dementia care, cognitive decline

My Google blogger alerts have been blinking and beeping about the Virtual Dementia Tour, an offering from a non-profit called Second Wind Dreams.

By 2013, phone-based navigation will be the dominant form of turn-by-turn navigation -- today more than one-third of North American consumers own or use some form of navigation services. So says a new Forrester Research analysis.

After reading weekly about wandering individuals with dementia -- lost and then found, not necessarily alive, I think it's time for an update. Here is a bit more detail on a few of the new players engaged in technology that helps track people with Alzheimer's or other dementia. These products are device-plus- service offerings, may not yet be available in all geographies, and this information is from the vendors.

I spent some quality time this weekend writing and then losing a blog entry to a software crash. Computers. Gotta love 'em.  But I got to thinking about simplification, packaging, and reuse. If you think about it, how resourceful and enterprising business people are! Just think -- from one year to the next, contractors and interior designers move from new home building and decorating to renovation and retrofit. Car rental companies like Hertz get into the hourly car use business to compete with Zipcar.

These are tough times to sell products. Period. But before being ossified into a state of discouragement, it's good to know that the baby boomer market segment is not tapped out yet as the attached two studies make clear.

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.