A 2026 report by the Office of the Seniors Advocate in British Columbia states that “the number of people on the waitlist for long-term care has more than tripled in the last ten years.” According to the Ontario Long Term Care Association, the waitlist in that province tops 50,000 people. With the aging population continuing to grow, this places enormous stress on the health care and long-term care system. Already, many Canadian families must care for an aging loved one at home as they wait for a bed in a long-term care facility, and many older adults are choosing to stay in their own homes regardless.

Living independently can be a healthy and rewarding experience for many older adults, but there are risks to living alone. Falls are a leading cause of injury and hospitalization among older adults. Social isolation and limited caregiver visits may mean that new issues and gradual functional decline are overlooked until a potentially preventable problem, injury, or infection has already occurred. While conventional emergency alert systems and wearable alarms may support intervention for falls or medical events, they are largely reactive—by contrast, 24/7 monitoring integrated with hands-on care may support proactive, early intervention and better health outcomes for older adults living independently.

Comprehensive Healthcare at Home—or CHAH—represents one evolution from traditional monitoring to predictive in-home care systems based on passive, continuous monitoring and AI-powered insights that ultimately support human-led care.

Canadian-based company CHAH Technology has partnered with McMaster University’s Institute for Research on Aging to study how AI monitoring can support healthier aging at home. The CHAH system uses optical sensors placed throughout the home to monitor older adults’ daily activities through motion tracking, as well as a mattress pad placed on the bed to monitor sleep quality and body temperature. Robert Stanley, BSc, Founder and CEO of CHAH Technology and Stay At Home Nursing, shares that “the entire system is ambient, so seniors don’t have to interact with it. They don’t have to press buttons, they don’t have to wear certain things.”

Stanley goes on to explain that the CHAH system does two things. First, it monitors for adverse medical events, such as falls, and environmental safety hazards, such as a stove left on. When it detects situations like these, it alerts the user’s medical team and loved ones. Second—and perhaps most powerfully—the AI algorithm interprets the users’ habits to predict the risk of falls and infections.

In Canada, 1 in 3 adults over age 65 will have a fall each year, and 85% of all injury-related hospitalizations in older adults are due to falls. The ability to spot an increased risk for falls before they happen can prevent injury, hospitalization, disability, and loss of mobility and independence.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are another frequent cause of infection and hospitalization among older adults. Currently, CHAH Technology is testing additional sensors for the bathroom that may help to ensure older adults are treated promptly for UTIs. Rather than provide a visual during private washroom trips, these sense how many times the toilet is flushed. By monitoring bathroom use frequency plus body temperature readings from the mattress pad, the AI system can predict the risk of a UTI. Stanley shares, “When that risk comes up, so a slightly elevated temperature from our bed mat sensor combined with increased frequency of washroom visits, we send a nurse within an hour. The nurse does a dipstick test to diagnose on site, positive or negative, and within a couple of hours we can have the antibiotics on site to try to prevent the infection [from] resulting in hospitalization.”

AI monitoring integrated with human care is what makes the system effective. The AI system monitors older adults 24/7 and can provide alerts and early detection. Nurses and health care providers visit the patient in their home to provide valuable insight, assessment, and hands-on care.

Privacy and cost are top-of-mind concerns with in-home AI monitoring systems such as CHAH. Stanley notes that “[CHAH has] a very strong architecture for privacy all throughout the entire system.” While the CHAH program is still only available to a limited group of private users, the CHAH Technology team is working to make the system available in the public sector so as to limit cost-related barriers once small-group testing is complete.

Private users have “so far…been super eager,” although Stanley shares that “one family [was] very excited about the idea, but they held back because their mother had dementia, and they were uncomfortable with the idea where she couldn’t actively consent to it.”

Cost, privacy, and consent are central to the ethical development of in-home AI monitoring systems; these issues must be addressed as systems such as CHAH and others become more widely available.

AI-powered in-home monitoring aims to create a home environment for older adults that fosters safety, independence, and resilience while delivering proactive health care without the need for a hospital or long-term care bed. Stanley says “the simple vision is we have to deliver more health care in the home. Not more home care, but more primary care, more acute care, more long-term care, more specialist care. All aspects of health care could be delivered in the home, and to deliver that, we also have to be more predictive than [the] reactive world that we’re in right now.” This echoes the goals of other health care organizations and health innovation leaders: by bringing health care and safe, private monitoring to older adults in their homes, we can predict and prevent negative health outcomes and support healthy longevity for our aging populations.