These are exciting times! As technology advances the health care industry continues to benefit and the area of senior care is no exception.
As the option to age at home is a more desired option by many seniors, than retiring to a care facility, developments in technology are making it more feasible for the elderly to remain in their homes. Here are some of the advancements and trends in technology that will benefit senior care in the new year.
Brain and Heart Health Tracking
An iPhone and iPad application called BrainyApp is designed to help improve brain and heart health. This app created by Alzheimer's Australia and Bupa Health Foundation lets users keep track of brain and heart health by working through a Brain Health survey to arrive at a starting score. This starting score is sent to your own email and subsequent scores will be used to compare and track increases or decreases. The BrainyApp will monitor diet, exercise and lifestyle habits and suggest activities to help improve brain and heart health. BrainyApp is based upon research that links brain health and a reduced risk of dementia to the health of heart and cardiovascular system.
Vigilan Administrator for Charting and Recordkeeping
A time saving software application by Vigilan, a senior living software provider, is designed to help nursing staff save time-spent record keeping and charting of data. The Vigilan Administrator app will be an easy to use, HIPAA compliant tool that runs on the iPad and will be available in March 2012.
Robots as personal assistants and household companions
The Health Care industry is one of the primary targets of Nao Robot from Aldebaran Robotics. The Nao robot has an imbedded Intel processor that allows it to run at a high level of performance and remain relatively cost effective. The Nao Robot is capable of assisting with mundane tasks; it can also dance, sing and recognize faces and voices.
The Nao Robot is capable of teaching basic concepts and is particularly useful in assisting children with autism. There are also valuable ways that a household robot can assist with senior care for example, Nao Robot can take out the trash and fetch things, it can help someone who has fallen with getting back up and remind people to take medications. Appointment reminders may be programmed as well as times to start dinner or notes that a guest is expected.
Pearl the Nursebot, developed at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute is valuable with reminding people to take medications, helps with opening jars and escorting them to appointments and to dinner.
GeckoSystems' CareBot is a valuable assistant to elderly individuals as a companion and is equipped with a video link so that the monitoring person will be alerted in the event of an emergency or the need for additional assistance.
Because the personal assistant robots have an embedded computer, they can collect and store data about the individual such as heart rates and blood sugar levels.
There are a variety of gadgets and technologies available to caregivers of seniors who wish to age at home such as monitoring systems, GPS, Smart Home technologies and computer systems that assist with guiding people through every day activities. Canadians are adopting the aging-in-place technologies slowly but as the baby boomer age the acceptance of assistive technologies is expected to increase as well.
No comments:
Post a Comment