According to news reports, on January 9th, during an official business session in front of both the French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Senioradom, a telecare company, and Sigfox, a Internet-of-Things (IoT) connectivity service provider, signed a strategic agreement to begin telecare solution deployment in the Chinese market.
The Telecare Solution for Seniors
By working together, the companies have developed a telecare solution made up of different movement sensors and door opening detection, as well as an alert and geo-localization necklace. The solution has been designed to automatically detect any potential behavioural anomalies due to a fall, a person feeling faint or a deteriorating mental condition such as Alzheimer’s. Thanks to the auto-learning algorithms developed by Senioradom, which have been operating successfully in France for the past 3 years, together with Sigfox’s technology that allows the transmission of data at a very low cost and with minimum energy use, this innovative solution will allow different cities in China to better protect their elderly populations by anticipating risks and responding faster in emergencies.
The Chinese Market
China has 200 million senior citizens who will benefit from such a telecare solution. A rural exodus of the active population towards major cities and the low-income levels of a large proportion of the elderly population, as well as a lack of hospitals and doctors, has pushed China to find affordable solutions that are quick to deploy, to help the Chinese administration face this significant social challenge. Thanks to this partnership, hospitalization and medical costs will be significantly reduced due to the prevention of dangerous situations.
The Deployment Plan
With this signing, the Chengdu High-Tech Industrial Development Zone has committed an investment of about  €300M to deploy the solution in China’s 20 biggest cities, following a one-year, 1500-person trial, beginning in 2018 in the city of Chengdu.