Yu Genxing, a 76-year-old living in Jincheng Community of Suzhou city, turned on his TV and hit the menu of “home-based care”. Then he asked for a doctor to take his wife’s blood pressure through video. Just 15 minutes later, a community doctor came to Yu’s home.
This is China’s first “smart home-based elder caring system” for trial operation, marking that home-based old-age care in Suzhou has stepped into the “cloud era” (cloud computing era).
The home-based elder caring system is operated by use of radio and television cable information network and cloud media network technology. As the community service center is connected with service target family by camera and cable TV network, old people at home can have a video conversation with working staffs and tell them what is needed by cable TV network.
At present, the system has been put into trial operation in Jincheng Community and Qingyi Community in Suzhou, covering nearly all the services old people need, such as house-cleaning, laundry, shopping, cooking, home medical service (medicine delivery) and so on, with the local government bearing the operation cost of the system.
Suzhou is an experimental field for exploration of new old-age supporting mode in China. In 2007 the first daycare center in China was set up in Suzhou, providing a place for dining, entertainment and relaxation for old people who are unwilling to live in nursing home. Later, first virtual nursing home in China was also set up in Suzhou, which, by virtues of modern technology, can provide convenient services such as housekeeping, shopping and so on and thus called “an old people’s home without walls”.