An 86-year-old resident of Tokyo’s Inagi who lives alone has few opportunities to socialize with her neighbors and only exchanges greetings with them

So, the woman found reassurance in replacing the bulb at the living room of her home with the HelloLight in February.

If the light is not turned off or turned on within 24 hours, her family members or acquaintances who are registered beforehand will be notified by email.

If her contacted relatives cannot visit the woman, personnel from Yamato Transport Co. will be commissioned to stop at her house under the Kuroneko monitoring service, which was put in place by the delivery agent in 2021.

“If something happens to me and I am unable to contact anyone for a week or so, that will cause trouble to my family and neighbors,” she said. “Now I have nothing to worry about with this service.”

A rapidly increasing number of people are applying for the monthly service priced at 1,078 yen ($8.10), with a total of 7,000 applicants recorded by the end of February.

In 40 cases, Yamato’s officials have reportedly dropped in at users’ homes in place of relatives.

HOME APPLIANCE MONITORING LESS INTRUSIVE

The service is among an increasing number of businesses that are incorporating offerings to keep watch on elderly individuals living by themselves.

Many do so by notifying their family members living elsewhere of any potential problems based on home appliance use and dropping in on them in lieu of relatives under subscription programs.

The market for those services is expected to expand further, as many people are concerned about the risk of "lonely deaths."

Among such products utilizing information and computing technology to care for senior citizens are Mitsubishi Electric Corp.’s air conditioner and refrigerator released in February.

The electronics are furnished with a feature to look after elderly customers by sharing their usage data with family members living apart.

The newly pitched offering carries a price tag of 1,080 yen per month and does not include personal visits.

“Watching over the use of home appliances seems more appropriate than surveillance with cameras,” said a representative of Mitsubishi Electric. “A growing number of elderly individuals live healthily on their own. Demand will continue from now on.”

Tokyo Gas Co. in April 2022 released a service under which doors of bathrooms and other facilities are fitted with sensors to enable a call center to contact patrons by phone in the event that they are not opened or closed for 24 hours.

The service is accessible to not only individuals living alone in the Tokyo metropolitan area but also owners of rental properties.

Zojirushi Corp. started sending data on the way its electric kettles are used to customers’ families via email 20 years ago.

In one instance, the family of this product’s user reportedly wondered why an electric kettle was left unused and phoned the relative.

The customer said there was “no problem” on the other end of the line, but a family member who rushed to the scene found the patron having breathing difficulties. The user was then quickly rushed to a hospital.

MUNICIPALITIES STEPPING IN

Some local governments distribute part of such care services as gifts under the “furusato nozei” (hometown tax payment) project. Subsidies are available in certain regions as well.

Inagi city, one of the 18 municipalities taking advantage of the HelloLight program, will cover all costs of the introduction of the Yamato monitoring service if applicants aged 75 or older are residing alone.

As many as 180 households are relying on the offering in the city’s three-year trial from fiscal 2022.

Inagi has been bolstering its personal visit project for elderly residents living on their own but has been facing the challenge of securing human resources needed to meet its objective.

Takahiro Arai, a divisional chief at the city’s welfare department for senior citizens, said he expects the HelloLight to assist in the conventional endeavor.

“We hope the equipment will complement our face-to-face monitoring, rather than provide complete peace of mind on its own,” said Arai.

In recent years, solitary deaths have been becoming increasingly problematic in society. The number of people aged 65 or over who lived alone and died at home in Tokyo’s 23 wards came to 4,207 in 2020.

The findings of a survey by the Cabinet Office show more than half of live-alone individuals 60 years or older feel that the possibility of lonely deaths is their “own problem.”

Against that backdrop, the sales of monitoring services and emergency report solutions for elderly people for use at nursing care homes and elsewhere totaled 26.2 billion yen in 2020, according to research firm Seed Planning Inc.

The figure is projected to rise 1.5-fold to 38.1 billion yen in 2030.