Help for caretakers in charge of Alzheimer’s Patients – High-Tech Tracking Technology
Alzheimer’s is a frightening disease, not just for the way it can reduce a normal functioning person into practically a zombie, but also for how easy it seems to fall victim to it. There are perhaps 5 million Alzheimer’s patients in America. About half of them have recently been diagnosed.
Anyone who is in the early stages of the disease, can still look forward to many years of reasonably independent existence, before they can expect the disease to deteriorate their brains, and make their lives and memories disappear. When this happens, most Alzheimer’s patients are seen to exhibit symptoms like spontaneously losing track of where they are, or where they’re headed.
If they happen to be walking or on a driving when this happens, they can get irretrievably lost. You can find lots of stories from relatives and caretakers of Alzheimer’s patients who find their lives more and more tied down to the constant care that their loved one needs with many routine functions they undertake everyday.
A woman in Texas, who’s Father has Alzheimer’s, is beginning to see some of the depressing reality of the disease in him. The previously self-aware and active old man would always take 5-mile-long walks around the picturesque streets of their town. Lately, he’s found himself suddenly bewildered at completely losing track of where he has arrived at some point on the walk. The statistics are scary for the missing old. There are about 3 million missing cases out there.
The Silver Alerts program is something that has already been in place for a while in 11 states around the country, including Texas. When an Alzheimer’s sufferer goes missing, a predetermined set of TV and radio broadcast outlets, quickly put out a “Gone Missing” message, to help passersby identify the poor lost person. Most of the time, the wandering person is soon discovered.
There is new help from the Alzheimer’s Association. All kinds of new high-tech options are now available for Alzheimer’s patients. All of them, combinations of the GPS technology, mobile phone technology and the tracking bracelet technology are used on prisoners on parole. But even GPS technology, only goes so far. It works very well when Alzheimer’s patients find themselves lost, but while they are still walking about, families have no way of keeping tabs on their location. A newer and better system is available, known as the Comfort Zone program.
Families that opt into the system are issued a number of transmitters. There is one for the car, one for the pocket, one to embed in the person’s shoes and another one that Alzheimer’s patients can wear as a wristwatch. These transmitters will signal to the family, to track on a participating website, real-time information on the exact location the family member is at any point of time. A caretaker can look closely to see where exactly the forgetful relatives are headed, and quickly move in to cut them off if they appear to be heading for danger. The transmitter system can also be given a perimeter around the neighbourhood that the Alzheimer’s patients in the family are not allowed to cross. The moment it happens, family members will receive a phone call.
This is how it works. The transmitters are able to keep track of the person’s bearing with help from cell phone towers and GPS satellites – in real time. Some of the older systems only used GPS and often this wasn’t a real help in the basement of a building, or deep inside a large structure. GPS can often lose track. Cell phone towers nearby though will always have access.
Families still do have to maintain close supervision. It’s just that, with a little help from this kind of surveillance technology, the supervision doesn’t have to be so relentless. That would always be a great relief to any family.
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