Anyone watching television in the late 1980s probably remembers one of the most famous commercials of all time. It featured the line, “Help, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up.”
Back in 1987, with the help of those commercials, a company named Life Alert skyrocketed from a lowly startup to the second largest medical alert provider in the nation. Now, however, Indian River Medical Center’s Linda Roberts and West Palm Beach’s Phil Verruto have newer and possibly far better rescue device options for Vero’s seniors to consider.
Almost 30 years ago, the nation suddenly became aware of dangers it hadn’t paid much attention to before. As seniors left their northern homes for warmer climates, the National Institutes of Health found that fully one-third of those seniors suffered one or more falls each year. Moreover, a shockingly large number of those who fell lived alone and frequently found themselves unable to call for help.
That opened the door for Life Alert and its chief competitor, Phillips Lifeline, the number one medical alert company then and now.
Phillips Lifeline currently boasts over seven million subscribers nationwide and just introduced its newest product: the Phillips Lifeline GoSafe System. As of February, Roberts and IRMC became certified providers for this newest personal emergency response system or PERs.
What’s the big deal with GoSafe? Well, for starters about 3,000 miles. Most PERs devices in use today have a range of between 600 and 800 feet. The devices worn around the neck or wrist must stay in contact with a home base-station to be effective and that range has been limited to a few hundred feet. GoSafe, however, allows wearers of its device to travel from Vero Beach to the Santa Monica pier in California and still be able to get emergency medical help if needed.
GoSafe also provides instant two-way communication. Just press a button and a call is automatically placed to the Phillips response center in Framingham, MA and, Roberts says, “a person at Lifeline will speak directly to you” and you can speak directly to them.
Additionally, this made-in-the-USA Phillips device uses multiple location-detection technologies to make sure help can be dispatched quickly and accurately. Most other PERs rely only on GPS and, as anyone with GPS in their car can attest, there are areas where that system just doesn’t work. In an emergency situation, that could be a big problem. Roberts explains that, “the GoSafe device has GPS as well as WiFi and another locating system called intelligent breadcrumbs.”
(“Intelligent breadcrumbs” may be one of the best names of the digital age. What it means is that sensors within the unit take “environmental snapshots” of the wearer’s location from time to time; in an emergency, the system can track the device’s wearer based on where they’ve been and the direction they were headed.)
The icing on the cake for this new GoSafe device, which is worn as pendant around the neck, may be its automatic fall detector. A different set of sensors automatically notify the response center when a fall is detected. Within seconds, someone at Phillips contacts the wearer to make sure he or she is all right and dispatches help if needed.
Roberts adds that unlike some of its competitors, (including Life Alert), Phillips does not require long-term contracts. Consumers purchase the waterproof, wearable device for $149 and then pay $55 a month for the monitoring service.
Further down the road in West Palm Beach, Phil Verruto and his partners have created a very different electronic medical device called MyDailyCompanion.
Verruto says, “most medical alert systems fall far short of delivering the information that first responders need in an emergency” so he and his team geared their product line towards providing paramedics, EMTs and ambulance crews the critical health information they need in a crisis situation.
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Like other PERS, MyDailyCompanion allows injured people to call for help. The difference is that it also displays a recent health profile, a list of any chronic conditions or allergies as well as medication and prescription dosages and similar information on the base station’s seven-and-a-half inch screen. Its database provides contact information for primary care physicians, specialists, pharmacies, emergency contacts and family members along with real-time phone connectivity.
This particular system can offer more mobility than many other PERs on the market by incorporating its mobile phone applications for android and iphone. If your phone is out of reach, it also includes GPS tracking via a nearby cell phone, a 24-hour registered nurse call button and, quite cleverly, the ability to send users daily reminders as to when they should be taking their medications.
The base unit can be had for $199.95 with a $29.95 monthly fee, which Verruto says are introductory promotional prices. To expand its range, adding the iphone or android app costs between $10 and $15 a month.
Medical alert systems have come a long way since 1987. Maybe it’s time to take another look at what’s available now.
Linda Roberts is the Lifeline Program Director at IRMC. She can be reached at 772-567-4311, ext. 3-1601. Phil Verruto is the CFO of Medsign. The company’s website can be found at www.mydailycompanion.com.