IOT · CONNECTED CARE

Hive Link

A connected care product that helped families feel closer to loved ones without making them feel watched.

CES Winner

2019

Two Countries

UK & USA

Is Mum Okay?

One question.

[ THE PROBLEM ]

Most technology solves inconvenience. Hive Link solved something harder. It solved the feeling you get when your mum doesn't answer the phone for two hours. The quiet dread of not knowing. The impossible balance between wanting to check on someone you love and not wanting them to feel watched, controlled or like a burden.

Small sensors, installed discreetly around the home, used pattern recognition to understand daily routines. What time does someone get up? Has the fridge been opened? Is the front door closed? Not surveillance. Something more gentle than that. A quiet signal that says: everything is as it should be today.

[ THE PERSONAL PART ]

In the early days of testing, I asked my dad to be one of our first guinea pigs. The sensors sat so discreetly around his home that he completely forgot about them. Which was exactly the point.

While we were testing, the system went offline. And overnight, I found my father. He had passed away.

I have wondered, in quiet moments since, whether it would have made a difference. Whether I'd have known sooner. I'll never know. But that question has never left me and it shaped everything about how I approached this product.

With seriousness. With responsibility. With the understanding that what we were building wasn't a gadget. It was a lifeline for people who needed one.

[ WHAT WE BUILT ]

Hive Link wasn't a headline product inside Hive. It was closer to a proof of concept with a mandate to scale, built by a small team, on limited resources, alongside engineers who were also supporting 500,000 customers across the rest of the Hive ecosystem.

We used existing Hive hardware — motion sensors and door sensors — but pushed them far beyond their original use cases. We built a separate installer app so British Gas engineers could set up the kit correctly. We designed a legal consent flow so elderly residents could give approval for monitoring in their own home. We partnered with a charity. We held to our deadlines. We shipped.

[ IN THE PRESS ]

The Guardian — Centrica's motion tracker service aims to assist unpaid carers.

[ THE CES WIN ]

When we won Tech for a Better World at CES 2019, I was blown away. Not because of the award itself but because of everything it represented. The team that had fought for this product when it wasn't the priority. The engineers who fixed invisible firmware bugs. The researchers who sat in people's homes and really listened. The users who had trusted us with something as precious and fragile as the care of their loved ones.

Awards can feel hollow. This one didn't.

[ THE STORIES THAT MADE IT REAL ]

“My mum left the front door open. I caught it twice. God knows what would have happened otherwise.”

“I knew my dad was putting on a brave face. He wasn't getting up at his normal time. I went round and he was ill.”

“She was crying on the phone from America. She asked if she could pay more to keep her account online. That call is the clearest measure of product impact I've ever experienced.”

[ WHAT I'D DO DIFFERENTLY ]

The product was sunset not because it failed but because business priorities changed. What I've thought about since is whether we told the story loudly enough, early enough, to the people who made those decisions.

The user on the phone from America. The person whose mum left the front door open. These stories existed. Did the right people inside the business hear them? Impact without visibility is fragile. I've carried that lesson ever since.