: The Future Is Here—However it’s arriving slowly
AI offers transformative potential for long-term care, however the adoption process is way slower than it must be. Care home managers must recognize the chance AI presents for improving productivity, even when it challenges the present supplier landscape. Enterprise capitalists should regulate vision technology that unifies and improves current fragmented systems. System integrators who pivot to supply AI-based solutions in long-term care can position themselves for fulfillment in a growing and underserved market.
Ultimately, the introduction of AI into long-term care can be a slow but inevitable process. The query is not if AI will transform this sector, but how quickly it’ll occur—and who will lead the charge.
