Sussex Police plan to fit dementia patients

I can tell you my experience, but please be aware I am part of this project and I want to avoid shouts of bias. There is no other product out there on the market and I want to avoid being accused of posting a sales pitch. If you read below, you do so on the understanding I am talking about a project that sells a product.

It is a good idea. I have been part of a team that has worked on this type of product for the past 18 months.

The one in the papers and on TV is just a block that can be taken off, lost or dropped. It can only track via GPS, so under any structure or in a house and there is a better than even chance it will not track.

OK, my project - it does sound a bit like a sales pitch.

I will tell you a bit of history. I was for a long time in the Police in a central English county force. My shift had a report of a "misper" (Police term for missing person) at least five times a week when someone went missing from a nursing home. Sometimes you found the elderly person quickly, sometimes it took a while. You ended up deploying a lot of assets if the time went past an hour or so. It was always a sad situation. Many people were regressing to their childhood and looking for something that was no longer there. Sadly despite efforts once we never did find one.

He was found three years later in foliage on the A444 and M6 junction 3 island. Well, his remains were!

To modern day, I work as a Business Consultant. It allows me to work from bed a few times a week. A client who I currently work with has developed a range of monitoring products.

In this case, our product from the company (Five Secure Ltd) is called Watch Over Me. One of the products is designed for vulnerable people through a range of wrist watches. It works on its own or with a range of other devices in the home. They monitor devices (household products) and how often they are used, or more importantly how they start to get used less and less. It is one of the early warning signs.

The top level product is the "life" monitoring device. This enables you to spot early signs of deterioration a the person. It does this by taking real time benchmarks throughout the day of the persons activities and vital signs.

An example could be that the person gets up every day at 8am. A few years later, they start to develop early onset of health issues that many of us may suffer in later life but are missed by those around us. The person starts to show the on-set of early signs of ill health such as dementia and their daily routine changes. For example getting out of bed later in the day, keeping the heating off. Not being as active, or even falling. The device is able to show that.

You can see whether they are drinking or eating enough, leaving the cooker on via the device monitors.

What you have to understand, the products are designed to help the person to stay independent and in their own home longer. It is just a guardian angel type of idea that can pick up on the smallest issues that roll into one big other problem.

It allows an earlier medical intervention when the family or other services can see through to interface on a website that there is a deterioration. It shows this as a graph and tells you what should be the signs, temperature, heart rate, oxygen saturation etc.

The devices work in and out of the home. Where the device that the OP talks about falls down is that it is basically on a lanyard and does not track live unless you go through several services to "ping" it.

The device on the TV and in the Paper only tracks through GPS rather than using a broad array tracking. So, enter a building or woods for example and you lose GPS lock. A device and there are several GPS devices on the market not aimed at this type of customer that track like the Watch Over Me and uses a higher standard of tracking. We and they use Assisted GPS (A-GPS), GLONASS, Galileo and GPRS. So the device can find the person in many other areas.

The base model that is the wrist watch, can work on its own, it simply monitors the person’s vital signs and where they are. The monitoring station gets alerts if something happens, or if you are a member of the family, you log into a website and can "ping", or ask the device where they are. We only advise live tracking in the instances of there being a problem.

The killer is, you can call the device. It has a regular phone number so you can call the person, or in cases of emergency override the device and make a forced call which automatically connects the device to an open call. It has a fall down indicator that connects to the monitoring station if the wearer falls over, or even does not move for the 20 minutes the medical people say a person should move.

Watch Over Me also has an alert button that allows the wearer to press a button to alert the monitoring station if they have an unwanted caller or if they are in trouble. This works as well at home as it does in a supermarket car park. The person also has the ability to summon help covertly. It is easy to make a grab for something around a neck, when the press of a button on a device that looks like a watch does not alert any potential person who could do harm.

One of the country’s largest local authorities is currently trialling the device.

Unlike all other service providers, we sell ours to the public direct.

End of pitch!

To be honest, anything that allows someone to live in their own home longer must be much better that people having to go in a home. Of course people will point out the cost considerations as it means it is far, far less expensive (£30-£40 a week) compared to the £500 in a care home.

Teajug, you post that this makes you mad. But we live in a society that leaves old and vulnerable, alone and cold. If there is anything that can be an item of last resort, then irrespective, it is better than someone who is old, suffering from illness or other infirmity being left alone. Nothing beats family or a good neighbour, but what do you do when that breaks down?

My wife's Grandmother is wearing one and it give us so much peace of mind for a 92 year old.


*I stress I have a bias for the Watch Over Me product. A vast amount of research has been done and nothing like it is on the market. There are other products on the market that may do parts or all of what I describe.