St. Mary provides housing, services and connections to its senior residents — about 1,000 in Dayton-area apartments, according to St. Mary President Tim Bete. In the last three years a portion of those residents, with an average annual income of $12,300 and who were unfamiliar with computer technology, got Amazon Echo devices and training on how to use the AI assistant Alexa.
“One of the things we had to explain to people is that Alexa is a computer and not a real person,” Bete said.
It started with a 2019 survey of 208 residents in St. Mary’s affordable-housing senior communities. They reported trouble accessing health and community services, mostly due to a lack of convenient transportation. The great increase in telehealth services during the pandemic helped, but that required access to an internet-connected device and a baseline of computer skills.
Half of residents surveyed owned a smartphone, and a quarter owned a laptop — but that’s well below national averages. Forty percent of those surveyed didn’t use the internet at all, often because they lacked access.
St. Mary followed up with a 2020 project to teach residents how to use Alexa. They installed free Wi-Fi in four of St. Mary’s apartment buildings, and gave Echoes to 120 residents. Then trainers from Trillnovo, a technology support company for older people, showed the residents how to use them and what Alexa could do.
Introducing technology
Once people had access to one computing device, coupled with enough training to give them confidence, they became interested in exploring other technology, St. Mary found.
One factor in getting people to change and grow is showing how that change can solve a problem. Most of the residents’ problems didn’t involve technology — but technology could solve them, Bete said. Reminding them to take medication and helping them talk to grandchildren were two big benefits of learning to use Echoes, he said.
St. Mary personnel knew residents’ introduction to technology had to be as simple as possible, Bete said. Cost was a big inhibitor too.
“If you’ve never used something before, why would you put your money into it before you know what it can do?” he said.
But once people became familiar with Alexa’s capabilities, such as playing music on command, even lower-income residents indicated willingness to subscribe to paid services for the content they wanted, Bete said.
Planners knew they had to provide free training, and account for different learning styles, Bete said.
Multiple area programs and foundations chipped in to pay for providing internet, Echoes and training. The total cost per year averages $154 per person, Bete said: $24 to provide Wi-Fi, $40 each for Amazon Echoes, and $90 for training — though that varied depending on how much help each person needed.
Reaping benefits
The 2019 study showed residents preferred voice-activated devices, and the Echoes gave many of them internet access for the first time. By far, the most popular use was playing music; but after trainers demonstrated what the devices could do, residents showed interest in learning more.
The program helped residents in five important ways, according to a St. Mary news release.
- It reminded people of medication schedules and medical appointments.
- It helped people with limited cell phone plans and no landline phones connect with friends and family.
- It provided entertainment such as music and audiobooks.
- Residents started talking more with each other about what their devices could do, even linking their Echoes so they could check on each other.
- Familiarity with simple voice-operated devices, easier to use than keyboards, made people interested in learning more complex technology.
St. Mary is working on wiring all its residential buildings for Wi-Fi within the next year or two, Bete said.
They’re talking with other organizations, looking for complementary initiatives, he said. Amazon just invested $4 billion in a healthcare company, so better access to health information may be “right around the corner,” Bete said.
Now St. Mary is starting to test Amazon Show, which is “Echo with a screen on it,” he said. St. Mary is also adding digital screens in its buildings to provide information.
“Our next step is to see whether we can do the same thing but see if we can put it on televisions within apartments,” Bete said.
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