Our story in Telecare began when our founder Henry left Schneider Electric’s smart home R&D center and created JOY Innovation. His idea was simple: use solid engineering and thoughtful design to create products that quietly protect people and bring real happiness and joy. Thanks to this combination of innovation and technical depth, JOY Telecare was selected in 2009 as one of the first companies to take part in a nationwide home-based elder care pilot project led by the Chinese civil affairs authorities. We have always known this is not a high-margin business, but it matches our values: designing for older people and improving their daily lives. Through years of direct contact and user research, our belief has only grown stronger:
Telecare is not a toy and not consumer electronics. When an alarm button is pressed, there is no “second chance” – it is about life, safety and dignity.
At the same time, the wider market often confuses cheap consumer personal/SOS alarms with professional Telecare systems. Many low-cost but high-margin devices sold online as “personal alarms for the elderly” are essentially simple electronic gadgets, not full Telecare solutions, even if the surface idea – press a button, call for help – looks similar.
Riding the wave of global ageing, some vendors package these low-cost personal/SOS alarms as easy answers, but they remain gadgets rather than true Telecare services. Consumer watchdogs such as CHOICE in Australia have even issued “worst product” awards to some of these low-cost personal/SOS alarms, a clear reminder that life-safety functions must never be treated as an extra feature on a cheap gadget.
From Henry’s experience, over the long term the total cost of using professional, stable and reliable systems is usually far lower than relying on low-cost, non-professional products.
When a service grows to hundreds or thousands of users, most of the unreasonable expense comes from unplanned emergency call-outs and site visits, time spent on “mystery faults”, and many other operational efforts.
Many service providers do not fully anticipate this at the beginning and later find themselves forced to write off their investment in problematic equipment and systems, and reinvest in professional solutions.
It is part of social welfare and community care, and many older people live on modest incomes, especially when they pay for services themselves. Public budgets are also under pressure.
So while performance and quality are non-negotiable for us, we work hard to keep overall system cost and pricing as reasonable as possible, so that more older people can genuinely benefit.
Unfortunately, some products and systems on the market are sold at prices around 2–4 times higher (per device or per user-month) than well-designed professional alternatives. That pushes up long-term operating costs and reduces coverage: when prices are too high, the people who most need support are easily left out, and Telecare becomes unaffordable for many who would benefit the most.
Guided by these lessons, JOY has always stuck to a few simple principles:
- Avoid low-end, improvised devices that put safety at risk or behave like short-life gadgets;
- Design and control our own hardware, firmware and platforms, and manufacture them in our own specialised factory under a traceable quality system, keeping failure rates low and large-scale deployments stable and predictable;
- Focus on solutions that are professional, reliable and reasonable in both cost and price, so that more older people and people in need receive protection that is both dependable and truly affordable.
