What needs will shape elderly care in 2030? By exploring possible future technologies and social changes, Halogen has designed systems that enable quick and safe handling of the needs of the elderly.

The goal is to provide  elderly people with a greater sense of safety at home, and give healthcare staff more time with each person they visit.

Expertise in digital technology and safety-critical systems

Through welfare technology such as emergency alarms and other alerts, elderly people can receive assistance when accidents or problems occur at home. Operators are on standby to handle regular calls.

Tellu, a technology company, provides digital services that connect the alarm system with the response centre. The company recognized Halogen's expertise in safety-critical systems, where lives and health are at stake, and together we set out to design a secure and effective alarm system.

Our approach was to accompany the operators at work. Through observation and interviews, we identified daily challenges they faced while responding to calls. We discovered, among other things, that operators struggled to find relevant information in the system. This lack of situational awareness created uncertainty in important decisions.

Scenarios to prioritise functionality

To ensure safe operation and minimise the risk of misjudgment, we wanted to map information needs throughout the operator's workflow.

Halogen invited the operators to a workshop where we used methods from safety-critical design to document the flow, criticality, and frequency of information in various scenarios.

This helped us find the most effective way to design an alarm system that best supports elderly people living at home, and assists the healthcare staff caring for them.