“If I ever need to go to a nursing home, kill me first,” my mother had said to my brother and me from time immemorial.
Of course, we never carried out her wish, but at 98 — her mind still sharp, but her muscles failing (after several serious falls) — she reluctantly agreed to enter her worst nightmare: assisted living. Until her death at 100 July last year, she was convinced that she had made a mistake.
Leaving one’s home, friends and the life one knows for a nursing home is neither easy nor often pleasant. However, for many of the elderly, there has been little choice. When you cannot take care of yourself, you may need constant assistance to help you remember to take your medicine, to make sure you are active and to generally make sure you remain safe in your home.
In the last few years, a series of technological developments has given parents and their adult children some new options. Devices and Internet-based solutions are becoming available that allow caregivers to keep an unobtrusive, high-tech eye on their family members, ensuring that they are safe, healthy and well cared for.
“If an individual can be safe at home, family relationships are enhanced and costs are reduced,” said William Kaiser, a director of the UCLA Wireless Health Institute, a research group that examines the intersection of technology and healthcare.
“New technologies are creating a revolution in the ability of individuals to stay at home,” he added. “The benefits to society are profound.”
Caring for the elderly is rarely the job of a single person. However, coordinating that care can be a burden of its own. A simple way to find and organize family and friends is through the Web site Lotsa Helping Hands. On the free site, caregivers set up a members-only community (you invite others to join). When a task needs to be accomplished, whether it is taking a person to the doctor or doing the shopping, it is posted on the site’s calendar and an e-mail alert goes out to the community. Those available to help sign up.
Lotsa Helping Hands can take the awkwardness out of asking specific individuals for help, while making it easy for everyone to see what needs to be done.
Philips Lifeline is a home-monitoring system that provides a basic, but essential set of features for about US$38 a month.
When an emergency occurs, users push the button of a pendant that can be worn around the neck, alerting the Lifeline call center. An operator talks to the client through a speakerphone device to find out what is happening. If there is an emergency, or there is no answer, the call center phones caregivers and emergency medical personnel.
For an extra US$12 a month, the Lifeline service will add its AutoAlert fall-detection feature, contacting the call center automatically whenever a fall is detected. According to Rob Goudswaard, the head of innovation for Philips Home Monitoring, the system has a very low level of false positives.
For those with advanced physical ailments, the ability to contact emergency personnel may not be enough. It was not for Jean Roberts, a 79-year-old retired nurse who had a brain aneurysm 20 years ago, and now suffers from a seizure disorder. She and her daughter, Carol, 52, who is also disabled, set up a system of customized sensors from GrandCare Systems.
With GrandCare, which averages between US$15 and US$25 a day, Carol receives cellphone alerts whenever a user-defined set of parameters is breached in her mother’s nearby Daytona Beach, Florida, home.
“I used to call and check on her constantly,” Carol said. “If she gets confused, she wouldn’t remember to push a pendant.”
Carol is automatically alerted if her mother’s front doors are opened before 7am or after 10pm, and a bed sensor alerts her if her mother does not get out of bed by 9am.
If her mother’s home is too hot or too cold, she knows that, too. And if her mother begins to get confused and wanders rapidly from room to room, her daughter also receives an alert.
To help the elder Roberts feel more connected, she can receive e-mails and photographs through the GrandCare system, displayed on her TV or an available touch-screen display.
As her mother ages, Carol expects to add other features.
“If she gets worse, we’ll write another parameter, that she can’t leave the house unless I’m notified,” she said. “She has no intention — none — of going into an assisted-care facility.”
For the monitoring of symptoms associated with heart failure and diabetes, Ideal Life in Toronto offers a number of devices, including a scale, a blood-pressure meter and a glucose monitor that automatically send data to the company’s Web site, where it can be examined by a caregiver. Text messages or e-mail alerts can also be sent automatically to a caregiver’s smartphone.
The Ideal Life products, now offered at no extra charge only through certain health plans like California’s Anthem Blue Cross and physicians’ groups, will be sold directly to consumers early next year.
The elderly are often in danger of forgetting to take their medications, or taking too much. So a number of companies, including Philips, offer pill dispensing and monitoring devices.
Philips’ Medication Dispensing Service, for example, uses a tabletop device that plugs into both an electrical and telephone outlet. The machine can be loaded with up to 60 doses of medication, each contained in a small plastic cup. When programmed by a nurse or family member, the dispenser will remind users with a spoken message that their medication is ready. Pushing a button releases a dosage cup into a tray.
If, after 90 minutes of reminders, the button is not pushed, the device sends a message to a designated caregiver. The device and service, which costs US$75 a month, does not know if the pills are actually taken, only if the button was pushed.
In addition to assistance and monitoring in the home, there are services that can help seniors when they are out of the house.
The ActiveCare Personal Assistance Link (US$59 a month) resembles a cellphone. It has software that can detect when a user has fallen and will automatically contact a call center if that happens, or if the user pushes the device’s Care button; it includes GPS technology that can locate the user. The device also functions as a simplified cellphone. Users can contact friends and relatives from a 20-number phone book with four dedicated speed-dial buttons, or ask the call center to dial for them.
The center keeps a list of a customer’s maladies and drugs, and provides them to emergency services; it will also contact caregivers when needed.
A similar device, MobileHelp, connects a user with a live operator when the button on its small white unit is pushed. Equipped with GPS technology, MobileHelp (US$35 a month) can locate a user as well.
The UCLA Wireless Health Institute expects to have a personal activity monitoring system available to consumers, through partners, later this year.
To encourage the elderly to exercise, it will have sensors that track a user’s motions, and will be able to distinguish between walking on level ground, going up and down stairs, and other physical activities. The information will then be transmitted to a caregiver or stored on a server.
Next year, the institute expects to have a commercial version of its prototype SmartCane, which uses embedded sensors that measure pressure on the handle and tip to determine if its user is walking with the proper gait, or in a way that would increase the likelihood of a fall. If a fall does occur, a caregiver would be notified.
Recently, China launched another diplomatic offensive against Taiwan, improperly linking its “one China principle” with UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space. After Taiwan’s presidential election on Jan. 13, China persuaded Nauru to sever diplomatic ties with Taiwan. Nauru cited Resolution 2758 in its declaration of the diplomatic break. Subsequently, during the WHO Executive Board meeting that month, Beijing rallied countries including Venezuela, Zimbabwe, Belarus, Egypt, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, Laos, Russia, Syria and Pakistan to reiterate the “one China principle” in their statements, and assert that “Resolution 2758 has settled the status of Taiwan” to hinder Taiwan’s
Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s (李顯龍) decision to step down after 19 years and hand power to his deputy, Lawrence Wong (黃循財), on May 15 was expected — though, perhaps, not so soon. Most political analysts had been eyeing an end-of-year handover, to ensure more time for Wong to study and shadow the role, ahead of general elections that must be called by November next year. Wong — who is currently both deputy prime minister and minister of finance — would need a combination of fresh ideas, wisdom and experience as he writes the nation’s next chapter. The world that
The past few months have seen tremendous strides in India’s journey to develop a vibrant semiconductor and electronics ecosystem. The nation’s established prowess in information technology (IT) has earned it much-needed revenue and prestige across the globe. Now, through the convergence of engineering talent, supportive government policies, an expanding market and technologically adaptive entrepreneurship, India is striving to become part of global electronics and semiconductor supply chains. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Vision of “Make in India” and “Design in India” has been the guiding force behind the government’s incentive schemes that span skilling, design, fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, and
As former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) wrapped up his visit to the People’s Republic of China, he received his share of attention. Certainly, the trip must be seen within the full context of Ma’s life, that is, his eight-year presidency, the Sunflower movement and his failed Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, as well as his eight years as Taipei mayor with its posturing, accusations of money laundering, and ups and downs. Through all that, basic questions stand out: “What drives Ma? What is his end game?” Having observed and commented on Ma for decades, it is all ironically reminiscent of former US president Harry