SMARTLINE

Smartline is a collaborative project led by the University of Exeter in partnership with Coastline Housing, Cornwall Council, Volunteer Cornwall and the South West Academic Health Science Network with the aim of supporting the development of an innovative eHealth and eWellbeing business sector and to drive improvements in health and wellbeing outcomes.

The project focuses its activities around residents of 300 homes owned and managed by Coastline Housing in socio-economically diverse areas of Cornwall, engaging with individuals, their families and their communities. The evidence and learning gained from the project activities supports extrapolation of the model by the partners to other sectors and services.  Social housing provides a test bed for goods and services which have the potential to address wider national market needs, being transferable to other housing sectors, and to those in private rental or owner-occupied homes.

A research and innovation project, Smartline enhances enterprise engagement in research and furthering understanding of the interactions between individuals, their homes, their housing providers and their communities; leading to new, needs-led products, processes and services.

Smartline supports evidence-based innovation leading to new products, processes and services in smart housing and smart communities. The project collects data from two primary sources, the home and the individuals living in the home.

Data has been collected through a range of digital sensors installed in participating homes since 2017. The project monitors the internal and external environments of these homes with information being provided back to participants through digital devices.

Now the hard data and insights gathered will be used to design new interventions to test:

• People’s readiness to adopt technology such as smart speakers, personal assistants and social media.
• How, and whether, technology can help to overcome social exclusion.

Smartline provides a variety of types of enterprise engagement to reflect enterprise need, including:

• the opportunity to co-create with the end user;
• support to research and test products, processes and services; and
• access to comprehensive new data sets for businesses to explore and exploit.

The project particularly benefits enterprises from the digital, health and care, and building management sectors, of which there are over 1500 in Cornwall and The Isles of Scilly.

In addition, Smartline supports individuals to more effectively engage with their communities, increasing community cohesion and fostering social innovation; through the identification of new community services or needs and supporting SMEs to address these needs and opportunities. It is anticipated that many of these services and needs will support independent living, refocusing demand away from the statutory services.

Smartline activities focus on four communities; Camborne, Redruth, Pool and Illogan, but they will serve as a test-bed for products, services and processes that will have wider county, national and international reach.

Smartline received additional funding to extend the project from its original completion date (28 February 2020) to 31 January 2023. The total funding is shown to the right of the page. This includes an additional contribution from Cornwall Council of £200,000.

Smartline Extension will continue to offer the business engagement programmes currently provided by Smartline. However, it will supplement these programmes to offer additional support on scaling up and addressing national market opportunities.

SMEs will have a number of ways to engage with Smartline:

• Knowledge exchange including one-to-one diagnostics, events and special interest groups.
• Collaborative research – including in-resident activities and follow-on projects.
• Cash grants – including idea generation grants, and larger follow-on grants.
• Market readiness programme delivered by SW AHSN.