A discreet device with bold ambitions to transform health and social care

Just two short years ago, Supersense Technologies was a fledgling idea dreamt up by two friends to improve dementia care through AI. Today, the team is poised to expand their solution across the East of England, and have a vision to help foster healthy ageing, cut hospital admissions, and ease pressures on health and social care systems in the UK and beyond. 

Led by electronics engineers Matt Ash and James Brown, Supersense is one of five technologies to reach the finalist stage of the Longitude Prize on Dementia. After a successful Discovery phase – structured around prototype co-design, piloting, and robust user feedback – the team now has 14 months (and £300,000) to progress their innovation and develop their business plan, tapping into Longitude Prize on Dementia support along the way. “It’s amazing to have that tick of approval,” says James. “It validates what we’re doing and sets us up to do a lot more development and really build the community and the support that goes with what we’re trying to do.”

A small device with big effects 

SenS2 is a small hub the size of a Wi-Fi hub installed in the homes of people living with dementia. It uses a radar sensor (rather than more intrusive cameras or microphones) to monitor people’s day-to-day activity across multiple rooms, while protecting their privacy. By drawing on a model of what’s normal for an individual – their “patterns of life” – the technology can identify abnormal activity, monitor trends, and send alerts to caregivers, translating complex data into simple messaging. For example, it will be able to notify caregivers if people are restless at night or have a fall (common with dementia), enabling swift interventions, and building knowledge about how a person’s condition is developing. The system can also flag problems with household data like abnormal room temperature or excessive water use. 

Overall, it “allows carers and the individual to adapt to changing needs very early and mitigate the risk of a crisis,” says Matt, whose experience as a remote carer for his mother – diagnosed with dementia in 2021 – inspired him to co-create Supersense. Ultimately, early recognition and interventions help people maintain their independence for longer.

Learning lessons from families

Supersense has spent the past year running a pilot in ten homes in eastern England, tuning into the needs and experiences of “the user[s] at the heart of this,” says James. “We’ve had daily interactions with [these families] for a year now,” adds Matt. “They’ve really accepted us into the conversation, so we’ve learnt an incredible amount from them.” Responses have been positive, with one user commenting: “I feel protected and I like the fact that my daughters know how to help me.” 

An emphasis on co-design and user feedback has directly shaped the tech. “A number of features have been developed with those families based purely on what they’ve requested,” explains Matt. “On occasions we’ve come in with ideas for features and it’s been blank faces, and then they’ve revealed what they actually want from it and we’ve built it for them – so it’s just a really valuable way of quickly discovering what the system needs to do.”

Another discovery has been that “people with dementia are really accepting of technology if it can help them stay independent for longer,” Matt says. Developments in AI and large language interfaces are critical here, lowering the bar on technology entry and making it less intimidating and easier to use.  “I think people with dementia really see that opportunity to start to engage with this technology more, because they believe it can really help them in their day-to-day lives,” he explains. “So that was really exciting for us because it matches our ambition to use the new developments in technology to help this underserved community.”  

The team was also struck by the value that carers place on simplicity. “They want the answers rather than having to scrutinise really complicated data, because they’ve got so much going on in their lives,” Matt says. “That was a real insight that came up again and again.” 

The pilot also sharpened their awareness of the importance of openness, trust, and privacy. “It was a real experience for us in learning how to build trust with families and how to explain [the system’s operations], in the right way,” says Matt. This included important conversations about the collection, ownership, and use of data: transparency about data use has been “front and centre of our trust-building,” adds James. 

Opening up access to Supersense

Next steps include expanding the pilot to reach more families – carefully chosen to reflect diverse socioeconomic backgrounds. “The nature of the technology and everyone’s own personal experiences of dementia mean that we need to talk to more people, to build that community, to really help us make sure that we’re not missing anyone out, […] to support a really broad need,” says James. “The challenge put to us [by the Longitude Prize on Dementia] and that we’ve really embraced is that we need to go out there and make sure we really understand the need.”

Thinking through accessibility and affordability is core to this. The team has been working with Essex County Council to access carers and dementia networks, and will now expand the pilot across the region. Sensitivity to cultural diversity is vital: “the language of dementia […] and the culture of care is going to be different for different [communities], so that’s part of our outreach, to make sure that we’re being really inclusive,” James says.  

When it comes to keeping costs down, AI and other technologies play a critical role, helping bring the solution to a wider community earlier. Supersense engineers are working to identify which elements need human input and what can be automated to help manage costs, James says. Meanwhile, being “laser-focused” on the “must-have features … really drives the affordability”, Matt adds. 

A long-term vision to improve health systems

Further down the line, Supersense hope to “change [people’s] dementia journey, really focusing on things like healthy ageing, physical activity, social activity, sleep.” This, in turn, will help reduce hospital admissions and ease social care pressures. “We think it’s got huge impact for the person, for the family, but also for our health and social care system,” says James.