GeriTech

In Search of Technology that Improves Geriatric Care

tech reviews

Smartwatches as Medical Alert Devices

It’s fairly common for older adults – or their family members – to want to have a way to get help in the event of a fall or other medical emergency. But most devices designed for this purpose are considered unappealing by many older people.

So I was very interested to learn last fall that Apple’s latest smartwatch included automatic fall detection.

Now should I start recommending a smartwatch to older adults who need a medical alert device? I wasn’t sure, so I turned to one of my favorite aging tech reviewers, Richard Caro of Tech-Enhanced Life.

Richard recently spent a few weeks carefully testing and reviewing four types of smartwatches that can serve as medical alert devices in the event of a fall or other personal health emergency.

In a recent podcast episode, he shared his findings and we discussed smartwatches and personal emergency response systems (PERS). Among the things we covered:

  • The Tech-Enhanced Life approach to evaluating innovations and newer technologies
  • The problem with existing medical alert devices
  • What key things to consider, when choosing a personal emergency response system (PERS) device and service
  • Why Richard and Dr. K recommend automatic fall-detection in a medical alert device
  • Which four smartwatch devices Richard selected for further testing
  • The difference between the Apple Watch 3 and 4, when it comes to using them as a medical alert
  • Why most medical alert services charge a monthly fee
  • How these newer smartwatch devices compare to more traditional PERS devices
  • The benefits of being able to “practice” summoning help
  • Richard’s preferred combo of medical alert features that no smartwatch offers (yet)
  • What to keep in mind if considering a medical alert for someone with dementia

If you’ve been considering using a smartwatch as a PERS device, I think you’ll enjoy this episode. You can find it here:

080-Interview: Smartwatches as Medical Alert Devices (What to Know and How to Choose)

What do you think of using the currently available smartwatches as a personal emergency response device? I’d love to hear from you in the comments here, or you can post your comment on the podcast episode page.

Omron home blood pressure monitor 786N: Good hardware, bad app design

omron home blood pressure monitorIf there is one device that I think most older people should have at home, it’s a home blood pressure monitor. So a few years ago, I wrote an article for the Geriatrics for Caregivers blog with tips on choosing and using a home BP monitor.

At the time, I didn’t recommend a specific device because I hadn’t tried any. But recently I decided it would be much better if I could suggest a specific device to patients and families.

So I looked on Amazon and looked for a home BP monitor that could meet my specifications:

  • Measures BP at the arm
  • Easy to store, review, and share BP readings, which means some type of wireless data transmission capability
  • Smartphone/tablet not mandatory to use the device

When I wrote a blog post in April 2014 about my specifications, Omron did not seem to offer a device with wireless data transmission.

But earlier this year I noticed a Bluetooth-enabled Omron monitor on Amazon.  So I bought an Omron 786N earlier this summer and have been trying it out.

Pros & Cons of the Omron 786N Home Blood Pressure Monitor with Bluetooth

Here are my thoughts so far: [Read more…] about Omron home blood pressure monitor 786N: Good hardware, bad app design

Still In Search of a Personal Health Record & Trying Healthvault

Recently I completed a consultation on a new patient. This person had moved to San Francisco a few years ago, and was not sure he was satisfied with the care he was obtaining from his new PCP.

The consultation was a bit challenging for me, because I had no past medical records available to review. Nothing from the old cadre of doctors on the East Coast, nothing from the current PCP, not even anything from a recent hospitalization. No laboratory results, no studies.

(In truth, I usually decline to schedule an initial consultation until some of this information is available. I need this type of information in order to do my work assessing the person’s health and the current medical management plan.)

As I often do, I encouraged this patient and his family to start maintaining a personal health record (PHR): some kind of collection of his key medical information, all in one place and under their control. I explained that this would be a huge help if they wanted to

  • Obtain second opinions when necessary
  • Transfer to a new PCP
  • Be able to check on how the chronic conditions were being managed and consider other options
  • Get better medical care in the event of an emergency or possibly even while traveling

In its simplest form, a PHR is a collection of papers kept in a binder or perhaps file cabinet. Paper can be hard to keep organized, however, and can only be searched effectively if everything was first filed in an organized fashion.

So a digital approach would seem to be in order. Digital information is easier to search, and often more portable than paper information.

But I was annoyed to find that yet again, after recommending this family set up and maintain a PHR, I couldn’t actually recommend a specific product or service. This was surprising to me, because it was almost three years ago that I wrote this article for the Geriatrics for Caregivers Blog: Tools for Caregivers: Keeping & Organizing Medical Information.

Yet today, I still cannot recommend a tool that will do the following: [Read more…] about Still In Search of a Personal Health Record & Trying Healthvault

GeriTech’s Take on AARP’s 4th Health Innovation @50+ LivePitch

On Thursday May 14, 2015, AARP hosted its fourth Health Innovation@50+ LivePitch event, an event that “features the most exciting start-up companies in the “50 and over” health technology sector.”

In this post, I’ll list brief descriptions of the finalists, comment on how promising they seem to me — in terms of improving the healthcare of older adults — and tell you which products I’m most interested in. To see what I’ve thought of past LivePitch finalists, here’s my coverage of the first, second, and third cohorts. (Now what would be interesting is to see what’s happened to all those companies since, esp the winners. No time now to do it, but let me know in the comments if you have an update re a past LivePitch finalist.)

As usual, the start-ups were judged by venture capitalists and by a consumer audience. No judging or input from anyone whose primary work and expertise is to improve the health of people aged 50+.

See the FAQs for the eligibility criteria for this year. More interesting to me are the judging criteria and AARP’s categories (also listed in FAQs):

“The Judges will focus on these five critical elements:

  • Functionality – Is the company’s product easy to use, and does it get the job done?
  • Potential – What is the company’s business model and likely profitability, size of the market, likelihood of adoption, and growth potential?
  • Team / People – What experience does the team have, and can they make the product or service a success?
  • Creativity/Differentiation – Why would someone use this product and/or service over alternatives?
  • Scalability – Is this a small business not capable of scaling or is it a large business that has a lot of growth potential?

The AARP Consumer voting will focus on these four critical elements:

  • Need – Why should consumers want this product? Does the product/service address a significant unmet or under-met need? Is it unique?
  • Marketing – How easy is it to get the product?
  • Usage – Why is the product easy to use?
  • Value – Why does the value and cost of the product makes it a “must have”? What is the value proposition? Would someone use it and/or refer it to family and friends?”

AARP’s Categories for Health Innovation @50+:

  • Medication Management
  • Aging with Vitality, e.g. increase daytime energy, maintain muscle strength, manage arthritis, improve or aid in memory/cognition, brain fitness improve/aid hearing, improve/aid vision
  • Vital Sign Monitoring
  • Care Navigation
  • Emergency Detection & Response
  • Physical Fitness
  • Social Engagement
  • Diet & Nutrition
  • Behavioral & Emotional Health
  • Other
Compared to last year’s categories, AARP seems to have dropped the category of “aging in place.” They still don’t have a category about managing one’s chronic health problems, which I would argue is extremely important to maintaining the health and wellbeing of people aged 50+.

AARP’s list of this event’s ten national finalists is here. They also had an additional group of five Florida finalists, which I won’t have time to cover.

GeriTech’s quick take on the AARP LivePitch finalists

[Read more…] about GeriTech’s Take on AARP’s 4th Health Innovation @50+ LivePitch

Advance Care Planning Online: GeriTech takes a look at MyDirectives.com

A few weeks ago, a visitor to Geriatrics For Caregivers sent me a message via the contact form.

He explained that he is a hospital chaplain and that his workplace is considering using MyDirectives.com to help their patients with advance care planning.

“I would love to hear your opinion of the service,” he wrote.

I’d actually never heard of this service, but that’s not so surprising…new healthcare services for consumers emerge and evolve so quickly that even if I followed tech for aging adults full-time, I’d have difficulty keeping up.But I have a soft spot for advance care planning. So I decided to take a look at this website, in order to let the chaplain know what I thought.

And, as an experiment, I also decided to try recording myself visiting this advance care planning site.

So if you are wondering what I thought, or if you’d like to see what a practicing doc might do when a patient asks about some new-fangled web-based service, you can watch me explore MyDirectives below. (For audio-only, click here.) [Read more…] about Advance Care Planning Online: GeriTech takes a look at MyDirectives.com