Following a year beset by COVID, CES 2022 featured the first-ever keynote from a Healthcare Company, Abbott Laboratories.  The presentation showcased powerful human stories of lives positively impacted by Abbott, leveraging technology.  It also underscored how technology can enable treatments and doctor/patient conversations without physically requiring the two people to be in the same room.  In fact, health professionals can treat patients at home thanks to telehealth visits.  Which is a natural lead-in to today’s recap on Digital Health and The Evolution of Homes.

The Great Home Makeover Continues
The definition of home has evolved and expanded since the onset of the pandemic nearly two years ago.  For years we watched home buyers on TV shows like HGTV’s “House Hunters” proclaim they wanted “open-concept.”  The demand for shared family living spaces left us unprepared for the reality of our current circumstances, where work, school, exercise workouts and more occur within the confines of the same space. The most immediate beneficiary of our new reality has been the consumer electronics industry, as consumers sought tech solutions to make up for the lack of separate rooms.  The category saw huge sales demand in 2021 that is anticipated to continue in 2022.

According to the CTA, three key trends were at the forefront last year:

1. 1. Consumers “leveled up” their technology – many used this time to make their lives easier. Sales increased for everything “Smart,” from TVs and appliances to light bulbs and doorbells.
2. 2. And they sought out Premium Brands – given the choice, consumers opted for the best experience. Premium brand sales outperformed sales of “average” brands.
3. 3. Services soared – consumers are subscribing, and sticking, with new services. On average, consumers subscribe to 8 services, e.g., streaming video, audio, fitness, and gaming.

Overall, consumers have used their discretionary funds accumulated during lockdown to improve their digital lifestyles.  They are opting for enhanced home theater components because they can rationalize the importance of better equipment, be it a new use case (like meetings for remote work) or just getting more value out of their new streaming subscriptions.

What about the TVs at CES?  As is the case every year, they are bigger, brighter, thinner, lighter, and all the other superlatives you can possibly think of.  OLED, QD-OLED, mini-LED, 4K, 8K – they are all beautiful, they all look good, and there is a screen for every budget.  Tech sites like CNET or The Verge offer great guidance to help you choose.

Smart Home, Smart Gadgets.  Aiding consumers to continue spending are plenty of new smart home gadgets.  Rather than rehash the various new smart doorbells, security products or light bulbs that closely replicate existing products you are likely familiar with, here are a few home items that are truly new or have new features worth a look:

What is the Matter with Smart Homes?  A key challenge for would-be consumers of Smart Home technology is that many devices currently exist in walled garden eco systems that are not interoperable.  You must first decide if you want to be part of the Amazon, Apple, or Google/Nest platform, and then shop from among whatever products work within them.  What if you could simply choose the best smart device, be it a doorbell, thermostat, or lightbulb, and have complete confidence that it will work in your home?  That is the goal of Matter, a new standard connectivity protocol.
Matter promises to remove interoperability considerations from the equation.  It is an open-sourced connectivity technology standard for the smart home created by over 200 companies, including the above platforms.  The promise of Matter is to enable all smart devices to talk to each other.  All products that are Matter certified will work within your Smart Home, regardless of who made them.  The first Matter certified products will be shipping in 2022, and hopefully, this will be the start of Smart Homes becoming truly smart.

Digital Brings Health and Wellness Home
Digital Health and Wellness is arguably becoming a natural extension the Smart Home.  Health and technology are more tightly linked than ever before.  COVID has accelerated the use of technology such as telemedicine that is likely to become a more routine alternative option to in-person doctor visits.  Devices that collect data and enable healthcare practitioners to remotely monitor patients are a logical companion to this.

Abbott Laboratories and biometrics wearables – The Abbott Laboratories keynote set the tone for the role of technology in healthcare.  Actor Laurence Fishburne, in a video clip, shared Abbott’s beliefs: “At this moment in time, technology is changing faster than ever before.  People are living longer than ever before.  And we are using technology to ensure that those longer lives are used to the fullest.”

Here are some examples that were spotlighted:

Here are a few other intriguing health and wellness tech examples:

And on that note, let’s call CES 2022 a wrap.  Despite all the great tech that enables virtual attendance, here’s hoping for a shot at seeing next years’ edition live and in-person!