Remote Monitoring Systems Can Give Caregivers Peace of Mind

An accompanying app allows family members to receive alerts, check a colorful activity tracker that rates their loved one's activity on a scale from 1 to 10, and coordinate care. Available online, it sells for $449.99 plus $69.99 a month for the home app subscription.

Activity sensors

• Caregiver Smart Solutions. When company founder Herd tried to use a camera in his dad's home, his father covered it up with a dish towel.

"People don't want anybody watching them,” he says. “They don't like that 1984 stuff."

That's why Caregiver Smart Solutions forgoes cameras for movement sensors to track a loved one's activities — everything from whether they've used the coffee pot to how much they're watching TV. Herd and others in the monitoring business point out that sensors are an improvement over the simple emergency call buttons, which are of no use if a loved one can't press the button because of losing consciousness in a fall or having a stroke.

This week the company announced its new Deluxe+ Monitoring Kit, $299 plus a $49 subscription fee, with sensors in five rooms, temperature and humidity sensors, a range of door motion sensors and more. The company also has more basic, less pricey kits.

• SensorsCall is showcasing its CareAlert “well-being monitor.” Still in development, its sensors detect changes in the home such as movement and temperature after taking about a week to learn a person's patterns, including when they get up and when they go to the bathroom — information that family members can see on an app. The app sends an alert if anything's out of the ordinary.

SensorsCall founder and Chief Executive Fereydoun Taslimi says he started the Atlanta-based company after he and his wife had trouble reaching her mother — their calls to her cellphone went directly to voicemail — and grew worried that something was seriously wrong. With SensorsCall, which also functions as a two-way communication system, if you're worried about your mother, “you can press a button and say, ‘Hey, Mom, what's happening?’"

By the way, his mother-in-law was fine. Her phone battery had run out.

One app modification the company is working on: A button for the grandchildren to tap that says, “I'm thinking of my grandmother.” A light on her monitor will turn a particular color.

"Then the grandma thinks, ‘Oh! My grandkid is thinking of me!’ " Taslimi says.

Bigger-Brother technology

• Electronic Caregiver also is showing off a flashy new virtual caregiving system called Addison Care along with its wearable Premier. It was created with big-name partners such as Amazon and when the virtual caregiver is released in a few months, it first will be marketed to private caregiving agencies.

A friendly looking virtual caregiver named Addison is available 24/7 on a touchscreen to assist “Aunt Martha,” as a company rep calls the theoretical user when explaining the tech.

Addison Care is a new virtual caregiving system.

Electronic Caregiver

Among many other abilities, Addison can talk Aunt Martha through the process of taking her pulse or testing her blood sugar levels using devices that come with the system. Addison then can send that information to health care providers, as well as explain her rehab routine or remind her to take her thyroid medication.

And it incorporates Amazon's Alexa software, so Aunt Martha can ask Addison questions. Meanwhile, family members can use an accompanying app to make sure all is well.

"She's meant to augment the real people who provide care, not replace them,” says Charles Hirtzel, Electronic Caregiver's director of customer service.

• Alarm.com , a home security company based in Tysons, Virginia, is broadening its reach to entice family caregivers with a comprehensive range of monitoring tech. The devices need to be purchased through a home security dealer, so prices vary.

Among the options, is a camera, called Wellcam — introduced at CES last year — that can be installed in your loved one's home to offer a 180 degree view of, say, the living room, with sensors that can alert you to any abnormal activity.

Alarm.com's vice president of product, Steve Chazin, says he installed a Wellcam in his dad's house, and his three siblings have taken turns being responsible for receiving alerts.

"We've set it up notify me on Tuesdays on Thursdays if the camera notices activity in the home between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. Other times I've set it up to tell me when dad is up and having breakfast,” he says.

And Chazin is confident that his dad is fine with being periodically watched.

"It's an act of love,” he says. “I think one day we'll be where a family member will say, ‘Don't you care about me? Why aren't you watching me?' "