Overview

SunCare Holdings, a Singapore-based eldercare operator managing three residential care facilities across the island, launched a six-month pilot of real-time spatial care intelligence technology in mid-2025. The pilot involved deploying smart location sensor networks across all three facilities, equipping every resident with a lightweight wearable tag, and integrating the platform with each facility's existing care management software.

The results, documented over the six-month pilot period and the subsequent three months of full deployment, offer one of the most comprehensive data sets available on the operational and clinical impact of spatial care intelligence technology in an Asian eldercare context.

"We serve families who entrust us with the most important people in their lives. When we can tell a family member exactly how their mother's morning went, and show them that not a single care task was missed, that changes the relationship entirely." - Chief Executive, SunCare Holdings

Context: Eldercare in Singapore

Singapore's rapidly aging population presents eldercare operators with acute challenges. The number of residents aged 65 and over is projected to exceed 900,000 by 2030, representing nearly one in four of the total population. Against this backdrop, the industry faces a severe caregiver shortage, with the Ministry of Manpower reporting a 22% vacancy rate in residential eldercare roles as of early 2025.

This combination of growing demand and constrained supply means that each caregiver is being asked to support more residents with more complex needs than at any previous point. Technology that can make caregivers more effective, rather than simply replacing human contact, is therefore not just operationally attractive; it is increasingly essential.

The Pilot Design

The pilot was structured as a phased deployment across SunCare Holdings' three facilities, with staggered go-live dates to allow the team to incorporate learnings from each deployment into the next. The three facilities ranged from a 45-bed community eldercare home in Jurong to a 180-bed skilled nursing facility in Tampines.

Key metrics tracked throughout the pilot included:

  • Caregiver response time from alert generation to acknowledged attendance
  • Resident safety incident rate (falls, elopements, missed medication administrations)
  • Staff workload distribution and overtime patterns
  • Family satisfaction scores (via quarterly survey)
  • Staff satisfaction and intent-to-stay scores (via monthly pulse survey)
Elderly residents in a warm, social care environment

Key Results

Response Time Improvement

The most striking finding was the 38% reduction in average caregiver-to-resident response lag measured across all three facilities. Before deployment, the average time between a care alert being generated (whether through a call bell, staff observation, or scheduled check) and a caregiver being physically present with the resident was 8.4 minutes. After deployment, this fell to 5.2 minutes on average, with the largest improvements seen on overnight shifts when spatial awareness is most challenging.

Safety Incident Reduction

Across the three facilities, the combined number of falls with delayed discovery fell by 67% over the six-month pilot period compared to the equivalent six months in the previous year. Elopement-related incidents, while already low across the portfolio, dropped to zero. Missed medication administrations, tracked via the platform's care task verification feature, fell by 54%.

Staff Experience

Perhaps the most surprising finding was the scale of the improvement in staff experience metrics. Monthly pulse survey data showed a 28% improvement in staff satisfaction scores between the start of the pilot and the six-month mark. More significantly, intent-to-stay scores improved by 31%, a finding with substantial financial implications given that the cost of replacing a trained care assistant in Singapore typically runs to several thousand dollars when recruitment, training, and productivity loss are accounted for.

When asked in open-ended survey responses to explain the improvement, staff consistently cited three factors: reduced time spent searching for residents, clearer and more manageable task lists, and less time spent on end-of-shift documentation.

Family Satisfaction

Family satisfaction scores, measured at three months and six months, increased from a baseline of 74% to 91% at the six-month point. The improvement was particularly pronounced in responses related to "communication and transparency" and "confidence in the safety of my family member." Several family members specifically mentioned the ability to call the facility and receive a real-time update on their relative's location and most recent care interaction as a key factor in their improved satisfaction.

"My father has dementia and I used to worry every night whether he was safe. Now when I call, the nurse can tell me exactly what he has been doing and where he has been all day. For me, that peace of mind is worth everything." - Family member, Tampines facility

Implementation Learnings

SunCare Holdings' pilot generated several implementation learnings that have since informed how the organization has approached its full portfolio rollout.

Configuration time matters. The facilities that invested more time in configuring alert rules, zone boundaries, and care task parameters before go-live experienced faster staff adoption and better early results. Rushing to go-live with default settings and reconfiguring afterwards led to alert fatigue and initial skepticism among nursing staff.

The family communication benefit is underestimated. The operational leadership team had not anticipated the scale of the improvement in family satisfaction, or the degree to which families would value the transparency that the system enabled. The organization has since built structured family communication protocols around the platform's data.

Night shift is where the greatest gains are achieved. In all three facilities, the most significant improvements in response time and safety incident metrics were concentrated on the overnight shift. This reflects the fact that night shift monitoring was the most reliant on manual checks before deployment, and therefore had the most to gain from automation.

Next Steps

Based on the pilot results, SunCare Holdings has committed to deploying the spatial care intelligence platform across its remaining four facilities by the end of 2026. The organization is also exploring the use of the platform's behavioral analytics capabilities to support proactive health management for residents showing early signs of deterioration, a use case that the pilot's six months of baseline data has made possible to begin developing.

Conclusion

The SunCare Holdings pilot demonstrates that the benefits of spatial care intelligence technology in eldercare are not limited to safety outcomes alone. The ripple effects across staff experience, family satisfaction, and operational efficiency create a compelling multi-dimensional case for deployment that goes beyond the immediate resident safety argument.

In a sector under acute pressure from demographic demand and workforce supply constraints, technology that simultaneously improves safety outcomes, reduces staff burden, and rebuilds family trust represents a genuinely transformative opportunity.