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Chapter 6 • Environmental Control 151

available through nonspecialist and ‘mainstream’ products, this prompts the need for
commissioning guidance over boundaries of equipment funding.

Environmental Control Systems
Definition of Environmental Controls (EC)

The following are definitions from the literature of the type of equipment within the scope
of this chapter.
‘Environmental control systems (ECS) enable persons with impairment to carry out
activities within the home without assistance from others and thus live more indepen-
dently’ (Brandt et al., 2011). Elsewhere they are defined as devices for enabling remote
control and operation of electronic and electrical equipment within the living environ-
ment to enable independent living (Brandt et al., 2011 – quoting :ISO 9999:2016).
The term electronic aids to daily living is used as an alternative to environmental con-
trols for the same equipment in some countries (Brandt et al., 2011; Verdonck et al., 2011;
Rigby et al., 2011).
For commissioning reasons in England, the impairment which would give rise to the
need for provision of EC is caused by a long-term medical condition through disease,
trauma or congenital reasons and is delimited to a physical impairment. The resulting loss
of functional movement, usually of the lower and upper limbs, is such that the individual
is not able to operate standard controls, which are typically hand operated (NHS England,
2013). Lack of control of access due solely to sensory impairment (e.g., vision) is usually
funded by different sources.
The equipment alleviates the effects of impairment, thus falling under the classifica-
tion of a medical device. Traditional controllers and systems are generally class 1 medical
devices; however, with the adoption of mainstream technologies this is subject to change.
The initial scope of ECS was developed over 60 years ago and only considered control over
the immediate environment. More recently the advances in connectivity have expanded this
to include a social element and enable control over the virtual as well as physical environ-
ment. As such, many NHS EC services in the United Kingdom have an expanded remit to
include access to computer technologies, as described later in this chapter.
This trend is likely to continue with the ever-increasing connectivity of the world and
incorporation of sensors and communication into the domestic and communal environ-
ment. As a result, the environment is developing from the passive, awaiting control, to an
intelligent one with capabilities not just of automatic control (e.g., light operation activated
by room occupancy) but also driven by user profiles, location and lifestyle predictions. The
technology which is currently considered as specialist access means (i.e., speech recogni-
tion, eye tracking and personal biometric identification) is likely to be incorporated as
standard features in everyday appliances.