Journal 7, July 27, 2008

Dennis Whitfield
July 27, 2008
LBST 2213



Elder Care, Signing on Becomes a Way to Stop by
By Christina Larson
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/04/business/yourmoney/04elder.html?pagewanted=1&ref=technology

With the need of adult children to keep and eye on their aging parents and have their career’s too. Companies like ADT are assisting the adult children by providing a home health alarm system that allows them to check in from remote locations. The motion sensors allows the subscriber to check to see how many times the refrigerator opens, how long they stay in the bathroom, and when they get out of the bed. If there is a change in normal behavioral pattern, they company alerts the subscriber. The Quiet Care system costs $199 to install, and the monitoring starts at $79.95 per month. In addition to the motion sensor, the company can install video cameras showing the floors and the foot of the bed. Quiet Care also provides a 24 hour call center to assist in emergencies.

There are several other systems coming into the market. One is SeniorSafe@Home that comes out this fall, which will provide a similar service as Quiet Care. It will staff its call center with nurses who will monitor data from a combination of motion sensors, electronic medication dispensers and fall detectors. Another system called iCare Health Monitoring uses a different model that is not meant to be uses as an emergency alarm system. It allows providers, family members and the older person to keep track of health data, like blood pressure, weight or medications. This system uses a small electronic device with a text screen and four input buttons. It asks a series of daily multiple-choice questions about their health. This is available through CVS pharmacies with a cost of $99 to install and $49.95 a month for monitoring.

As an only child, this article had special interest to me. With the current technology and medical advances life expectancy rises every year. The technology mentioned here, would allow me to check in on my parents where ever I might be, if the need arises. There is a good chance that I might never go back to live in my home town. Plus my parents would never leave that town or move to my location. They also would not go to an assisted living facility, unless something was serious wrong. So to have this technology available is a comfort to me.
Twenty years ago this technology might of saved a an elderly person in my neighborhood. Growing up in a rural community, it was possible to go days without being noticed. In this case the gentleman’s daughters lived 200 miles away and that was his only family. One night he went to bed and during that night he went into a diabetic coma. When he was found, it was determined that he had been deceased for over a week. This is something that every adult child fears and this technology would have alerted them that no one has been moving about the house.