The first shoes with a built-in GPS device — to help track down dementia-suffering seniors who wander off and get lost — are set to hit the US market this month, the manufacturer says.
GTX Corp said the first batch of 3,000 pairs of shoes had been shipped to the footwear firm Aetrex Worldwide, two years after plans were announced to develop the product.
The shoes will retail at about US$300 a pair and buyers will be able to set up a monitoring service to locate “wandering” seniors suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.
Andrew Carle, a professor at George Mason University’s College of Health and Human Services who was an adviser on the project, said the shoes were likely to save lives and avoid embarrassing and costly incidents involving the elderly.
“It’s especially important for people in the earliest stages of Alzheimer’s who are at the highest risk,” Carle said. “They might be living in their home, but they’re confused. They go for a walk and they can get lost for days.”
Carle said studies indicate more than 5 million people in the US suffer from Alzheimer’s, a number expected to quadruple in the coming years. He said 60 percent of sufferers will wander and become lost and up to half of those lost who are not found within 24 hours could die, from dehydration, exposure or injury.
Other devices such as bracelets or pendants can provide similar protection, but seniors often reject these.
“The primary reason is that paranoia is a manifestation of the disease,” Carle said.
The GPS system, which is implanted in the heel of a shoe, allows family members or caregivers to monitor the wearer and to set up a “geofence” that would trigger an alert if the wearer strayed beyond a certain area.
The shoes are being developed by GTX Corp, which makes miniaturized Global Positioning Satellite tracking and location-transmitting technology, and Aetrex. They received certification from the US Federal Communications Commission this year.
“This is a significant milestone for both companies and while the US$604 billion worldwide cost of dementia has become and will continue to be a significant fiscal challenge, the under US$300 GPS-enabled shoes will ease the enormous physical and emotional burden borne by Alzheimer’s victims, caregivers and their geographically distant family members,” GTX Corp chief executive Patrick Bertagna said.
Carle said the original idea was to develop the shoes for children and long-distance runners, but he persuaded the makers to change their plans, noting that the devices could also help ease a lot of anxiety about seniors who want to remain active.
BUSINESS UPDATE: The iPhone assembler said operations outlook is expected to show quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year growth for the second quarter Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) yesterday reported strong growth in sales last month, potentially raising expectations for iPhone sales while artificial intelligence (AI)-related business booms. The company, which assembles the majority of Apple Inc’s smartphones, reported a 19.03 percent rise in monthly sales to NT$510.9 billion (US$15.78 billion), from NT$429.22 billion in the same period last year. On a monthly basis, sales rose 14.16 percent, it said. The company in a statement said that last month’s revenue was a record-breaking April performance. Hon Hai, known also as Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), assembles most iPhones, but the company is diversifying its business to
Apple Inc has been developing a homegrown chip to run artificial intelligence (AI) tools in data centers, although it is unclear if the semiconductor would ever be deployed, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday. The effort would build on Apple’s previous efforts to make in-house chips, which run in its iPhones, Macs and other devices, according to the Journal, which cited unidentified people familiar with the matter. The server project is code-named ACDC (Apple Chips in Data Center) within the company, aiming to utilize Apple’s expertise in chip design for the company’s server infrastructure, the newspaper said. While this initiative has been
GlobalWafers Co (環球晶圓), the world’s No. 3 silicon wafer supplier, yesterday said that revenue would rise moderately in the second half of this year, driven primarily by robust demand for advanced wafers used in high-bandwidth memory (HBM) chips, a key component of artificial intelligence (AI) technology. “The first quarter is the lowest point of this cycle. The second half will be better than the first for the whole semiconductor industry and for GlobalWafers,” chairwoman Doris Hsu (徐秀蘭) said during an online investors’ conference. “HBM would definitely be the key growth driver in the second half,” Hsu said. “That is our big hope
The consumer price index (CPI) last month eased to 1.95 percent, below the central bank’s 2 percent target, as food and entertainment cost increases decelerated, helped by stable egg prices, the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said yesterday. The slowdown bucked predictions by policymakers and academics that inflationary pressures would build up following double-digit electricity rate hikes on April 1. “The latest CPI data came after the cost of eating out and rent grew moderately amid mixed international raw material prices,” DGBAS official Tsao Chih-hung (曹志弘) told a news conference in Taipei. The central bank in March raised interest rates by