Slashdot Mirror
Japanese City Tags Elderly Dementia Sufferers With Barcodes (japantimes.co.jp)
"The Japanese city of Iruma has introduced scannable adhesive barcodes to tag fingernails of senior citizens with dementia who are prone to getting lost as a way to help concerned families find missing loved ones," writes HughPickens.com, citing this article from Japan Times:
The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails -- part of a free service launched last month and a first in the country -- measure just 1 cm (0.4 inches) in size. "Being able to attach the seals on nails is a great advantage," says a city worker. "There are already ID stickers for clothes or shoes but dementia patients are not always wearing those items." If an elderly person becomes disorientated, police will find the local city hall, its telephone number and the wearer's ID all embedded in the QR code. Japan is grappling with a rapidly aging population, with senior citizens expected to make up a whopping 40 percent of the population around 2060.
The article describes Japan as "a country where 4.8 million people aged 75 or older hold a license... Last month, police started offering discounts for noodles at local restaurants to elderly citizens who agreed to hand in their driving licenses."
The article describes Japan as "a country where 4.8 million people aged 75 or older hold a license... Last month, police started offering discounts for noodles at local restaurants to elderly citizens who agreed to hand in their driving licenses."
>The adhesive QR-coded seals for nails
Wut?
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
It could take them for crime from scumbag criminals who have no respect for the elderly.
Isn't facial recognition technology good enough or something?
"And the second beast required all people small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand...."
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
it's already there.. finger print / iris scan / DNA .. ask the old man to press his thumb impression and you can find who he is.
Wouldn't it be easier to chip them, like you do for cats, dogs & marmosets?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This needs to be paired with something on clothes like a yellow star or badge or such
Surely it should be "disoriented" or have I been misinformated? (From "orient" meaning the East, or to find the direction East).
Spurious word endings do not beautificate your language and should be omissionated.
These barcodes made it easy for me to catch them in Pokemon Go. So far I've caught a 98 year old on a freeway, a man who'd wet himself, and a confused lady trying to buy catfood from a vending machine.
An adhesive bar code or QR-code on fingernails sound about as permanent as a Post It note on a cloth sleeve. A tattoo on a wrist or other visible place would be pretty permanent but the data base connected to the tattoo must be kept up to date. Another less permanent device might be an end sealed plastic wrist band containing appropriate information including perhaps a readable chip or QR-code. Maybe even an identity chip placed under the skin like those for wayward pets.
There's still the problem of dementia patients wandering away from their residence. This seems to happen fairly frequently and sometimes with tragic results. Some kind of tracking of such folks would also be nice. These are often used in the residential settings of such people, but don't work when the the patient walks away.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
What do the Jews have to say about this??
Laughing all the way to the bank. We control the banking industry, after all.
Trump says this problem is huuuuuuuge!!!
"Last month, police started offering discounts for noodles at local restaurants to elderly citizens who agreed to hand in their driving licenses."
Yeah, they're banking on most of the elderly forgetting about the discount...
#DeleteChrome
Many of the early commentators are missing the point.
Barcode is the direct allusion to Nazi Germany innovation of using permanent tattooed numbers to account their inmates. By the way, they have used IBM computers, leading novel technology, to keep track of inmates.
At the same time Soviets did not use codes on the bodies of their prisoners in GULAG, because they had way more prisoners and all their efforts were directed toward building weapons for WW2, not dealing with computers.
Fun stuff. Who could have thought that the nazi ideas will be implemented, treated as novel and applied towards humans. The difference between permanent tatoo and a small finger nail sticker with strong adhesive is really tiny.
Dude, Japan is turning into a real live Children of Men.
With near zero immigration, and below replacement rate both rate, they are doomed.
Japan is going to have t have some serious cultural changes within the next 10-15 years, or the new lace will be a ghost town.
The Nazis Had Pieces of Flair They Made the Jews Wear did some one think back to the WW2 days?
It has begun
It hasn't
I think those cover everything to be said in 160 characters or less :)
In the US we'd never do anything like that. We're Christians ! We have Morals !
Instead people will be told that, to better serve them and to keep medical costs down, all medicare recipients will be offered a chance to enroll in a programme that offers them expedited ambulance transport in case of accidents (they're easier to locate), emergency treatment in hospitals (because their medical data can be found more easily) plus waiver of the upcoming 1000$ a month service surcharge ... provided they consent to have an RFID chip implanted with their SSN.
Those who elect not to participate in the programme will not be eligible for expedited ambulance transport, will experience a light delay upon admission until their medical data has been found and their insurance status clarified, and will be asked to pay the service surcharge.
Net participation in the chipping program will therefore be 99%, of which 100% will be voluntary, you see?
That's how you do things !
"seal" is the Japanese word for "sticker" - it is a foreign loan word from English - it comes from the seal (sticker) that is usually found on an item you purchase. If you buy an item that comes in a box, it usually has a round adhesive sticker or similar that 'seals' the box, showing you it hasn't been opened before.
People should put labels in the clothing of people suffering from dementia. People think of dementia as being an old people's problem but dementia can affect people at any age from 20 years old to 100 years old.
Most dementia cases are considered a terminal illness people do not just forget where they live and who they are they forget how to control their body they forget how to walk how to eat an amazingly they forget how to control their breathing.
In the early stages they get very frustrated and cry a lot about losing their mind.
The majority of them will end up bedridden unable to walk unable to speak. They will end up wearing a catheter, and will have to have their arse cleaned to remove the body waste.
They will then enter the danger zone that is when the person who loves them their family suddenly begins getting frustrated and annoyed by their demented love one. they will shout at them shake them and often smack them out of frustration. That is when they usually send them to what is called respite. Respite is when they put them in a nursing home temporary to give them a rest from the patient.
In the nursing home the underpaid carers will treat them like a piece of meat they will resent having to clean them up and feed them day in day out. Usually if they go in a nursing home permanently it speeds up their death.
Depending on the level of the dementia some people can live with it with help from others. The misinformation you get about dementia from people who should know better is amazing. You do not have to be old to get dementia. Dementia and strokes are two different things and are not related.
The last dementia patient I come in contact with was a 40-year-old who was on a terminal ward, what the doctors and nurses call "end of lifes".
If you are lucky and you have money you can go to sheltered accommodation which has a warden. They will play them music in the morning's. It was found that elderly people and dementia people keep their faculties for longer when entertained by music and put in sheltered accommodation near busy streets.
people who cope best are people who have an animal like a dog to care for it has a positive affect on them an amazing effect sometimes.
Television is considered the plague for wondering dementia patients. We had a woman trying to escape because of a murder that happened in her room!
She was hysterical and escape because of a man called Columbo, told her that a person had been killed in her room. Columbo is an American television series starring Peter Falk as Columbo, a homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. She managed to escape on three different occasions through the fire exit.
On each occasion she was fetch back by the police because she had a identity tag sewn in to the back of her dressing gown.
Ironically we got news from the U.S. about this Peter Falk, saying he had "Alzheimer's disease".
The 40-year-old patient died in the middle of the night his body stopped functioning. The woman who liked Columbo, was banned from watching television.
Someone finally turned up to pick up all of the Auschwitz IT junk. "Repurpose for the elderly" they said.
While this is in principle a nice idea, it also opens up rather nastier possibilities as data capture for identity theft. Who better for a potential attacker to skim data from that someone who may not know or understand they might be compromised?
It's not you: I'm just this horrifically socially awkward with everybody.
This isn't new. We've put tags on our people for decades, I remember it back in the 1970s. Sometimes even a dog tag. One family I remember had a dog collar around his neck with a dog tag. They said this made it very obvious what was going on.
These people are a handful. If they can get out, they're off for the races! Happened to my father in law. We had to put locks on the door. When they are at this point, it usually isn't long.
Just a welcome technology update. Scan the fingernail, poof. Here's where the guy lives. Let's take him back.