The UK has been an early adopter in the use of ambient assisted living technology for social care and this experience has helped to shape the approach to the use of technology in healthcare. The National Health Service (NHS) in England has benefited from a series of policy measures, supported by grant funding, that have resulted in a significant uptake of ambient assisted living technologies in both health and social care. Over the period 2005–2010 the NHS has moved from a few small scale pilots toward a situation where a growing proportion of local health authorities have implemented some form of service, and a few have moved on to plan or deploy technology on a large scale.

The paper examines the operational use of assisted living technologies, highlighting the pivotal place of the ‘Whole System Demonstrators’ which have been established to generate the evidence needed to support a move towards mainstream adoption. It also examines a number of other operational implementations of assisted living to identify trends in the technologies and draw out lessons for the deployment and use of these technologies as mainstream services.