“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.
Two weeks ago, Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh (楊紫瓊) raised hackles in Taiwan by posting to her 2.6 million Instagram followers that she was visiting “Taipei, China.” Yeoh’s post continues a long-standing trend of Chinese propaganda that spreads disinformation about Taiwan’s political status and geography, aimed at deceiving the world into supporting its illegitimate claims to Taiwan, which is not and has never been part of China. Taiwan must respond to this blatant act of cognitive warfare. Failure to respond merely cedes ground to China to continue its efforts to conquer Taiwan in the global consciousness to justify an invasion. Taiwan’s government
Earlier signs suggest that US President Donald Trump’s policy on Taiwan is set to move in a more resolute direction, as his administration begins to take a tougher approach toward America’s main challenger at the global level, China. Despite its deepening economic woes, China continues to flex its muscles, including conducting provocative military drills off Taiwan, Australia and Vietnam recently. A recent Trump-signed memorandum on America’s investment policy was more about the China threat than about anything else. Singling out the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as a foreign adversary directing investments in American companies to obtain cutting-edge technologies, it said
The recent termination of Tibetan-language broadcasts by Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) is a significant setback for Tibetans both in Tibet and across the global diaspora. The broadcasts have long served as a vital lifeline, providing uncensored news, cultural preservation and a sense of connection for a community often isolated by geopolitical realities. For Tibetans living under Chinese rule, access to independent information is severely restricted. The Chinese government tightly controls media and censors content that challenges its narrative. VOA and RFA broadcasts have been among the few sources of uncensored news available to Tibetans, offering insights
“If you do not work in semiconductors, you are nothing in this country.” That is what an 18-year-old told me after my speech at the Kaohsiung International Youth Forum. It was a heartbreaking comment — one that highlights how Taiwan ignores the potential of the creative industry and the soft power that it generates. We all know what an Asian nation can achieve in that field. Japan led the way decades ago. South Korea followed with the enormous success of “hallyu” — also known as the Korean wave, referring to the global rise and spread of South Korean culture. Now Thailand
RSS