Still at Home at AGE-WELL 2026

This week, Still at Home took part in the AGE-WELL Annual Conference in Ottawa, Canada’s national gathering of researchers, clinicians, care providers and technology companies working on how older adults live well at home.

Over three days we met research teams and university professors from across the country, including the Universities of Ottawa, Saskatchewan and Northern British Columbia and Carleton University, and visited SAM3, the AGE-WELL national innovation hub at Élisabeth Bruyère Hospital, where sensors and analytics are being tested in a working smart apartment.

What we heard about aging in place

Three things stayed with us:

• After a hospital stay, the care plan and the home are still handled separately. The grab bar the occupational therapist recommends often has no one to install it.
• The technology to notice a change at home is mature. What families need is the person who shows up when it does.
• Researchers and clinicians want partners who do the work in real homes, not only in the lab.

We also began initial conversations with researchers and occupational therapy educators about collaborating on research projects, including tools that cut the time clinicians spend on paperwork so more of it goes to the people they serve.

Home safety assessments and accessibility work in Ottawa

That is the work we do in Ottawa: home safety assessments, grab bars and railings within a day of an OT recommendation, accessibility renovations, and the grant paperwork, alongside the occupational therapists and care partners a family already trusts.

Still at Home is listed on Champlain Healthline under Home Modification.