Family Care is similar to amazon's paid offering, Alexa Together, which the company It was quietly discontinued earlier this yearSamsung’s service leverages the smart devices in a person’s home and applies ai to determine their daily patterns and send alerts to a caregiver if anomalies are detected — for example, it can send a notification when there’s been activity in the morning (such as using a Galaxy phone) or if there hasn’t been.
According to a press release from Samsung, the Family Care service also helps caregivers set up and receive reminders for things like checking blood pressure and taking medications, and allows them to set up and manage smart home routines in their family member’s home. Samsung says the service will also allow a user to schedule medical appointments through their Galaxy smartphone or Samsung TV (2024 and later models). Additionally, location alerts allow caregivers to receive a notification when their family member leaves or arrives at a location, which is helpful for making sure they made it to those appointments.
There are other features, too. Samsung says a caregiver can use Family Care to set up SmartThings automations to do things like turn on an air purifier when the outside air quality drops, turn off an induction cooktop if it’s left on, or see inside the refrigerator to find out what groceries their loved one might need — assuming they have connected Samsung appliances. It’s not clear whether the service will work with any non-Samsung devices connected to the SmartThings platform.
Smart home technology has great potential to help seniors age in place (live independently in their homes for longer), especially as it allows a caregiver to stay in touch digitally. However, there have been problems with current technology: connected devices can be complicated to set up, difficult to maintain remotely, and don't always work consistently enough to rely on. Best Buy and amazon have attempted to solve these problems with paid services in this space: Best Buy launched Life insured in 2017, and amazon launched Alexa Together in 2021. Both have since been discontinued.
While Samsung’s Family Care service is free, it requires a Galaxy smartphone and relies on Samsung home appliances and, presumably, a SmartThings hub. (We’ve reached out to Samsung for clarification.) All of this may be a barrier to entry for many. The company’s application of ai technology to improve the service could help with reliability and usability issues with some smart home devices, but it’s not clear exactly how ai integrates with the service.
Family Care can be downloaded from the Life tab of the site SmartThings App Starting August 16th.
