Two hi-touch technology providers, GrandCare & VRI, join forces and link their services to keep Seniors in their own homes

Two hi-touch technology providers, GrandCare & VRI, join forces and link their services to keep Seniors in their own homes

Dayton, OH, West Bend, WI – VRI, a medical alert, medication adherence and telehealth monitoring company, and GrandCare Systems, a provider of in home socialization, entertainment and wellness sensor technologies, announced today that they have developed a partnership to deliver an integrated portfolio of services. Now, GrandCare System care partners will be notified on GrandCare’s easy to use online interface when their loved one has activated their personal response system. In addition, VRI and GrandCare will be able to cross sell their integrated solution into their respective distribution channels.

“This was a natural partnership”, commented Andy Schoonover, President of VRI, “Both organizations are committed to safety and wellness, while giving the family members an unmatched ‘peace of mind’.

Laura Mitchell from GrandCare Systems added, “We know how difficult this whole process can be. We just hope we can help to make the family’s lifestyle easier, happier and more affordable”.

“It’s through partnerships such as these that innovation for elder-focused technologies will be accelerated”, said Peter Radsliff, chairman of the Aging Technology Alliance, an industry association developed to foster awareness of products and services geared toward the aging population. “Stimulating cooperation is why AgeTek was formed from the outset.”

“Blending our services can add a strong measure of comfort, convenience and control to those that desire to age in place but have conditions that may limit their ability to move freely, communicate effectively or otherwise navigate their environment”, said Steve Abate of VRI. “Partnering will ensure and encourage Seniors the opportunity to remain at home with safety and peace of mind.”

VRI is a healthcare services company with over 20 years of experience and is one of the largest providers of medical alert and monitored medication dispensing systems in the country. Headquartered in Dayton, Ohio, VRI’s services enable seniors and those with disabilities to maintain their independence and avoid long term care facilities and hospitalization. The company’s service portfolio includes Medical Alert Systems, Monitored Medication Dispensers, Telehealth services and other specialty solutions to provide safety and independence for their clients. For more information, or to see the range of VRI’s products please visit www.monitoringcare.com.

GrandCare Systems offers a new WINDOW into the online world using a simple-to-use virtually programmed TouchScreen. The Loved One simply enjoys and interacts with the incoming pictures, messages, 2-way web chat, family videos, games, reminders, calendar appts, news headlines, etc. – all maintained remotely by care-partners through a user-friendly online interface. But that’s just the “tip of the iceberg”. Smart “activity of daily living” and Tele-wellness sensors quietly talk to the Trillium TouchScreen and generate text, email or phone alerts to designated care-partners.

INTRODUCING Brand NEW GrandCare HomeBase!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD0qdEZd1PM

GrandCare Systems introduces the revolutionary HomeBase
GrandCare Systems introduces HomeBase, a new system that allows families to use the Internet to communicate and chat with disabled or aging relatives. Individuals with ZERO computer experience are now, for the first time, being VIRTUALLY and socially connected to family members and care partners across the world, without having to know or LEARN anything.

It’s that simple. GrandCare Systems’ HOMEBASE understands that everyone has different chosen methods for communicating; some virtual, some not. The HomeBase converts online communications into an easy to use, microwave-like TOUCHPANEL format for our disabled or aging loved ones.

Suppose a granddaughter wants to send an instant message to her grandfather
Or send over a Frank Sinatra music video that she knows he’ll enjoy. It’s now possible using GrandCare Systems’ HomeBase.

Perhaps a boomer child wants to share an online video of a grandchild learning to walk and follow it up with a quick Email explaining how big she’s gotten. It’s easy and quick using GrandCare Systems’ HomeBase.

Imagine your grandparent being reminded of when to mail out birthday cards, or exactly what time choir practice is tonight. The HomeBase calendar does just that!

Or maybe a wellness professional wants to use 2-way VIDEO chat to really “SEE” how well her client is doing. It’s here with GrandCare Systems’ HomeBase.

Say your great grandmother enjoys receiving messages, photographs and home videos of her growing family, without having to learn how to use a computer. It’s now a reality with GrandCare Systems’ HomeBase.

In our fast-paced, technology-oriented society, online communication is faster, more efficient and better than ever. Nobody should be excluded from connecting to family and friends, no matter where they live! HomeBase is a whole new world of communication between generations.

GrandCare HomeBase starts as low as $1995.00 (plus installation and a low monthly fee). Activity of Daily Living Sensors and Telewellness sensors can be easily integrated with the GrandCare HomeBase. For more information, or to find a local dealer in your area, please visit: www.grandcare.com or call 262-338-6147

GrandCare Systems, 2412 W.Washington St, Suite 10, West Bend, WI 53095 www.grandcare.com info@grandcare.com

GrandCare 2nd article in New York Times


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/garden/29hometech.html?scp=1&sq=GrandCare%20Systems&st=cse

The Technology for Monitoring Elderly Relatives

“IF I ever need to go to a nursing home, kill me first.”…
Customized Services

For those with advanced physical ailments, the ability to contact emergency personnel may not be enough. It wasn’t for Jean Roberts, a 79-year-old retired nurse who had a brain aneurysm 20 years ago, and now suffers from a seizure disorder. She and her daughter, Carol, 52, who is also disabled, set up a system of customized sensors from GrandCare Systems (grandcare.com).

With GrandCare, which averages between $15 and $25 a day, Carol receives cellphone alerts whenever a user-defined set of parameters is breached in her mother’s nearby Daytona Beach, Fla., home.

“I used to call and check on her constantly,” Carol said. “If she gets confused, she wouldn’t remember to push a pendant.”

Carol is automatically alerted if her mother’s front doors are opened before 7 a.m. or after 10 p.m., and a bed sensor alerts her if her mother doesn’t get out of bed by 9 a.m.

If her mother’s home is too hot or too cold, she knows that, too. And if her mother begins to get confused and wanders rapidly from room to room, her daughter also receives an alert.

To help the elder Ms. Roberts feel more connected, she can receive e-mail messages and photographs through the GrandCare system, displayed on her TV or an available touch-screen display.

As her mother ages, Carol expects to add other features. “If she gets worse, we’ll write another parameter, that she can’t leave the house unless I’m notified,” she said. “She has no intention — none — of going into an assisted-care facility.”

For the monitoring of symptoms associated with heart failure and diabetes, Ideal Life (ideallifeonline.com) in Toronto offers a number of devices, including a scale, a blood-pressure meter and a glucose monitor that automatically send data to the company’s Web site, where it can be examined by a caregiver. Text messages or e-mail alerts can also be sent automatically to a caregiver’s smartphone.

GrandCare Systems Featured in NY TIMES!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/garden/29parents.html?scp=2&sq=GrandCare%20Systems&st=cse

Technologies Help Adult Children Monitor Aging Parents

IN the wee hours of July 14, Elizabeth Roach, a 70-year-old widow, got out of bed and went to the living room of her Virginia ranch home. She sat in her favorite chair for 15 minutes, then returned to bed.

She rose again shortly after 6, went to the kitchen, plugged in the coffee pot, showered and took her weight and blood pressure. Throughout the morning, she moved back and forth between the kitchen and the living room. She opened her medicine cabinet at 12:21 and closed it at 12:22. Immediately afterward, she opened the refrigerator door for almost three minutes. At 1:36, she opened the kitchen door and went outside.

All this information — including her exact weight (126 pounds) and blood pressure reading (139/98) — was transmitted via the Internet to her 44-year-old son, Michael Murdock, who reviewed it from his home office in suburban Denver.

All was normal — meaning all was well.

“Right now she’s not home,” Mr. Murdock said. That he deduced because the sensors he had installed throughout his mother’s home told him that the kitchen door — which leads outside — had not been reopened since 1:36, more than an hour earlier. The opening of the medicine cabinet midday confirmed to him that his mother had taken her medicine. And he was satisfied that she had eaten lunch because the refrigerator door was open more than just a few seconds.

In the general scheme of life, parents are the ones who keep tabs on the children. But now, a raft of new technology is making it possible for adult children to monitor to a stunningly precise degree the daily movements and habits of their aging parents.

The purpose is to provide enough supervision to make it possible for elderly people to stay in their homes rather than move to an assisted-living facility or nursing home — a goal almost universally embraced as both emotionally and financially desirable. With that in mind, a vast spectrum of companies, from giants like General Electric to start-ups like iReminder of Westfield, N.J., which has developed a system to notify families if loved ones haven’t taken their medicine, are looking for a piece of the market of families with an aging relative.

Many of the systems are godsends for families. But, as with any parent-child relationship, all loving intentions can be tempered by issues of control, role-reversal, guilt and a little deception — enough loaded stuff to fill a psychology syllabus. For just as the current population of adults in their 30s and 40s have built a reputation for being a generation of hyper-involved, hovering parents to their own children, they now have the tools to micro-manage their aging mothers and fathers as well…


The system Mr. Murdock persuaded his mother to install is called GrandCare, produced by a company of the same name based in West Bend, Wis. It allows families to place movement sensors throughout a house. Information — about when doors were opened, what time a person got into and out of bed, whether there’s been any movement in a room for a certain time period — is sent out via e-mail, text message or voice mail. He said his GrandCare system cost $8,000 to install — about as much as two months at the local assisted-living facility, Mr. Murdock said — plus monthly fees of about $75. The company says that costs vary depending on what features a client chooses.

In addition to giving him peace of mind that his mother is fine, the system helps assuage that midlife sense of guilt. “I have a large amount of guilt,” Mr. Murdock admitted. “I’m really far away. I’m not helping to take care of her, to mow her lawn, to be a good son.”

His mother, Mrs. Roach, was nervous at first when her son brought up the idea of using the system. “I didn’t want to be invaded,” she said. “I didn’t understand the system and was concerned about privacy.” Now that it’s in place, she said, she’s changed her mind: “I was all wrong. I’m not feeling like I’m being watched all day.” And she really enjoys the system’s feature that lets her play games and receive photos and messages from her children and grandchildren. (She never learned to use e-mail.)

Mrs. Roach has no major health issues that require the kind of watching she is getting, and oddly enough, that is the ideal scenario. Elinor Ginzler, senior vice president for livable communities at AARP, said it’s best to discuss using such technology long before a parent’s health has slipped to a point where she might actually need it. “You frame it that way: ‘We’re so happy that things are going so well. We want to make sure to keep it that way. Let’s talk about what we can do to make sure.’ ”

What often follows is pushback. After all, this is not a generation known for its ease with technology…

Adult children who call parents to check up on them have learned to be careful about how they phrase their questions. “I personally don’t make it so that I’m watching,” Mr. Murdock said. “I don’t say, ‘Mom, I was looking and you didn’t do this.’ I say, ‘Mom, are you O.K.? I noticed you didn’t take your medicine.’ It’s a balancing act, but it’s an easy conversation. It’s not like I’m calling every day saying, ‘Did you do this or did you do that?’ ”

Thursday July 29th VA’s Technology & Teamwork: An Overview

JOIN US!! On GrandCare’s weekly aging & technology industry call! OPEN TO ALL

Thursday July 29th, 1p Central Daylight Time
where: http://my.dimdim.com/grandcare
Speaker – Rita Kobb, MN, APRN-BC
Training Center Director
Education Program Specialist
VHA Telehealth Services.
Biosketch: Mrs. Rita Kobb has been with the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) for twenty-one years. She has been a Gerontological nurse practitioner for the past 14 years. Prior to that she worked as a Gerontological clinical nurse specialist. Mrs. Kobb holds Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Nursing from the University of Florida.
In 1999 she was part of a conceptual planning team to develop a new model of care for high-risk, high-use, and high-cost veterans in the Sunshine Network (Florida-Puerto Rico) using care coordination and home telehealth technologies. From February 2000 until January 2004 she was the Lead Care Coordinator for a care coordination and home telehealth program, located in Lake City, Florida. Currently Mrs. Kobb is the Education Program Specialist and Director of the only national training center for care coordination and home Telehealth for the Office of Telehealth Services. The Sunshine Training Center is located in Lake City, Florida.
Mrs. Kobb has spoken all over the country about care coordination and home telehealth in VHA. .She has consulted with several healthcare organizations and government agencies from around the world about telehealth implementation. She has been recognized as an expert consultant in care coordination and home telehealth and has served as Chair of the American Telemedicine Association’s Home Telehealth and Remote Monitoring Special Interest Group.

Thursday Age/Tech Call: Sales & Service in the Aging Industry

Greetings Aging & Technology Enthusiast!

Join our weekly INDUSTRY aging & technology networking forum!
where: http://my.dimdim.com/grandcare
(optional dial)
when: Thurs July 22, 2010 2pm EDT (11am PDT)
Call sponsored by Presto. Co-sponsored by AgeTek & ClearSounds.

TOPIC: Shana Duthie, CEO of Nurture Connect, speaks on customer sales & service. You only have one chance to make a first impression

All Are Welcome!!!!

The Savvy Senior: How to keep tabs on an elderly parent

Source: www.baxterbulletin.com/article/20100719/NEWS01/7190320/The-Savvy-Senior-How-to-keep-tabs-on-an-elderly-parent

My 80-year-old mother lives alone about an hour from me and I worry about her health and safety. Outside of the telephone, what types of caregiving devices can you recommend that can help me keep tabs on her?

Concerned Son

Dear Concerned,

There are many different tools and technologies available today that can help adult children keep tabs on their aging parents when they can’t be there. Here are some popular options and new products to check into.

Senior Help Line
One of the biggest concerns among families that have an elderly parent or relative living alone is them falling and needing help. For this, a “personal emergency response system” or PERS is the most affordable solution. For about $1 a day (available through companies like lifelinesys.com, lifealert.com and lifefone.com) you can rent the equipment which includes a small transmitter (SOS button) that your mom would wear, giving her the ability to call for help any time she needs to. The drawbacks, however, are that many seniors forget to wear their SOS button regularly, and if they do have it on and fall, they still have to be alert enough to actually push the button.

Upgraded PERSs
If you’re willing to spend a little more (around $50 a month), there are several more sophisticated PERS on the market. One of them is Wellcore (wellcore.com), a new device that has fall-detection sensors in the SOS button that can automatically summon help without the user having to press a button. Plus, it will beep to remind your mom to put it on, and if she doesn’t, it will notify you. And, when paired with a compatible cell phone, it can even be used outside the home. Halo Monitoring (halomonitoring.com) also offers fall-detection products, as does Philips (lifelinesys.com), maker of the popular Lifeline Medical Alert Service who just introduced an AutoAlert option.

Home Monitoring
Another more expensive option for keeping tabs on your mom is with a “home monitoring system.” These systems come with sensors, placed in key areas of your mom’s home that learn her daily patterns and notify you if something out of the ordinary is happening. For example, if your mom doesn’t get out of bed at her usual time, or if she went to the bathroom and didn’t leave it could indicate a fall or other emergency. The great thing about this type of system is it requires no input from your mom, and you can check in on her anytime through a password-protected website. You can find these systems at companies like GrandCare (grandcare.com), Healthsense (healthsense.com), and CloseBy (closebynetwork.com), with prices ranging from several hundred to several thousand dollars, depending on the options you choose.

Medication Management
If you’re worried your mom not keeping up with her medications, there are a wide variety of pill organizers, medication dispensing and alarm systems (see epill.com) that can help.

One of the best new systems on the market is TabSafe (tabsafe.com). A home-based device that dispenses medicine on schedule, providing reminders to ensure she takes it on time, and will notify you or other caregivers if her pills aren’t taken.

Medication reminding services like OnTimeRx (ontimerx.com) or Check-in Friends (checkinfriends.com) can also be helpful. For a small fee, these services will call your mom to remind her to take her medication. Pillphone.com offers a similar service for wireless phones only.

Communication
Videophones have become an increasingly popular tool for keeping in touch with older loved ones from afar. If you’re not familiar with them, videophones are like a telephone with a built-in camera and video screen that gives you the ability to see the person you’re talking to in real time. Two of the best on the market today are the “ASUS Videophone Touch” that works with Skype (skype.com), and the “ACN IRIS 3000” (myacn.com). Both require a high-speed Internet connection and are simple to use. Or, if your mom, and you, both have a home computer and a webcam you can video-chat online.

Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of “The Savvy Senior” book.

IN 15 mins Aging Technology Topic: Assis

IN 15 mins Aging Technology Topic: Assisted Living Model of Care AT HOME. http://wp.me/pyOLA-72 all are welcome to JOIN!!!