An integrated housing and care tech project supporting retirees will be delivered in South Lanarkshire, following Glasgow-based tech company Archangel securing a share of a £600,000 funding round from the UK Government.

Partnering with the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI) and Bield Housing & Care, the new project aims to cover around 25 homes within a Biggar retirement housing development, placing unobtrusive sensors to monitor property and wellbeing conditions such as temperature, humidity, and motion.

The data will then be sent to the Glasgow tech company’s ambient assisted living (AAL) technology platform and be automatically monitored around the clock so that if any issues arise affecting tenants or their living conditions, they can be quickly responded to.

The sensors themselves are connected to Angelnet, a connectivity network that includes broadband, mobile, and LoRaWAN (wireless low power long range wide area network).

The “Evaluating care delivery in rural settings” project is one of eleven digital health- and tech-focused projects from the Glasgow City region to have received investment from the latest round of the UK’s Department of Science, Innovation and Technology’s (DSIT) 5G Innovation Regions (5GIR) funding vehicle.

Speaking on the benefits of opening up data, Archangel’s CEO and founder Tom Morton said: “Data related to social housing, health, care and wellbeing is currently fragmented across multiple vendor systems and siloed datasets.

“This disjointed approach creates inefficiencies and hinders the large-scale adoption of IoT due to the costs associated with numerous single purpose systems and specialised skills required to manage them. It also weakens efforts to support integrated healthy, sustainable homes initiatives.

“This project showcases a smarter more cost-efficient approach to resolve these challenges using social housing data collection and presentation from multiple IoT (Internet of Things) devices via a unified communication infrastructure.

“It offers a single, holistic view of individuals and their home environments, allowing for collective decision-making and timely interventions.”

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Janette Hughes, director of planning and performance at DHI, also added: “This is ultimately about making housing safer and more responsive to personal circumstances for communities and allowing people to live happier, longer and more secure lives in their own properties.

“It is fantastic to see a Scottish business securing this type of funding as our role as a national innovation centre is to support research and innovation into digital health to help the people of Scotland live longer, healthier lives while supporting businesses access new funding and business opportunities.”