Serai Care, FHNW School of Computer Science

The entire world is ageing rapidly, and Switzerland even more than the global average: today, nearly one in five people is over 65, and by 2030 this proportion will rise to almost one in four. As more older adults wish to live independently for longer, healthcare and long term care systems face growing pressure. Serai Care project, carried out in collaboration with Serai AG (https://www.serai.ch/Home), addresses this challenge by re-imagining ordinary homes as environments that can intelligently support safe and independent living.

Over 80% of severe injuries among older adults result from falls, therefore, the project concentrates on fall detection and prevention. Serai Care explores how video based monitoring, combined with advanced artificial intelligence, can analyse daily activities, identify potential risks, and support the timely detection of critical events. Compared to single purpose sensors, video based approaches provide richer contextual information, enabling more accurate and personalised assessments of in home safety.

Protecting privacy and building trust are central to the project’s design. Serai Care draws on recent advances in computer vision, generative AI, and privacy preserving technologies to reduce the amount of sensitive personal data that needs to be processed or stored. Privacy considerations are integrated throughout the entire system, from data capture to analysis and end-user interaction.

Innovatively, the project utilizes virtual reality (VR) to generate realistic synthetic data for training AI models, which helps limit the use of real in home recordings. With VR or with videos, Generative AI methods are explored to create synthetic data to improve performance in challenging situations, such as poor lighting or partially occluded views, while keeping identifiable information to a minimum.

By opting for off the shelf sensors and existing wireless infrastructure, Serai Care is working towards solutions that are scalable, accessible, and economically viable. Integrating advanced technology with human centered design methodologies, the project supports older adults in living safely and confidently in their own homes while providing reassurance to caregivers and contributing to more sustainable models of senior care in Switzerland.