Later this month Sharp Corp. will start offering B2B solutions that enable service providers in Japan to operate monitoring services through television sets in the home. These services will allow service providers to externally monitor the daily television viewing habits of targeted subjects. Since developing the monitoring services in 2012, Sharp has performed practical demonstrations with municipal governments. Having established the feasibility of the services, Sharp said it will now offer monitoring service solutions to service providers such as private companies and NPOs.

The solutions make use of a cloud server that monitors TV usage patterns and software that indicates the usage status of TVs in the homes of those being monitored. Content for display on televisions can easily be created online, and service providers operating monitoring services can provide viewers with notifications that may, for example, include locally topical information. Furthermore, content can be transmitted in a questionnaire format. For example, an interactive monitoring service for the elderly could have them answer through their TV daily questions concerning their state of health.