Senior Alerts – Choose The Best System

How do you choose the best senior medical alert system for your parent or grandparent?  There are lot of different systems on the market and is easy to get overwhelmed by all the choices.  What you do is determine exactly how much assistance or monitoring your elderly loved one requires, your budget and how willing and able that special senior citizen is to wear and use the device.

Call Buttons

Some systems for senior citizens provide a call button feature.  Any time the person wearing the device needs assistance they simply push a button and they are instantly connected with a monitoring service who can connect them with a relative, nearby neighbor or even call 911 and get emergency services to the home if the need be.  This type of device is good for in a person who is living on their own and wants to remain independent but also have the added peace of mind of knowing that help is just a click of a button away.  These devices are easy-to-use.  You just wear it around your neck as a pendant like a wrist watch on your arm.  Most of these products also come with a clip that you can wear on your belt.

We recommend LifeStation for a simple, economical solution. Great service, great product.

Keep in mind these products have limited range.  There is a receiver mounted next to the home telephone that can pick up a transmission from the pendant or pushbutton, but the signal will not carry outside the home very far.  So, if you’re worried about a senior citizen who walks around the neighborhood a lot in this type of device will not be very effective.  You’d be better off getting them an easy to use cell phone.

Cell Phones for Seniors

For an easy-to-use cell phone for seniors,  Get a Jitterbug J.
We like Jitterbug -  it’s an easy-to-use cell phone for a senior citizen who has trouble hearing on regular cell phones.  The pushbuttons are big and easy to see in case you missed place your glasses,  and their spaced far enough apart so that someone who is suffering with arthritis will have less trouble pushing the buttons than they would on a regular cell phone.

GPS Trackers for Dementia

If you’re concerned about a senior citizen who is cognitively impaired (suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s or dementia) the pushbutton call system is most likely inappropriate.  A victim of dementia may push the button at inappropriate times and failed to use the device when help is actually needed. If you’re looking for a device that will help prevent wandering, take a look at some GPS devices for people with dementia. These devices can track where your loved one is an alert you if they haven’t a wonderful way from a predefined area. For GPS tracking check out SecuraTrac.

Medical Monitors

Lastly, if you’re elderly loved one has severe medical problems that require close monitoring but they’ve been sent home from the hospital without a monitoring device, take a look at myHalo which can track motion, temperature and heart rate plus it has a true fall detection feature that can alert you the medical professionals in the event that the wearer falls down. Sometimes people who fall are too disorientated to remember to push the button and get help.  There are devices out there that claim to have fall detection, but they’re not as sensitive and as reliable as myHalo.

See our review of senior life alerts here.

 

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