Remote monitoring

With my ombudsman hat on yesterday, I spent a morning doing an assessment of an Assisted Living Facility. As is usually the case, the nurses showed us a thick patient chart book with its hand-written status observations, penciled medication tracking dosage X's and yellowed-out discontinued drugs.

I have been searching the web for robots that could be useful to seniors -- today. Yeah, I know that's a tall order. So much research, so few commercial products, and I really don't want to count the companion toy dogs. And while vacuum cleaners and floor washers are interesting and available through Target, they're not quite what I had in mind for helping seniors stay safely in their homes. And the research programs, funded by every company (including Toyota, Sony, etc., etc. and its mother, don't seem to have commercial product near ready. 

Is the PERS device -- press a button around your neck and a service is dialed -- eventually headed for obsolescence? Parks Associates has predicted a basically flat growth path for PERS devices through 2013. Maybe that's so if security companies -- not healthcare companies -- set the replacement and extensible path. Here's another established and financially healthy security company, Visonic, that's been around for a long time -- now in the "PERS-and-beyond" market, aka the home monitoring market, with its Amber line.

The aging in place wave has hit the upscale community of Coral Gables in Miami. It's a well intentioned but inadequate concept despite its promise.  Coral Gables@Home is being launched as a non-profit which will cost members an introductory $500 annual fee for the first 100 enrolled.

I admit that I am a bit of a nerd; I find survey data very interesting. It’s especially intriguing when it exposes trends that are both counterintuitive and actionable. So it is with two studies that I tackle the questions of senior and caregiver readiness to use home monitoring technology that can help seniors age in place and stay in their homes longer.

Builders have little interest in changing their home-design practices to accomodate seniors -- unless pressured by consumers who want their homes designed that way, of course.  In fact, in Florida, universal design standards are not part of the building code for new buildings, although contractors can be certified in it as well as becoming

Juxtapose this.  1) There's a modest trend towards Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORCs), which are

The home monitoring market for seniors is a potentially converging set of product vendors, some with medical interests and origins that may over time be marketed for use in advance of medical need -- these include HealthHero, Honeywell HomMed, Dovetail Health (even linking to nurse monitoring).

I admit it.

Many who want to age in place suffer from some early memory loss themselves -- or they have a spouse or other relative with dementia. But is this technology consistent and optimal across state boundaries? It looks like every state (now 11 or more) can and probably will implement Project Lifesaver Silver Alerts that use some sort of bracelet with a notification to local police.