For care organisations
How Active Ageing Centres can keep watch over seniors who live alone, without more home visits
The short version
- Calls and home visits tell a centre how a senior was at that moment. Sensors fill the days in between by noticing when a usual routine does not happen.
- With Birdhouse, the centre owns the homes it sets up. Staff see every home on one overview, ranked by what needs attention, and ask a staff Telegram bot about the seniors they look after.
- Urgent alerts and SOS presses reach whoever is on shift in the centre’s on-call rota, and everyone sees who took the alert. Family caregivers can be given app access at full or summary detail.
- Registration for organisations is free at app.birdhouse.sg/agencies/apply, and every organisation is checked before it can see any home.
Where calls and visits leave gaps
Most centres keep in touch with seniors who live alone through a mix of phone calls, befriender visits and centre activities. These matter, and nothing replaces a person who knows the senior. But each contact is a snapshot. A call on Monday says nothing about Wednesday night, and a senior who stops coming to the centre may be unwell, or may simply have changed routine. Staff end up spending time on reassurance calls to people who are fine, while the one person who needs help is the one nobody happened to call.
Sensor monitoring changes the question from “who should we call today?” to “whose day does not look like their usual day?”. It does not replace the relationship. It points the relationship at the right person, sooner.
What sensors add to a centre’s work
| Situation | Without sensors | With Birdhouse sensors |
|---|---|---|
| A quiet morning after a fall | Noticed at the next call or visit, or when a neighbour raises it | “No movement anywhere for 4 hours” alert to staff on shift, the same day |
| A senior presses for help | Depends on which button or phone is in reach, and who it rings | SOS goes at once to staff on shift and to the family, at any hour |
| Gradual change, such as more nights up, fewer outings | Hard to see until it is large | Visible in weekly reports and charts against the senior’s usual weeks |
| A device stops working | Looks the same as a quiet day | Hub offline and sensor silent alerts, so a broken device is not mistaken for a safe day |
| Deciding who to call first | Rota or memory | An overview ranked by what needs attention |
How it works for a centre
- Hubs reserved for the centre. Hubs ordered by an organisation are reserved for it. When staff claim one, the centre becomes the owner of that home. Anyone else who scans it only creates a request for the centre to approve.
- One overview of every home. The Birdhouse dashboard shows each home’s status, open alerts and devices, with per-person insights. Staff can also ask the staff Telegram bot, for example, who has been inactive today.
- Rules per home and room. Each home starts with suggested rules for its rooms, such as no movement anywhere for 4 hours in the day or still in the bathroom after 45 minutes. Staff adjust them to the senior’s routine, including their usual centre days.
- On-call. The centre keeps an on-call rota. Urgent alerts and SOS presses go to whoever is on shift, an unacknowledged alert keeps escalating, and the first “I’ve checked” tells everyone who is handling it.
- Family caregivers. The centre keeps each senior’s caregivers and contacts. A caregiver who wants the app can be invited, with full detail or summary detail (alerts and whether someone is home, without activity times).
- When a senior leaves. The centre either takes the hub back, which archives the home with its history and resets the hub for the next household, or hands the home over to a family member.
Families can also invite a verified centre into a home they set up themselves. The centre sees that home only after it accepts, can add its own rules for its staff, and cannot change the family’s rules. See Birdhouse for families or through a care agency.
What it does not do
- It is not an emergency response service. Birdhouse alerts the centre’s staff and the family. A person decides what to do, and calls 995 when it is an emergency.
- It does not detect falls directly. It notices missing movement, and an SOS press. A fall where the senior keeps moving, or a fall in a room without a sensor, may not raise an alert.
- It needs power and internet in the flat. If the hub goes offline, staff are told, but nothing can be seen until it reconnects.
- It does not replace visits. It helps staff decide which visit cannot wait.
Experience from pilots
Birdhouse has run pilots with Jia Ying and Chong Hua Tong Active Ageing Centres and a 6-month paid pilot with New Hope Community Services, across 16+ homes with 380,000+ check-ins in total. During the New Hope pilot, Birdhouse independently detected inactivity linked to real medical emergencies. In those cases the individuals were able to call emergency services themselves, and the inactivity alert confirmed that staff would have been told if they had not.
Two lessons from those pilots shape the advice below. First, coverage matters more than the rules: a senior who spends evenings in a room without a sensor looks inactive. Second, alert fatigue is real. A rule that fires on every afternoon nap gets ignored within a week, so rules are tuned per senior in the first two weeks.
Before a pilot: a checklist for centres
- Choose the seniors. Start with 5 to 10 who live alone, have home internet or are willing to have it, and have agreed after an explanation in their own language.
- Record consent. Explain what the sensors see (movement and door openings, never images or sound) and who gets alerts. Birdhouse asks for consent to be confirmed before monitoring starts.
- Decide who responds. Name the on-call person for office hours, evenings and weekends, and what they do when a senior does not answer the phone.
- Plan the sensors per flat. At least the living room and bedroom, the bathroom where possible, and a door sensor so “out” can be told apart from “not moving”.
- Tune for two weeks. Fit rules to each senior’s real routine, including centre days, before judging the results.
- Review monthly. Look at alerts raised, how fast they were acknowledged, and which turned out to need action.
Frequently asked questions
Does an Active Ageing Centre pay to register with Birdhouse?
No. Registration and verification are free. Hubs for the seniors a centre serves are arranged with Birdhouse directly.
Can staff see camera footage or hear the senior?
No. Birdhouse uses motion sensors, door sensors and an SOS button. It records that movement happened in a room and when, never images or sound.
Who gets an SOS alert at night?
Everyone with access to the home, including family caregivers with app access, and whoever is on shift in the centre’s on-call rota. It is never held back by quiet hours, and it keeps escalating until someone acknowledges it.
How is a centre verified?
Birdhouse checks that the contact’s email is on the organisation’s own domain, looks the UEN up in the ACRA register, verifies the contact’s mobile number, checks Active Ageing Centres by hand against AIC’s directory, and then a person at Birdhouse approves or rejects the application.
Can we use Birdhouse alongside the Personal Alert Button in rental flats?
Yes. The government button covers presses. Birdhouse adds passive monitoring for the days nobody presses anything. See the comparison with personal alert buttons.
Sources and further reading
- Register your organisation with Birdhouse
- Agency for Integrated Care (AIC)
- Birdhouse vs personal alert buttons
- Birdhouse privacy policy
This guide describes Birdhouse as it works on 2 November 2026. Birdhouse is not an emergency response service and never calls emergency services for you. In a life-threatening emergency, call 995. Questions or corrections: info@birdhouse.sg.