High-tech home-care help
A portable telecare device from Finland has been praised for helping
older people and those with chronic conditions to live more
independently at home. It has also helped to reduce admissions to
hospital, ensure more timely hospital discharges and increase confidence
for people in and around their homes.
At its most basic, WristCare by Finland’s Vivatec is a community
alarm that is worn on the wrist rather than round the neck as is usual
in the UK. It can be used to call for help in emergency by pressing a
button, just as with the round-the-neck type, and then the operator at
the community centre will try to make voice contact with the wearer
through a loudspeaker, and if this fails will send help to the caller’s
home.
The WristCare device can do much more than this, however, as within a
few days of being worn it familiarises itself with the wearer’s daily —
and nightly — routines and if it senses a departure from these it calls
the centre of its own accord.
It is able to detect if it is not being worn by sensing both the change
in temperature and a change from the moistness of the wearer’s skin.
It learns the wearer’s pattern of deep and REM sleep, and if it
senses no movement for, say, half an hour longer than the normal
duration of a deep sleep period, it again issues an automatic alarm, as
it will also do if the wearer is waking frequently during the night,
perhaps because of diarrhoea or urinary frequency.
It can, if required — as perhaps in the case of a subject with
Alzheimer’s disease who should not go out alone — report when the wearer
leaves the house by sensing when it is out of range of its base station.
The care team can use evidence of ‘wellness’, as indicated by no alarms
from a wearer’s WristCare, to reduce the number of ‘pop-in’ visits they
make to the home.
The device was shortlisted in the HSJ 2005 awards under the Improving
Care with Etechnology category, and was the only telecare finalist in
any award category.
Source: bjhc&im February 2006
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