Apple officially introduced its first-ever smart wearable, Apple Watch, at its first new product release in 2015, showing that Apple has advanced with a stride in the health and medical area.

Health function is one of the main functionalities of Apple Watch. This watch may record the heart rate data of the wearer with its heart rate sensor. One of its built-in apps, Workout, may help the user to record his or her own health data, including exercise data, calorie data and fat burning rate, etc. It also has the additional function for choosing the measuring units of distance, body temperature, height, weight and blood sugar, and it can even proactively remind the user when it is good time to do exercise. Apple Watch may provide health functions with third-party apps.

The “feeling of being accompanied” from intelligent elderly care

Products like Apple Watch will be gradually introduced into the life of elderly people. With modern smart devices, internet and information technology, an invisible safety network will be formed for providing easy, timely and effective care for the elderly. Take the Memo Box that has occurred recently as an example. When it is time to take medicine, the indication light on the Memo Box begins to flash, and an alarm is given every two seconds. Both sound and light alarms are given. With this easy-to-use Memo Box, the problem of telling the elderly to take medicine on time has been addressed.

Smart home for elderly care may be considered as a new type of social services for supporting elderly care in a warm family. This model not only fits for our traditional Chinese culture, but also fits the needs of most elderly people. It uses the internet of things technology to enable people to remotely monitor the daily life of their old parents with smart sensing and recognition technology, which breaks our traditional way of thinking.

As the smart voice technology is so popular, we may consider combining elderly care with this popular technology. Elderly people do not like feeling lonely. They do not have high requirements for a very good material life, but have the need for an assured “feeling of being accompanied”. It is said that OKVoice, a human-oriented voice technology provider, once suggested that human beings may create such a “feeling of being accompanied” with the voice technology. Try to imagine that we can use voice technology to synthesize the voices of the elderly people’s children for reading messages for the elderly, reminding them to take medicines on time and keep on doing exercise, and at the same time, we can use highly accurate voice recognition technology and semantics recognition technology to answer the questions and solve the uncertainties of the elderly, chat with them and perform as per their instructions. Though such companion cannot completely replace our care in reality, it may still be an ideal approach for people to fulfill their filial piety in the future world.

Elderly people should be able to enjoy the remaining time in their lives, those in their prime times should be able to contribute their talents and abilities, children should be able to grow up safe and sound, and those widows, orphans, empty-nest elderly and disabled people should be supported. Piety is the priority in Chinese culture from the past to date. In the future, same as the prevalence of smart phone, intelligent elderly care will also be introduced into the home of more ordinary people, as it not only reassures the people about elderly care, but also improves the quality of life and sense of happiness of the elderly people to the best. With intelligent elderly care, we will be able to do more for our parents in return for what they have done for us in their lifetime!