SANTA FE, N.M. — Need to modify your home to accommodate aging adults or people with disabilities?
To borrow a phrase from a famous Apple commercial, there’s an app for that.
A team of researchers has developed myAccessibleHome, a digital tool with an artificial intelligence assist that allows an occupational therapist to assess your home for potential hazards remotely — no visit required.
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“We’re thinking about the person and their specific needs, their specific challenges, the tasks that they need to do and want to do in their homes,” said occupational therapist Suzanne Burns, co-founder and co-CEO of myAccessibleHome. Burns is also an associate professor of occupational therapy at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine.
The newly launched app has limited availability for now and isn’t yet available to the general public.
The technology comes as households, providers and government agencies grapple with a demographic shift that has been called a silver tsunami — a growing number of older adults as the baby boomer generation ages. New Mexico’s over-65 population grew nearly 40% between 2010 and 2019, outpacing the rest of the nation, and the trend is poised to continue.
While the vast majority of seniors want to stay in their homes as they age, some 4 million households across the country pose accessibility challenges for older residents, according to Census data released in 2023. Those homes can pose a real danger to seniors: Unintentional falls were the leading cause of injury-related deaths among New Mexicans 65 and older from 2019 to 2023, while fall-related hospitalizations have been on the rise since 2020, according to data from the state Department of Health.
With a rural landscape, shortage of healthcare providers and dearth of companies able to install accessibility features like ramps, “New Mexico is not prepared for this generation of older adults who are aging in place,” Burns said.
“We’re doing our best to at least partially fill that gap,” Burns said.
How it works
Using a smartphone, patients or their caregivers answer a few initial questions — intended to gauge the likelihood of a fall and the potential consequences of such an incident — before scanning their home in the app.
Augmented reality technology provides precise measurements of the space before presenting an occupational therapist with an initial report on the home. After the therapist signs off, the patient and their caregivers receive a list of recommended changes, plus connections to installers in their area and assistive technologies that could be of use.
Some recommended modifications are relatively small, like installing grab bars in the bathroom or setting up smart home devices to automatically turn on the lights, Burns said. Others involve bigger structural changes, like widening doorways to fit a wheelchair.
An iOS version of the myAccessibleHome app launched in the U.S. in May with the Android version expected to launch in the fall.
However, you can’t just download myAccessibleHome from the App Store. For now, it’s only available through partnerships with individual organizations — for instance, a group serving people with brain injuries — so it can be tailored to meet specific needs, Burns said.
AI help, human decisions
The myAccessibleHome app is the result of more than a decade of research and development, supported by $1.6 million in federal funding from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research.
While AI is one piece of the technology powering the app, “the software doesn’t make clinical decisions,” Burns said. “We’re really using occupational therapists to make those decisions. … Even though this is incredible for efficiency and reach, there are still some pieces that we want that human interaction and that human decision-making.”
Using AI technology also allows occupational therapists to assess patients’ homes virtually, which Burns argued could be a boon for a rural state like New Mexico — where both occupational therapists and installers of accessible technology can be hard to find.
“AI supports efficiency, our speed. It supports our data capture. It’s a great starting point,” she said. “But the decision-making still comes down to the human, and I think that’s important.”
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