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High Tech Elder Care May Be Mixed Blessing
Hugh Pickens writes "Gerontologists say 'aging in place' vastly improves the quality of life for seniors, and is a lot cheaper for society than group homes and institutions. The trick is to do so without jeopardizing the health and safety of older people, which is why 480 people are taking part in pilot programs in Portland, Oregon that outfit homes with technology so elderly people can be monitored for illness or infirmity. With the first wave of baby boomers turning 65 this year, corporations such as Intel see lucrative new business opportunities tending to a generation of people accustomed to doing things their own way. As part of a test, Dorothy Rutherford's two-bedroom condominium has been outfitted with an array of electronic monitoring gear that might eventually find its way to retail shelves. Motion sensors along hallways and ceilings record her gait and walking speed. A monitor on her back door observes when she leaves the house, and another one on the refrigerator keeps tabs on how often she's eating. A special bed laced with sensors can assess breathing patterns, heart rate and general sleep quality, a pill box fitted with electronic switches records when medication is taken, and a Wii video game system has been rejiggered so that players stand on a platform that measures their weight and balance. But there is the downside, as some experts on the aging population worry that making it easier for elderly people to stay in their homes could reduce the incentive for children to visit or could create a false sense that technology can foresee every problem and address every need."
The average life expectancy of someone in a nursing home is 2 - 3 years. This could be a huge leap forward in increasing the quality of life for the elderly, and I look forward to the tech that will be in place when I'm that old.
...could reduce the incentive for children to visit or could create a false sense that technology can foresee every problem and address every need.
Seriously?
The first one makes no sense and the second is, you know, obvious.
Maybe those "experts" should retire, they may be getting as old as the people they are studying.
Technology might make people lazy. What else is new?
We'll cope, so long as we do something about the lawsuits. I'm wondering if the liability factor might make this technology just as expensive as a group home.
or could create a false sense that technology can foresee every problem and address every need."
This makes about as much sense as the assertion that seatbelts are dangerous because they encourage people to drive recklessly.
GE and Intel are lining up for a big suck on the elder care teat. It's nice that some monitor in some remote location will beep when they have a problem - but by the time they get the message, and get a medical team on site (from Wyoming?) it's going to be a bit on the "too late" side. Letting the old folks live out their lives and die at home is a good thing; they'll enjoy a better quality of life and they won't be stuck with crippling medical bills. But I'm having a little trouble figuring out how a few dozen kilobucks worth of GE and Intel stuff is going to do anything to improve their lives. The only winners here are the corporations - with luck, they can get federal healthcare funds to pay for all of it (at properly inflated prices).
My mother has been diabetic for thirty plus years. Currently she uses a pump which has a sensor system which can partially measure her glucose level. It is not terribly accurate and has to be calibrated a lot. She is still required to test her blood sugar levels a few times a day as she is NOT allowed to rely on the sensor readings for accuracy. If she gets very low at night it beeps then eventually vibrates. So it can at least determine relative levels of glucose and report the direction its going but they are not convenient. The sensor has to be changed every three days (they are not cheap) and there is a decent failure rate.
So what am I getting at. I like the direction this is going and I do not believe it will make a nation of shut ins or have families feel as if they can ignore their elders. If they are going to ignore their elders (parents) then they will regardless of what technology does. If anything this might help keep them in contact more often because like the article states you can be told if mom took her medicine, if she is eating regularly. I would not mind a monitoring system which could alert on emergencies because that is the real point of all this monitoring - we cannot be there 24x7 but machines can.
I would certainly be willing to pay for monitoring of my parents health so that emergency persons can be sent when the need arises. Hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) is not something you can recover from unless you catch it quickly. My mother can stay conscious with blood sugar levels in the 40s but when it gets below 60 she acts "silly drunk" and may not realize the trouble she is in. At the same time 500+ in her can be fine but it should be noted because in diabetes one common thing I have found is far too many doctors don't agree on causes or when something is a problem, let alone how to always fix it.
More monitoring options will add more years of good living. Now this opens up the next problem, paying for all these years. For some of us giving up the little things won't be hard for the big things in life.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The problem isn't that workers don't know the patients are sick. That's why a person is in a nursing home in the first place, because they have something wrong with them that makes it impossible to care for themselves. The problem is that workers in some of these places get complacent, and let the elderly lie in one spot for days at a time until they get bed sores, or let them lay in their own excrement, or make them suffer in other ways just because it's too inconvenient to fulfill their needs. Unfortunately neither this technology nor any other is going to fix that.
If your children are only visiting you because they're afraid you might be dead, you need better children.
On the flip side, if they're only visiting because they're hoping you're dead, you should have been a better parent.
We have prolonged life but not the quality of life, and this tech does not address this. A dying process that used to take 2 months is now drawn out for 2 years costing untold piles of money and untold extra grief and pain for the patient and the family.
Does anyone else feel this tech is super creepy and sounds more like a testing ground for Orwellian type monitoring? I mean there is no reason a government couldn't say this tech that watch's everything you eat and every time you leave the house and all your movement in your own house ever your gait wouldn't give a 29 year old extra safety too?? creepy
even if it's true this is cheaper then a retirement home today; whatever it costs, it will cost less putting this tech into a retirement home on scale (also reusable without being moved) so that argument is false
that is 90% genetics, sorry
This technology isn't particularly new -- telehealth has been around in some forms for a few decades, but it's definitely taking off now.
One of the benefits not mentioned is that, in addition to 'remote monitoring,' telehealth services generate a huge amount of useful data for clinicians. Our telehealth program collects weight, blood pressure, pulse, and (for diabetic patients) blood sugar readings daily. It takes less than five minutes for the patient to do these tests.
In turn, their physician and care team have daily medical data, and can detect subtle changes much more quickly than a weekly nurse visit or occasional office visits. The only other setting where you have daily vitals monitoring is an in-patient hospital or care facility; now we can have it in people's houses. And the patients generally love it -- they feel a sense of security knowing that their health is being monitored.
High tech care may be a mixed blessing, but what we do know for certain is that human care will get worse. The ratio of working population to retirees will change a lot over the next 30 years, Already nurses and home aid are on the stop watch, you can't make it that much more effective to matter. Meanwhile a lot of the industry has gone from making a thousand to a million units with robots, automation and computers. A gadget will be getting cheaper and cheaper while human time gets more and more expensive. Politicians can lie as much as they like but looking at the fundamentals you see that it is inevitable.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Can they program these robots to steal the old persons valuables too?
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Upon seeing the headline, my first thought was of Roujin Z.
I guess that's for when they can't get by on their own and simple monitoring won't do.
End of line..
The problem with multigenerational homes, is that the elderly often feel they have right to control the life of their adult children.
Hate much? Surely you won't mind being remembered as "the generation that brought on the War on Terror, wasting the lives of thousands of young Americans and thus bringing grief on their homes, all while throwing valuable resources into a futile war to deepen the pockets of contractors and arms manufacturers", and being held personally accountable for those events. Because of course it was YOU who did it.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
Have gnu, will travel.
Whatever helps you sleep at night, son.
Same goes when the elderly aren't at home. That's a pretty large reason their adult children don't visit. It seems to be difficult for parents to treat their children as responsible adults, regardless of their absolute age.
In many cases there are no offspring to do the job. Not everyone has massive extended families. GOOD nursing homes where they can interact with peers can be better than some families.
I'd rather run out the clock in a good VA home with other ex-G.I.s. I've visited a couple which had HAPPY residents who were articulate and didn't mind expressing themselves.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Caregiving for seniors is often MUCH more than a full-time job even for smart, clueful and motivated people.
There are many choices, so research them to get the best outcome.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
boomers did that too, this gen was the ones being sent off to fight the wrong country
BTW, the "Terms and exclusions" clause of my signature is there exactly for cases like this.
This post contains no rudeness or derision of any kind. All arguments are friendly. Terms and exclusions may apply.
This is a good idea for people that are close to having to go to a nursing home. The monitoring system will show when they can't take care of themselves any more. This could be months or even years. A good nursing home costs an arm and a leg and your first born child, while staying home is much cheaper, and a small victory every day. What ever they are going to charge for monitoring is still less than a good nursing home.
The health care is only so-so at most veterans' homes, but the company is top-notch.
Part of the reason we started MEDgle ( http://www.medgle.com/ ) was to help make sense of all the data that is (EHRs) and will be (sensors) generated. The huge amount of data generated needs to be analyzed and prioritized before being presented to caregivers. At MEDgle, our focus is to enable scalable health by facilitating the distribution of care tasks to the most cost effective individual while ensuring quality of care through real-time clinical intelligence. Though as the article points out there is a risk of over dependance. The question, is how to achieve balance that provides the best outcomes. Feedback, thoughts, etc are very welcome! Cheers Ash disclaimer (I'm the CEO of the company)
... and could be solved by a high-tech, or even a bunch of low-tech, devices. But electronic monitoring can only go so far.
If the elderly person cannot interpret what they are told by a screen (or a disembodied voice reading it), a human caregiver must be present. In a timely manner. _Every time_. A familiar son or daughter over the phone is not enough for someone with a form of dementia, or a case of Just Plain Stubborn. There is no substitute for being there.
As many commenters pointed out, eldercare will be monumental challenge for the next couple decades. Nursing homes, assisted living, and group homes will clearly evolve, as there will be more folks who need care, and fewer who can provide it.
Lose = not win
As a nurse who has dealt with these issues a LOT, a few points to make.
*Electronics will never replace human beings, they supplement them. Monitors can tell you some things, but nothing replaces someone who knows an elder looking and talking and ensuring that they "look ok". Current technology is not nearly accurate enough to ensure anyone's health, machines are too picky and have to be placed "just right", broken phone line bolluxes all your telehealth technology, batteries fail, and elders get tired of the annoying electronics and unplug stuff.
*Neither electronic monitoring, home health nurses, nursing homes, nor family in the home is going to prevent an elder from falling. Moving them from home alone to a facility simply ensures that someone who is falling frequently will be found sooner, there is no magic about a nursing home that prevents falls. On a related note BEDRAILS ARE EVIL - elders break arms and legs by getting them stuck through the rails and then falling from bed. They climb over the rails and land on their heads rather than sliding from bed onto the floor as they would do otherwise. They even get their restraints partially untied and hang themselves by climbing bedrails and falling. Bedrails are never an answer to keep a loved one from falling, half rails are used to help them move themselves in the bed.
*SAVE MONEY NOW - there is no magical fund out there that is going to take care of you when you are too old to take care of yourself. If you are sick enough to need nursing care, medicare will pay for a limited amount of time in a skilled nursing bed, if you are dying they will pay for hospice. If you have spent all your money and are completely broke, medicaid in some states will put you up in a medicaid funded facility or private home. Most of these are not where you would want to spend your final days, trust me.
*If you are needing to choose a facility to care for a family member who cannot care for themselves, use the "sniff test". Visit the facility unannounced on a weekend (avoid mealtimes if you can) and walk down the hall using your nose. If it smells like people are unwashed and unchanged, choose a different place. And another good rule is that if you have a family member in a home, those that have frequent (and unpredictable) family visits get the best care. When I visited patients in facilities they never knew when the nurse was going to show up and so my patients were getting much more frequent checks and care than those who did not have visitors. And when you are there be sure to check the BM log. Sounds gross but is vitally important. Constipation and bowel impaction is a huge problem in elders who cannot easily make their needs known or care for themselves, somebody needs to be paying attention.
*And remember each time that Congress starts making noises about cutting programs for healthcare that this is going to directly affect YOU when your elderly parent needs care. You are responsible as next of kin, and failure to care for a dependent elder is a criminal offense. This also affects the care you will be able to receive when the time comes and you need help. Nobody plans on needing care when they get older, but most everyone does. The choices you make now have a direct affect on how that will look.
That would be about now, Logan.
I thought we just tipped the guy that brings the cart around?
"bring out yer dead!"
I don't think we need THAT much tech in grandmas house... Simply because it wouldn't work. On the other hand, something like an iPhone has more than enough capability to monitor health and emergency status with built in sensors and a few attachments. I liked the idea of using a Wii in that manner too.
My grandmother lived to 90's. The BIG factor was being in her home and access to prompt help. "minor" injuries are what "kill" most old people. A broken bone or untreated sore turns into multiple surgeries and "being in a hospital" is what gets them in a slow death spiral. Throw in monitoring meds and chronic conditions like pacemakers or diabeties and you could cut 50% of care costs. Ultimately, being SOCIAL is what keeps most old people going. Having someplace to GO every few days, people to see keeps them getting up and taking care of themselves.
Smart money would be on bluetooth connected devices ... Monitors, O2 tanks, testing meters... And tie those to something cheap like a Wii or iPhone(ish) devices. Brand small things to work together and you have a winner. Heck, iPhones have 2-way video features now... Now grandma can SHOW where she's fallen and can't get up. It would be trivial to build an "old people friendly" device with some goofy robot OS but all the same hardware.