Habit-Forming Medication Reminders

While technology can help elderly people with multiple prescriptions handle their medication regimes, Method, the London-based design firm behind the Nightingale system, recognized that many elderly people can be resistant to tech advancements.

Wearables make sense for younger generations, but seniors are often hesitant to respond to a wristband that gives them reminders. Instead the Nightingale system uses glowing LED lights placed at strategic points around a person's home, illuminating their everyday objects as gentle reminders to take medications. Thus, rather than a buzzing wristband or a ringing app, the Nightingale system incorporates pill-taking into its users daily routine, eventually encouraging habit-formation and less reliance on third-party reminders.

The system also comes with a chatbot called "Flo" that tracks whether a user is taking their pills (via a device placed on the cap of pill bottles) and acts as an intuitive guide to medication advice. In all, the Nightingale system could represent a happy medium between fully integrated IoT and a tech-free environment by actively weaning its users off of its own service.