FamiliLink Blog

By Laura Nuhaan, CEO and Co Founder FamiliLink

You hear and read more and more about people trying to find ways to keep an elderly parent living independently in their own home, trying to postpone the perhaps necessary move into a retirement community or assisted living facility when heir health may deteriorate while also trying to avoid scary (not too mention expensive) trips to the emergency room. The benefits of living longer independently is not only to avoid the substantial increase in monthly costs if a move to assisted living becomes necessary but also, like many of us, we want to stay independent as long as possible.

There are various companies out there that provide advanced sensor systems for adult children to track the activities of the aging loved one and alert them when there has been an important change in behavior. One of those companies is Quietcare. Quietcare lets the adult children also login to a webpage where they can get more information on their aging loved one. See an example here

The child will also receive phone alerts from QuietCare emergency response operators and notification emails if values are not within the normal range. Last week an article in the New York Times covered this specific topic as well. Read more at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/13/us/13senior.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

The article gives a good example of an elderly woman , Berta 78 years old who fell from the bed and didn’t have within reach their personal alert system like Lifeline Alert Systems from Philips offers. The sensor under the bed part of the system provided by eNeighbor detected that Berta had gotten up but other motion detectors in the bedroom and bathroom registered no motion, which prompted a security call to her. When that call wasn’t answered, the alert system was set in motion and within an hour additional help arrived.

Technologies like eNeighbor come with the possibility of increased care at lower cost and with the backing of large companies like Intel and General Electric.

But there are also some disadvantages with it. One of the disadvantages is the idea that big brother is watching you in your own private setting, what is left for yourself if sensors register all your activities. Or the feeling that your children are following all your moves in your own home? As a daughter of an aging mother living alone, I personally wouldn’t like the idea of following my mother’s moves on the computer. To me it seems like she is perhaps in an observation facility being constantly watched and monitored. While it helps me feel better knowing she is safer, there is a price to pay…her privacy and self-dignity are at stake. So probably there is a balance between how concerned you are and how much you want to compromise your privacy. The same applies to personal alert systems like Lifeline Alert. To give my mother an alert pendant around her neck would feel to me like I was labeling her in some negative way, however if the risk of falling or other issues increases this may be the price we are both willing to pay.

It would be nice if someone could develop a less intrusive solution that keeps these privacy and self-dignity aspects in mind.

Getting back to FamiliLink, as part of our service we offer an urgent message alert feature: With the touch of one button an elderly user can send a pre-set urgent message to a group of pre-selected people (such as an adult child, neighbor, or nurse). The message will be sent to their email and in the near future the same message will also be sent to their cell phone. This is not a complete solution but it will help in feeling more secure and safe and will provide some peace of mind to the family. In the near future we will introduce other safety related features as indeed the technology is available and we can leverage modern communication technologies.