Suppose your elderly parent, spouse, or other relative has to be at home alone all the time, or even a good bit of the time. Would it ease your mind if there was a system available that would allow you to check on various activities of your loved one? There is a system that would enable you to monitor various activities of the person you care about, such as a system that would create an alert if your loved one does not leave the bathroom in an hour. If your loved one needs help but is unable to reach a phone, there is a system that would allow him or her to push a button to warn someone that he or she is in danger. Another system would allow your loved one to press a button, and the system dials 911 on the telephone. The loved one can speak to an emergency operator through a small device, as long as he is within 600 feet of his phone. Those are some of the many products available to help give you peace of mind and protect your elderly loved ones who are living alone. Some of the devices are relatively inexpensive, and some are not.
Quiet Care Systems manufactures the system to monitor activities of your elderly loved one involved in various daily activities in the house. It is designed to warn family members and caregivers of emerging problems before they become emergencies. It uses small wireless sensors that are placed in key areas, such as the bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, bathroom, meal preparation, and medication areas. Each sensor transmits information seven days a week, 24 hours a day to a book-sized base station. The base station gathers this information and transmits it to Quiet Care’s computers. Any changes in the senior’s normal lifestyle are analyzed, so caregivers can be alerted to problems by call center professionals, or by cell phone, e-mail, text message, or pager.
The device costs about $200 to install, but there is an additional fee of $100 a month for monitoring. The website for the company is: http://www.quietcaresystems.com.
There are cheaper high tech devices to monitor and help support elderly family members living at home alone. Or you might also be interested in another device if you don’t like the idea of constantly monitoring someone you love.
The Phillips Lifeline System makes a high tech device designed so that an elderly person living alone can wear a device around his or her wrist. If someone needs help, he needs only to push the personal help button. After that, a CarePartner Basic Unit or telephone is activiated and automatically dials the Lifeline Response Center. Then a trained Personal Response Associate will be able to access personal and critical medical information. The elderly person will then be contacted to see what is needed. Someone will contact the person in need in his native language-whether English or some other language. If nobody is able to contact him, Lifeline will send help immediately. The cost is about $30 a month for monitoring. The website for the company is: http://www.lifelinesys.com.
If you want to protect your elderly loved one living alone with a high tech device that has no monthly fees, there is the Guardian Alert 911. The device costs $199.99, but there are no monthly fees, no monitoring fees, and no service contracts. The system is a base station that is plugged into a telephone. The person living alone wears a pendant, with a button that enables the person to talk to an emergency operator through the phone up to 600 feet away from the phone. The pendant runs for a year on a AAA alkaline battery. The website is: http://911guardianphone.com.
The demand for such high tech devices will no doubt grow. The number of Americans that are 65 or older will rise from 36.8 million in 2005 to about 71.5 million in 2030, according to the Administration on Aging.
The devices mentioned in this article are not the only high tech devices in existence or being planned to support the elderly living alone. Researchers are developing sensors that track a senior’s breathing patterns and heart rates when they are in bed. Another device is being planned that picks up sounds, such as a person falling, and monitors temperatures in a home.
The San Francisco Chronicle lists other such devices, including pill bottles that remind you to take your medicine, bandages that take your temperature and heartbeat, and robots that help a person get up from a chair and walk down a hallway.
With such devices and many more in existence or being planned, you might feel safer if your elderly spouse, parent, or other loved one has to be at home alone often.
