On June 22nd 2021 a Webinar on Smart homes was organized by ISINNOVA and Smart Homes
Smart homes have received increased attention during the last year. Having spent more time in home office during the Covid-19 pandemic, many people became interested in improving their home. According to research firm Berg insight, in 2020 there was a total of 51,4 million smart homes in Europe. Forecasts predict that this number is expected to double by the end of 2024.
As smart homes require a lot of personal information and data, the aspects of responsible innovation play an important role.
Listen to the experts
Smart homes - Technology trends and state of the art
- Ad van Berlo is working in the area of smart houses & e-healt and is currently CEO and R&D manager at Smart Homes. He has 28 years of experience in smart home technology, smart living, care technology, e-health and telemedicine, particularly for ageing people. Smart homes was founded by Ad van Berlo in 1998 and has become the Dutch national expert centre for Smart Houses and Smart Living. He explained that almost 50% of the people in the Netherlands have at least one smart device (e.g. smart lighting, smart temperature controller), so inevitably, the market for Smart Homes is ever increasing and the possibilities are endless.
Data-Driven Care: Challenges and Opportunities for patients, carers, healthcare professionals and national systems
- Afroditi Konidari the CEO and co-founder of Tendertec, the award winning deep-tech start-up bringing remote people-centred care to the world. Tendertec addresses the care of vulnerable people in ageing societies and has launched its first product called CareBox, a remote monitoring platform enabling health and social care organisations deliver tailored care at the right time and at the right place 24/7. She explained the more technical side of Smart Homes, including Machine Learning and appliances in every day live to make our lives easier, safer, healthier or just bring more comfort.
Data security and privacy in a smart home
- Tijmen Schep is a technology critic, privacy designer and public speaker focusing on ethical innovation. He helps develop privacy enhancing technologies. His book “Design my Privacy” is used by universities of applied design across the Netherlands and Germany. By developing the “Candle”, a privacy friendly smart home prototype, he won a Dutch Privacy Award. He brought a sharp eye to the subject, explaining about all the privacy issues owning smart devices can bring us. Most people are aware that big tech companies use our data for reasons such as advertisement and research, but he also deliberately discussed the affects it can have on our social lives, which is called coveillance. For example, how do you want to throw a surprise party for your partner when this person can watch all activity happening in your house?
The presentations of the keynote speakers triggered many questions from the participants, such as:
- ‘How can be sure that all the data about our presence and use of the smart home are not used for other purposes that we don't know? Is the current EU data privacy regulation enough in this respect?’
- ‘Is it possible to move further on, from data privacy towards new data sharing or data altruism business models, where networks of users decide to share and use their smart home data to deliver benefits to all them together (e.g. peer-to-peer Exchange of energy storage capacity, etc)? How these could be incentivized/monetised?’
- ‘How can you assure that the privacy wishes of someone who does not have the capability anymore to explain this (e.g. well-advanced stage of dementia) are met?’
Contact the organizer
Svetlana Ivanova: sivanova@isinnova.org
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