A ground-breaking integrated housing and care technology project in South Lanarkshire has been awarded major funding from the UK Government, aimed at enhancing independent living for older residents.

The project, by Glasgow-based technology firm Archangel and supported by Bield Housing and the Digital Health & Care Innovation Centre (DHI), will utilise Archangel's cutting-edge technology to monitor environmental conditions and resident well-being within a Bield retirement housing development in Biggar.

The project will utilise discreet sensors to monitor key environmental factors such as temperature, humidity, and motion within individual homes and the development as a whole. This data will be collected and analysed through Archangel's secure Angelnet network, enabling proactive monitoring and timely interventions to support resident well-being and ensure a safe and comfortable living environment.

This initiative is part of the UK Government's Smart & Connected Social Places (SCSP) 5G Innovation Fund, which aims to support the development and deployment of innovative digital health and care solutions.

Gavin Wright, Head of Property Management at Bield, commented: "This project enables us to explore IoT (Internet of Things) expansion as part of our digital strategy and aligns closely with the Smart Social Housing initiative which aims to tackle a major challenge in housing, health and social care: the fragmentation of data across disconnected systems."

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Tom Morton, Archangel’s CEO and founder, explained: "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 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."

Professor Soumen Sengupta, Director of Health and Social Care for South Lanarkshire, said: "A key objective of South Lanarkshire’s Local Housing Strategy is that people with particular needs are better supported to live independently within the community in a suitable, sustainable home. The integrated deployment of digital technologies will have an increasingly important role in this and I am looking forward to the sharing of the lessons learnt from this project across our local authority area, the wider Glasgow City region and the country as a whole."

Janette Hughes, Director of Planning and Performance with DHI who alerted Archangel to the funding opportunity, 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."