Help for caretakers in charge of Alzheimer's Patients - High-Tech Tracking Technology
Alzheimer's is a really 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 just 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 xibit symptoms like spontaneously losing track of where they are, or where they're headed. If they happen to be on a walk, or on a drive 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, in charge of her father's Alzheimer's, is beginning to see some of the depressing reality of the disease in her father. 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 Alzheimers 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. But for people like the daughter in the story above, there is new help from the Alzheimer's Association. There are all kinds of new high-tech options available for Alzheimer's patients now, all of them, combinations of the GPS technology, mobile phone technology, and the tracking bracelet technology used on prisoners on parole.
But even GPS technology, only goes so far. It works very well when Alzheimers patients find themselves lost; but while they are is still walking about families, have no way of keeping tabs on their location. A nnnewer and better system is what is 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 is headed, and quickly move in to cut them off, if they appear to be headed for danger. The transmitter system can also be given a perimeter around the neighborhood 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 their bearings, with help from cell phone towers and the GPS satellites. And they do so in real time. Some of the older systems, only used GPS; often, this wasn't a real help; in the basement of abuilding, 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. And that would always be a great relief to any family.
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