Aging Independently
Carol is 79 and living alone in the same home that she’s lived in
for 30 years. She and her husband, who passed away two years ago, raised
their three children in this home and although she is now living in it
independently – it is home. Her children have long since moved out with the
closest being Michelle who is a 45-minute drive away. Carol has some
cardiovascular conditions and she also, like many people her age, is
starting to experience a bit of cognitive decline. She just doesn’t remember
things as well as she used. Each day, Carol gets up around 7:00 a.m., uses
the bathroom, weighs herself, goes to the kitchen to eat breakfast and take
her various pills, makes a cup of tea and then settles into the den to watch
the morning news. Around 9:00 a.m., a prompt appears across the TV screen
reminding Carol to take her blood pressure, which she does with a
wireless-enabled blood pressure cuff that is sitting next to her easy chair
in the den. Each morning around 10:00 a.m., Michelle, Carol’s daughter,
receives a text message on her cell phone that says “Mom’s okay” – meaning
that systems throughout her mother's home were able to determine that she
got out of bed, she used the bathroom, her weight had not dramatically
shifted, she took her pills correctly, the gas on the stove is off, and her
blood pressure is stable. Michelle uses her cell phone to call her mother
and ask her how she’s doing that morning, but she already knows that all is
well and they talk about Michelle’s kids.
If Carol had forgotten to take her pills that morning or if something
else about her daily living had been abnormal, Michelle would have been
alerted and she could have called her mother to help coach her or
preventively called for more specific professional health care support.
- Assistance with daily health and monitoring tasks
- Medical reminders
- Activity prompts
- Monitoring and early warning using bio-sensor data collection
- Automated dietician
- Emergency response
- Real-time alerts and communication
