Thanks to a “Global Explorers” grant from Innovate UK, the team at Audar Health had the opportunity to visit key international events and uncover cutting-edge developments in care technology. From AI-driven health solutions to interactive robotic companions, Reuben Howe shares key takeaways from events in Paris, Dusseldorf, Copenhagen, and beyond—highlighting what UK care providers might have missed and what the future could hold.
The months between November and March are filled with trade shows, industry talks and society meetings (not to mention award shows!) which serve to highlight the current state of the care sector, and shine a spotlight on its future.
These shows are valuable to the future of the sector, and yet the majority of UK care homes don’t have the time and staff to attend. Beyond the shores of the UK there are also many international care events, which UK care groups attend even more rarely.
Luckily, the team at Hertfordshire-based company Audar Health were able to attend a wide range of these shows thanks to a “Global Explorers” grant from Innovate UK. A member of their team, Reuben Howe, shares the best (and strangest) finds that you might have missed from the last few months of international events in order to share international insights and new technologies:
Silver Economy Paris: Weird and Wonderful
The event I remember most vividly is Silver Economy, in Paris. The event covered recruitment and education as well as technology and the care providers themselves. Both care homes and home care providers took part, so there was plenty of innovation that would be applicable to the UK care market too.
Blue Frog Robotics – Interactive Companions
When we walked in, one of the first stalls to the right featured a wheeled robot about 2 feet high, with a colourful animated face and chirpy sound effects!
This was the work of Blue Frog Robotics, and the “Buddy” project was more than just a funny robot frame. Buddy actually began as a remote learning aid for those with disabilities or immune disorders, but recently has found application in care homes.
Behind all the novelty of an interactive robot companion, Blue Frog have made Buddy a “Hub” which can connect vital sign monitors, location trackers and other peripheral devices. This means a home can store and collate a resident’s data in an attractive, interactive package that also provides stimulation and reactive engagement. If data is pointing to a user experiencing discomfort, not eating meals or some such, the robot can take an active role in “empathising” with the resident, which can help them report the issue to staff.
For us at Audar this sort of “hub” tech is really important because our watches are seamlessly integrable with IoT connection. This means we can send data to hubs like this robot, and add value to the device. In fact, our research with the University of Essex was focused on emotion recognition. In the future, we may see interactive robots that are equipped with peripherals that can monitor emotional states, creating a reactive and engaging companion for residents.
Telecom Design – Resident-Based Hub Units
Building on that idea of a “hub” for multiple devices and purposes, the “Vibby” from Telecom Design is a unit which hosts health and wellbeing tracking.
Usable for both home care and care homes, Vibby units are particularly good for residents who are more independent and want an active engagement in their own care and health. We’ve seen, from working in the care sector, how sometimes people connote being old with being helpless but that’s not the reality for a lot of older residents.
A resident might have one very strict requirement in one area of their life, but actually the rest of the time they’re quite autonomous and need active involvement in their own care.
Vibby allows a resident to receive messages, listen to radio, check things like the weather, track their activity and health, and all of this can be shared to the care home to keep peace of mind about the resident’s increased independence.
Vibby currently has watches in the UK, with the fancy base units only available in France for now. They are keen to expand that franchise over here, though, so it’s worth looking out for this sort of tech in the UK market in the year to come.
Medica Dusseldorf: Rules and Regulation
Medica is the largest international medical industry event. For those who haven’t been I really can’t begin to explain how vast Medica is. As a technology company, and one focused on care specifically, we were targeting just one hall of the 6+ available.
Medica is like a separate microcosm within Dusseldorf, and navigating it can actually feel like navigating a city!
Regulation and Reliability
Attending Medica really hammers home the amount of work it takes for a product or solution to be deployed. Not even internationally, just within one nation.
Of course, in the UK we have the NHS, they have an NHS suppliers list. But there are hoops of regulation and trials to pass before attempting to get to that stage, and private services detached from the NHS have their own set of rules.
Visiting Medica made it clear that the UK is “behind” when it comes to these initiatives. While our innovation levels are high, our follow-through is lower. Solutions are deployed sporadically and in individual boroughs or even individual care homes, with little integration across the wider nation.
Conversely, France and Germany have stuck with innovations through to completion and then enforced those successful factors as regulation. For example, a fall detection and SOS alarm device over there must be a specific size. The face has to be able to trigger the SOS when pressed at a specific pressure, and pressed from any individual point on the face.
In the UK, we don’t have that sort of specification, because we haven’t deployed solutions like this en masse yet.
The NHS 10 Year Plan aims to invest millions of pounds into wearable health monitors by 2035, so perhaps by the end of that process we can expect to see the UK “catch up” and form some regulatory specifications which help innovators like ourselves get our solutions deployed into the care sector, doing the good work that we built them to do.
AI4Healthcare Copenhagen: Mythbusting the AI Trend
AI seemed like the buzzword of 2024, no matter what sector you work in. We saw it in art, science, manufacturing, copywriting, marketing, even interior design. Visiting the AI4Healthcare (As in “AI for Healthcare”) event in Copenhagen helped refine the discussion on AI into one that actually addressed the care sector, and dispelled a lot of myths.
Hadrian Health – AI is New and Old
When some of you read “AI” just now you’ll immediately have thought of AI generated imagery and videos and music. It makes sense, since those are the audio-visual representations we have of AI, and certainly the most accessible to the public.
The truth is, though, that AI has existed for far longer than that. Machine learning has been pivotal to medical devices and programming for years. We ourselves at Audar have used AI in our emotion detection and fall detection algorithms.
The simplest way I can contextualise AI in healthcare is this: As humans we know that one person having a heart rate of 60bpm is fine, while a different person having a heart rate of 60bpm is definitely not fine, based on the conditions they have and medical history and resting heart rate etc.
A computer, processing data, would have no way of “knowing” that one value of 60bpm is good and the other value of 60bpm is bad.
This is where AI comes in. By “teaching” the system to check other data in addition to that 60bpm, and change the “good” or “bad” rating based on a collation of that information, the system “learns”. Over time, human input is required less and less, until the AI can operate with high enough efficiency that it can be deployed.
This is just one example of how AI is used in data handling for healthcare, and as you can see it’s not deciding what treatment someone gets or prescribing medication to a patient based on info that they put in a chat box!
The biggest takeaway, based on my understanding of how many in the UK still view AI, is that it really won’t be as “in-your-face” as people think. AI will change how your quality management system works or how your data is handled, maybe even how the CQC operates, but on a day-to-day basis and in terms of staff working times there’ll be very little change due to AI at first.
It’s not that Copenhagen was uninspiring, it’s just in terms of the care home sector in the UK specifically, I don’t think there’s as dramatic a change there as many people are expecting.
Arab Health – The Cutting Edge in Medical Tech
The final event of this globe-trotting journey was Arab Health. This event was focussed more on the innovation side of healthcare, with less care home and home care information but much more research, technology and again: AI.
Alameda AI – Brain Diagnosis and Treatment Via AI
While I did see that day-to-day use of AI in the care sector is unlikely to be the revolution people expect, I also saw evidence to the contrary. Alameda AI are working on AI diagnosis and healthcare for brain diseases. As a growing number of our elderly population develop Dementia (Now sitting at around 1 million individuals in the UK) brain diseases are more and more of a focus for innovative solutions.
If breakthroughs in AI on the medical side can diagnose and care for these conditions, that could have a knock-on effect which sees fewer elderly people so quickly admitted into care facilities, instead staying independent or easily cared for at home.
So, while the developments I saw at Arab Health weren’t really directly applicable to the UK care sector on the surface, the outcomes of this sort of tech nonetheless have the potential to revolutionise care.
Kinvent – Modular Muscular Measurement
One company that did catch my eye at Arab Health, whose technology is much more directly applicable to care, is Kinvent. A French company (Though strangely absent from Silver Economy Paris!), they have developed modular measurement devices for physiotherapy and muscle usage.
Rather than relying just on general statistics like weight or a step counter, they use specialised devices which measure pressure, exertion and strength in 40+ muscles. This means we could more accurately diagnose and identify muscle conditions such as muscular wastage.
Keeping active has always been vital to enhancing the lives of those in care, and with a modular solution like this, carers would be able to accurately plot the muscular health of residents, down to even if they have more function in their right arm compared to their left!
It’s intriguing to see such specialised data in real time, visualising how our muscles work and noticing differences we wouldn’t otherwise know about. For example, I discovered that I lift far more weight in a shorter time with my left arm, because I am right-handed and therefore over-compensate when using my left for anything strenuous.
Combine this micro-level muscular data with more general passive measurement like vital sign information from our Audar E2, and I can see a complete health monitoring solution is actually accessible to the UK care market within the decade.
Participating in the Sector in 2025
With 2025 ahead of us, there’s still a chance for care homes in the UK to get involved with the sector at large. While it’s unlikely many of the UK care groups can spare the time and staff to attend these international events, local ones such as the Care Roadshows South at Epsom Downs are a great way to see these innovations and insights in our own country.
I’d be happy to talk in more detail with anyone interested in remote monitoring, regulations, research or anything else so if you see a Reuben Howe representing Audar Health at any event or social for the sector, do say “Hi”!
You can sign up to attend UK care sector events by region here: https://www.careroadshows.co.uk/
You can find more information about Audar Health and the Audar E2 at their website here: www.audarhealth.com.
