How Interactive Monitoring can Help Dealers GROW

Think outside the panel: Getting into interactive monitoring and related services can more easily lead to other revenue.

Now that the elections and their TV ads are over with, you might notice that replacing those politicians are ads for interactive home services and monitoring. Homeowners can lock or unlock a front door of their home from a thousand miles away. They can receive and respond to alarms on a smart phone or look in through a camera to make sure Mikey came home from school or Rover is not tearing up the house. They can monitor and manage home appliances ranging from a complex HVAC system to a simple coffee pot.

For homeowners, there are many choices — too many choices — and much confusion when it comes to home area networks, in-the-cloud apps, mobile devices and communications protocols with interactive systems and home appliances, home computers and printers, and even home entertainment systems. There is also the growing concern over computer, communications and identity security.

Overall, the future of interactive monitoring may hinge on the application of more and more sensors in homes.

For instance, in one project, the University of Alberta, Canada, and Glenrose Rehabilitation Hospital are working with IBM on a pilot aimed at providing researchers and students with insights on how to care for aging populations. IBM software correlates data from sensors capturing patient activity and replicates it in a virtual world using avatars that represent elderly patients in an independent living suite. Such applications may, one day, work in all types of homes and apartments with professional monitoring tied to multiple sensors and covering everything from security, health care and lighting to energy management, home entertainment and home networking.