You know the drill – which seems unchanged. A bot advises you that many older adults would benefit from a free monitoring service in the event of a fall. The bot attempts to verify age and then hands off to an offshore call center rep that cannot pronounce ‘Houston’ – an element in the name of the service company, nor can the rep identify the maker of the medical alert service they are offering. Naturally, the rep cannot remove a name from the cold-calling list -- and when asked to do so, hangs up. But there's good news...
...The top medical alert device mentioned by consumers in a recent survey is the Apple Watch. For those who have been observing the PERS (medical alert) industry over the decades, this is progress – not just for Apple, but also for the wearables market itself, including multi-vendor partner offerings beyond Apple – like those from FallCall Solutions, to matching the range of needs (and options) for fall detection and remote monitoring, such as the UnaliWear Kanega Watch, especially for older adults living alone, walking the dog, and/or have a notable fall risk.
Life Alert finally changed their gloom-and-doom ‘I’ve Fallen” ad. In the nick of time, as the most mentioned fall-related product now mentioned on Reddit is, you guessed it, The Apple Watch. Online AI-enabled search coughs up a detailed comparison. The traditional PERS industry has seen this coming for a while of course, although feature comparison sites may attempt to hide the obvious. Older people own the watch – adding another alarm tool beyond a home security system may not seem to be an obvious step.
Cold-calling older adults is a ‘feature’ for having a landline telephone. Over the past five years, landline phone use has declined by 40.9 million households, though older adults lead in landline use, particularly in the Northeast, for some reason. The ‘Silence unknown callers’ feature of cellphones hasn’t (deliberately) made it to landlines. However, and this is a big deal, landlines are still the most reliable method for reaching and being found by emergency service providers, particularly during a storm. And to avoid cold callers, simply turn off the ringer.
