A newly established smart home-based elderly care dispatch center, fully funded by private capital, has recently begun operations in Qian'an, Hebei Province. This marks the city's first facility of its kind.
In recent years, China's Ministry of Civil Affairs and seven other government departments jointly issued a policy to encourage social forces and various business entities to address gaps in grassroots elderly care through market-oriented and specialized approaches. The goal is to invigorate the elderly care service market and foster a favorable environment for investment and entrepreneurship. Leveraging this policy direction, Qian'an has introduced market forces to build a four-tier linkage system—from the city-level coordination to township coordination, village-level base stations, and home-based terminals. This initiative innovatively combines Western digital rehabilitation with traditional Chinese medicine techniques, and the entire project was self-financed by the operator without any government funding.
The four-tier system has already been deployed in several villages around Qian'an. The city-level smart dispatch center functions as the "smart brain," handling all regional data aggregation and AI analysis. Township hubs relay dispatch commands to surrounding villages, while village-level base stations serve as frontline service points. In pilot households, smart terminals act as the final link for technologically protecting the elderly. Currently, the project has selected 10 households with elderly individuals who are advanced in age, disabled, or living alone as its first pilot group, embedding elder care services directly into rural communities.
In these pilot homes, digital Western medical tools form the primary layer of protective care. For stroke survivors suffering from hemiplegia or limb weakness, the program introduces smart rehabilitation robots to conduct digital training focused on leg strength and neurological function. Using gamified, standardized interfaces, the system guides seniors through prescribed rehab exercises, with all data transmitted in real-time to the city-level dispatch center. This approach significantly reduces the cost of manual rehabilitation services. Additionally, a comprehensive smart monitoring network operates 24/7, with devices capable of precisely detecting swallowing actions to reduce choking risks, tracking bed entry and exit patterns to identify potential fall hazards at night, and locking onto indoor movement to alert for unexpected incidents. If an anomaly is detected, the system triggers an immediate emergency response, connecting via a supporting service platform to nearby pharmacies for medicine delivery or coordinating medical resources for on-site rescue.
Yang Jinghan, head of the center's operator, Yuanhua Dianjing (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., stated that this market-driven initiative addresses the real pain points of rural left-behind elderly—being "unwatched, unmanaged, hard to return to, and even harder to leave." It moves beyond the traditional model of relying on government handouts. By using technological innovation to lower the cost of professional care, it makes professional medical services affordable for ordinary rural families. Looking ahead, the company plans to expand coverage through market-driven methods to help bridge the urban-rural elderly care resource gap, ensuring that more elderly people living in their familiar rural settings can enjoy a dignified old age with good care, proper medical attention, and family connectivity.