Thanks to an exciting announcement this week from the Obama administration, Alzheimer’s disease may soon join the likes of polio and yellow fever as examples of how science has triumphed when tasked with an insurmountable challenge.  The first ever National Alzheimer’s plan has been developed to determine the best options for the treatment and prevention of Alzheimer’s disease by the year 2025. As one of the millions with a family history of Alzheimer’s, I’m not too proud to shout, “YIPPEE!,” but it is difficult not to ask hard questions about funding and support for families – not to mention, “What do we do in the meantime?”

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For families long impacted by the constant worry of wandering loved ones, a new product has recently been released by GTX Corp. Developed over the past two years and currently available on the market for around $300 per pair, GTX Corp has developed a GPS tracker that fits into the heel of an otherwise normal walking shoe, making the worry of wandering a soon-to-be-distant memory.

In a report from the Daily News, Professor Andrew Carle from George Mason University claims that the shoes will help to eliminate embarrassing and potentially costly accidents for those suffering with senility or early onset Alzheimer’s disease.  The device will allow families to create a “geo-fence” that would trigger an alarm if the person “wanders” outside of the designated area.

Products like these, and the myHalo medical alarm, are part of a growing market developed for the impending “aging tsunami.”  Aging Baby Boomers are not taking no for an answer and are wanting technology solutions to the complex problems of aging, whether it be for the seniors themselves, who need a medical alarm with automatic fall detection like myHalo, or for an aging parent that they want to keep an eye on with a GPS locator in the car – or even a pair of shoes.

With so many options, families are able to pick and choose the best products that meet their needs. Apple is including three monitoring devices in their holiday gift guide, including Pocketfinder GPS Locators, small GPS devices that can be placed in the car, on your pet’s collar, or on your person.  With advancements like these, early PERS devices with panic buttons are now becoming more and more obsolete, and that’s a good thing.  Statistics say 4 out of 5 seniors who use traditional, manual medical alarms are unable to push the button after the fall – a risk no one needs to take now that there are so many outstanding products on the market.

Make sure to make safety a priority this holiday season, and include a monitoring device, like myHalo under your tree.

Many families believe that the move towards aging in place is a complicated and expensive decision, and depending on which direction you go- it can be.  However, more and more we’re seeing that companies targeting aging seniors and their families are making it easy to take the proper steps toward safety and increased protection with minimal cost and effort.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently ran an article about prioritizing the rooms in the home that need aging in place modifications the most, and they suggest starting in the bathroom.

“The room that poses the most danger to seniors is the bathroom. The potential for slips and falls is greater in this part of the home – 75 percent of fall injuries occur in the bathroom — making it a good place to focus your renovation energy” claims the article. They go on to suggest installing hard surface flooring, higher toilets, walk-in showers or baths, and good lighting.

While making the decision to make your home safer is a step in the right direction, some of the suggestions mentioned in the article take time and money up-front.  These types of renovations often end up displacing the homeowner, and causing friction between family members.  I suggest starting small with a wearable medical alarm with advanced fall detection and remote monitoring.

By wearing a medical alarm, seniors have the security that if they do fall or have an emergency someone will immediately be notified and come to help them. On the other hand, with remote monitoring, family members have to capability to “check on” their loved ones health and activity levels through a password protected website.  It’s an easy solution that keeps seniors in their own homes without the cost and burden of renovations.

During the months of November and December, Halo Monitoring is providing a promotional offer to get started easily with no risk. The promotion includes zero deposit and $1 shipping and handling fees. All you have to do is enter coupon code WINTER on your order form. With this offer, you can give protection to your loved one immediately with minimal up-front cost and only a small monthly fee IF you decide to keep it.  Convincing a loved one to wear a small medical alarm on their belt or around their chest is an easy step in the safe direction.

For the upcoming Holiday season, we are offering a limited discount to all new myHalo customers.

For the months of November and December only, Halo Monitoring is waiving the $99 deposit, and offering $1 shipping and handling charges.

You will only be billed the standard monthly rate:

$49/month for the myHalo belt clip;

$59/month for the myHalo Complete with chest strap and 24/7 activity and health monitoring

Click here and enter the offer code “WINTER” to receive this limited offer, or call 888.971.4256. For more information, please click here.

If you’ve ever been in the hospital and been made to wait for someone to answer your page, you could have been the victim of a growing issue called ‘alarm fatigue’. This term refers to hospital personnel becoming immune to the constant beeps and buzzes that are ever-present within a hospital ward, and often forgetting about patients who may be in need of their immediate care. A recent piece on ABC news featured this growing problem and the families who have been victims.

“Each box, each device, each program is claiming the attention of the human operator. The result is people are confronted with many, many alarms, only a few of which are meaningful or important,” said Dr. Richard Cook, a critical care physician and safety expert at the University of Chicago Medical Center. “The function of the human becomes to ignore alarms. And inevitably some get ignored that would have been important to pay attention to.”

There are a lot of parallels between what’s happening on these hospital floors and what’s been evolving in the medical alarm marketplace for a couple of years. The cornerstone of our business has been panic buttons, but more and more we’re finding that they’re simply not effective. In our case, it’s not that no one hears the alert once it’s pushed but 4 out of 5 seniors are unable to push the button in the event of a fall.  There had to be a better solution, and that’s when “automatic fall detection” came into play.

It’s of my opinion that if we can keep seniors safer while they’re at home, and protected from serious falls than we greatly decrease their chances of ending up in the hospital for an extended time. The fear is that once a senior has to be admitted into the hospital, they will never be well enough to return to their own homes.

The myHalo Complete is the only product on the market today that offers 24/7 activity and health monitoring, along with automatic fall detection- no need to push a button in the event of a fall. And in the event of a fall, caregivers are notified via phone, email, or text, according to preference. If the fall is serious, an emergency team is immediately sent to the site to attend to the senior. While in the cases of “alarm fatigue”, adding additional alarms won’t solve the problem but making preventive decisions to keep loved ones out of hospitals are worth the extra can time and money.