My personal experience with ambient sensing technology
My personal experience with ambient sensing technology
There’s a particular kind of clarity that comes when something you’ve been building professionally suddenly becomes something you need personally.
As the head of product for MatrixCare and Care Daily’s ambient sensing solution, I have been at the center of developing ambient sensing technology for years. I’ve been involved in clinical reviews, studied resident outcomes, refined alert thresholds, and been a part of every product decision that shapes how the system performs in the real world. Knowing this technology inside and out, I’ve seen up close how much it matters to the families and care teams who rely on it every day.
In this blog, I’m sharing a moment when that professional conviction became deeply personal.
Experiencing the realities of home-based care
Years before the system found its way into my family’s life, I experienced my first “aha moment.” A close family member, then in her early nineties, had moved in with another family member to be closer to loved ones. Not long after settling in, she was placed on hospice.
One night, in the early morning hours, she fell trying to get to the bathroom. She was stubborn in the best, most quietly heroic way, the kind of person who would rather figure it out herself than ask for help. So she tried for about 45 minutes.
When she finally called out, my family member asleep down the hall heard her, but faced her own physical limitations and couldn’t get her up alone. A 2:00 a.m. call went out to a relative who lived nearby. She came over, and together they managed to help her up, get her to the bathroom, and back into bed safely.
I remember thinking, in the middle of all of it: I am literally working on fall detection technology right now. A device in that room could have flagged this in 90 seconds. My family could have been alerted before anyone had been on that floor for nearly an hour.
Unfortunately, the system never got installed, as my family member declined rapidly. But one thing resonated with me: this ambient sensing technology protects real people, just like my own loved ones.
The fall that changed everything
More recently, another close family member, a woman in her mid-sixties who has lived with cerebral palsy her whole life, is aging independently in a single-family home. Her condition affects her right side (hand, foot, gait). Most of the time, she navigates daily life with impressive independence, but cerebral palsy creates a particular vulnerability when pivoting. Her right foot can catch, which makes falling a significant risk.
One evening, while getting ready for bed, she fell in her bathroom. Her phone was on the nightstand, her smart watch was already off, and there was nothing within reach to call for help.
She was on the floor for a few minutes. While did manage to get up on her own that time, she was shaken in a way that stayed with her. She called me the next day to explain what happened, and when she described what it felt like to lie there, that was the moment things shifted.
I had run timed test falls, so I knew what 90 seconds felt like when you’re flat on the ground. It feels like forever and I’m not even in a state of panic. For someone alone, at night, with real physical limitations, those minutes carry an entirely different weight.
The text pact that didn’t last
In the immediate aftermath, she came up with a plan. A nightly text was a simple check-in to make sure she made it to bed safely. She would also stop taking her watch off until she was fully settled for the night, so she would always have a way to call for help.
It was a thoughtful, well-intentioned solution. But it only lasted about a week.
Behavior change is genuinely hard, and the logistics quickly became complicated. What about getting up in the middle of the night? Would she text every time? The nightly ritual slipped, and with it, the safety net. I knew she needed something more reliable, something that did not depend on anyone remembering to do anything.
I told my family member what I’d been building, explaining how the system was radar-based, with no cameras, no audio, and nothing intrusive. Just quiet, continuous awareness. If something happened, I would know. I could call right away and if there was no answer, I could be there in minutes.
My family member had a few questions. The concerns were exactly what you would expect:
Is someone watching me?
Can you see me?
Is it listening?
I walked her through it, showed her the app, and explained that this was closer to a fitness tracker than a surveillance camera. There were no images, no recordings, just patterns of movement translated into data that painted a picture of wellbeing over time.
By the end of the conversation, she was on board.
What the data reveals
The value of ambient sensing goes far beyond waiting for something to go wrong. I check in on the data regularly to see whether my family member has made it home in the evenings, when activity patterns shift, and her sleep scores.
Sleep quality is a remarkable window into overall health. When my family member came down with a common cold recently, I saw it in the dashboard before even hearing about the illness. Sleep scores that typically hovered in the mid-80s dropped into the low 60s and then crept back up over five days in a gradual recovery arc. You could see the trend and it confirmed exactly what was going on.
This matters beyond a cold. There is substantial clinical evidence linking poor sleep to increased fall risk in older adults. When the body is not resting well, reaction times slow, balance suffers, and the chances of a stumble go up. Knowing that my family member is getting less quality sleep is an early signal to have a conversation, to remind her to be more careful when she pivots, and to encourage extra rest before she pushes herself too hard.
I also monitor for something more personal and harder to talk about: depression. My family member has experienced episodes in the past, and when they come, they tend to be quiet at first. She pulls inward before she opens up. Ambient sensing makes those early shifts visible. If time spent in the bedroom increases, if time outside the home decreases, if patterns change in ways that suggest withdrawal, I will see it. Not to surveil, but to know when to reach out and offer help.
Why this resonates with caregivers everywhere
I’ve sat through the clinical reviews, studied the resident outcomes, and helped shape the product design that matters so much to families and care teams. While I’m not a nurse, I have extensive experience as a product leader and genuine love for the people in my life. And that, it turns out, is exactly the point.
Families doing their best to support aging loved ones do not need to be healthcare experts or product leaders like myself to use ambient sensing meaningfully. The system translates complex physiological signals into accessible, proactive alerts:
Sleep scores that tell you whether your loved one is resting well
Activity patterns that reveal whether daily rhythms are holding steady
Movement data that can flag when someone is spending unusual amounts of time in one room
Fall detection that alerts you within 90 seconds, not 90 minutes
You do not need to know what a UTI looks like on a lab report to recognize that something has changed. The dashboard shows you. And once you see it, you can act.
What differentiates our ambient sensing solution
My experience also illuminates what sets the MatrixCare and Care Daily ambient sensing platform apart from other solutions and fall detection devices on the market today.
Privacy-first, radar‑based senior monitoring (no cameras, no audio): Most competitors rely on video, wearables, or microphones. Our solution feels safe, respectful, and non-intrusive.
Device-agnostic flexibility: Unlike solutions tied to a single proprietary sensor, our platform integrates multiple radar devices and data sources (smart watches or rings, smart home devices, future IoT).
Actionable, holistic insights: We detect falls and the trends that lead up to them including sleep quality, activity levels, room movement patterns, and early indicators of illness or depression.
Simple installation: Sensors mount with adhesive, require no drilling, and can be set up in minutes by a facility administrator or family member.
Proven in both homes and senior living communities: Our solution works seamlessly in any home environment, whether it’s a residential home or an apartment within a senior living, assisted living, independent living, or memory care facility.
Designed for real-world accuracy: Our chosen radar technology is validated to minimize false positives, even with pets.
Built and trusted by clinical and product experts: As the head of product, I rely on the system for my own loved ones.
The peace of mind this system provides has value that is hard to put a number on. My family member knows that if something happens, the window of time before help arrives is measured in seconds, not hours. And I know that the quiet data flowing through the dashboard is keeping watch in ways that no text pact or behavior change ever could.
Better insights lead to better decisions
The future of senior living is about making technology more intuitive, more connected, and more supportive of the people delivering care. Ambient sensing represents an important step in that direction, giving communities the ability to better understand resident well-being while helping staff focus their time where it matters most.
By combining discreet sensor insights with MatrixCare data, our ambient sensing solution creates a more complete picture of resident wellness, establishes personalized behavioral baselines, and alerts care teams when meaningful changes occur.
Better insights lead to better decisions, and better decisions help create healthier, happier communities.
Megan Anderson
Megan has been in the health care industry for more than 15 years and is an original founder of our Ambient Sensing Technology.
Megan started in healthcare working as a full-time direct-care provider in a group home while attending college. Since then, she’s transitioned to the healthcare technology industry where she found a combination of her passions of helping people while also exercising her technological expertise. She has served in various business, product & leadership positions including new business ventures and head of product, ambient sensing solutions.
Megan is a wife, mother of three daughters, and a 10-year military Veteran of the MN Army National Guard.
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