Omega Healthcare Investors (NYSE: OHI) has acquired senior living technology company Connected Living with an eye toward bringing technology into its senior housing and care properties.
Connected Living — now a standalone subsidiary of the Hunt Valley, Maryland-based health care real estate investment trust (REIT) — works with senior housing and care companies to provide smart devices, mobile apps and wearables, digital community networks and programming. The company also distributes an assistive robot called Temi that is slated to be used in Inspir Carnegie Hill in New York City, a community co-developed by Omega and Westport, Connecticut-based Maplewood Senior Living.
Omega declined to share the acquisition price. The REIT’s portfolio encompasses 945 senior housing and skilled nursing properties in the United States and abroad.
The REIT’s acquisition aligns with a growing trend of using technology to enhance the senior living resident experience, according to Matthew Gourmand, senior vice president of corporate strategy and investor relations at Omega.
“Connected Living has been honing their technology for over a decade, and we were particularly drawn to their ability to combine an elegant interface with user-friendly functionality,” Gourmand told Senior Housing News. “While we believe our operators can benefit from this technology, we also believe it can help the industry as a whole.”
The decision to use the services of Connected Living will lie with Omega’s operating partners, and the technology platform will set its own strategy for growing the business.
“However, we have made our operators aware of the services Connected Living provides and we have received a significant amount of interest across our portfolio,” Gourmand added.
Communities and residents can tailor Connected Living’s platform for a variety of uses in either senior living or skilled nursing settings, such as connecting with family and friends over video, setting a daily schedule, ordering food or listening to music, according to Connected Living CEO and Co-Founder Sarah Hoit.
“It will be up to each operator to determine whether and how they wish to use the suite of services Connected Living provides,” Hoit told SHN. “Connected Living provides options to suit each price point, and operators can add additional services as they need.”
The Connected Living acquisition comes about a month after Omega acquired a 24-property Brookdale portfolio from Healthpeak Properties (NYSE: PEAK) for $510 million. The transaction substantially increased Omega’s private-pay senior living assets. CEO Taylor Pickett said the operator is positioned to see pent-up senior housing demand in the post-pandemic landscape.
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