Cathy Cress

Expert in Aging Life and Geriatric Care Management

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6 Tech Ideas For Long Distance Care Providers During Covid on Holidays

December 12, 2020

Long-Distance Family Stocking Brimming with Coal

Christmas and Hanukkah are upon us, and many long-distance families will be celebrating remotely with elderly parents due to the nationwide COVID onslaught. Long Distance adult children will make the dangerous journey anyway. Those that do travel may call an Aging Life Care Manager after coming across piles of junk mail, consistently dirty clothes, or a house and/or aging parent that looks like lumpy turkey gravy. Those adult children who stay safely home in the pandemic will need their aging parents to have some technology to communicate with them. Both groups should consider technology as a gift to seniors

 Technology Pushes Coal Out of Stocking

Before you get that call, you should read Laurie Orlov’s blog, a fellow Geriatric Care Manager now very well known in the field of aging for her expertise in aging technology. This is what Orlov has to say about long-distance technology in the pandemic. When they call you you might suggest one of the high-tech items Orlov suggests a part of an older family member’s life. Especially during the pandemic. These gero-technologies can help an older parent or relative shelter safely in place, avoid loneliness and isolation through connecting with others, age in place, and improve communicating with loved ones.

Videoconferencing

Videoconferencing is a great way to keep elderly parents connected and less lonely and isolated. It can also be a good tool for adult siblings who live apart to have chats or meetings about Mom or Dad.  Free programs like Skype or another parent-friendly plus easy choice Facetime and the built-in webcams on many computers, make this easy on elders. Zoom has become the number one way that families communicate, during the pandemic. . For the holidays, birthdays or even a crisis, it is how we virtually gather now and has a free version.

Amazon Echo Show uses Alexa, by activating Amazon’s voice and can make calls to adult children or anyone, making it easy for seniors to talk to anyone including family. An older standard telephone conference service is still highly rated and still free, as well. Freeconferencecall.com

Med Dispensers

Here is a review of several med dispensers on the market

A device that is very appropriate for elders who have medication abuse problems is Hero Electronic Pill Dispenser   

Alexa has a new pill reminder feature

A more modest choice is Electronic Pill Box with Flasing Reminders 

Caregiver Video Cameras

Cameras like Google Nest can monitor an individual’s activities of daily living and provide caregivers with direct video feed on a smartphone, tablet app, or the Web to check on the status of a family member. 

Monitoring sensors

Wireless systems. Cameras can be viewed remotely from a smartphone or computer. You may be able to get video motion alerts and the ability to pan and zoom

GCM Laurie Orlov at Aging Tech suggests many new 2020 sensor programs among them. Caregiver Smart Solutions 

Canary Care. lets you place wireless sensors around the house to monitor the activity of an elderly parent who is declining, while the family is long distance. The information is sent to your Canary Care portal. The sensors are battery powered and the hub uses mobile data to send the information, so no need for a landline or broadband.

TruSense  – can alert long distance or even local adult children if a probable fall occurs. An alert is triggered when TruSense detects that your loved one has not moved from high-risk fall areas (such as a stairwell or restroom) in an unusually long time. Other alerts include doors where the older person could wander.

 

 Other Sensor Products

Sensor products can check a number of items within a house: motion patterns, stove on/off status, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide levels, air quality, and presence of smoke or fire. They can also lock doors and control other items in the home remotely.

Daily activity monitoring. Activity sensors can be placed on the refrigerator, stove, door, and other objects around the home. Your relative may also wear a watch that monitors activity. You can allow caregivers and physicians to access the data. Set up notifications to be delivered by e-mail, text, or mobile app.: Live!y is a good choice

 GCM Technology Guide

Technology moves in nano-seconds and changes almost as fast. Give clients and their families the updated information. For a totally overhauled technology chapter,” Technologies That Support Aging in Place “, by GCM Julie Menack and Berkeley’s head of the Center for Aging and Technology, David Lindeman Ph.D. Get the new Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition 

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HOW DO USE TECHNOLOGY TO HELP LONG DISTANCE CARE PROVIDERS

December 15, 2015

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Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging life and geriatric care management, aging technology, elder patient advocate, gero technology, long distance family on holiday

Aging Tech Saves Holiday for Aging Families

November 26, 2015

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Happy Thanksgiving .The holidays are officially here, and many families will be celebrating with elderly parents. Sometime during the festivities,they may come across piles of junk mail, consistently dirty clothes or a house and/or aging parent that looks like lumpy turkey gravy. At that point they may call an aging life or geriatric care manager 

 

If you get that call, there is great new technology for a family at a distance. When they visit you might suggest one of these high tech items a part of an older family member’s life. These gero-technologies can help an older parent or relative age in place and improve communicating with loved ones.

 

Videoconferencing is a great way to keep elderly parents connected. It can also be a good tool for adult siblings who live apart to have chats or meeting about Mom or Dad.  Free programs like Skype and the built-in webcams on many computers, make this easy on elders. Others include:

Family Virtual Visits 

Google Video Chat 

 

 

In addition to online chats, Ceiva, Flickr and Kodak allow adult children, friends and family to continually send new images, helping older or less mobile family members stay updated.

 

One item I love is Presto. You can load pictures of you and your family or write notes and letters and send them to your parents. They don’t have to do anything. The service just prints your message and photos out in their home. It’s a great gift for someone with memory loss, or just for Mom and Dad to have in general—with the wonders of technology they don’t have to have any computer savvy.

 

If your elderly Mom or Dad would like to use e-mail but need a simple technological tool, PawPawMail takes the complexity out of the process. For $5 a month, users transmit and receive mail through PawPawMail’s Web site, which features simple graphics, large type and real names rather than potentially confusing e-mail addresses. The account manager, typically a younger family member, sets up the account, creating a list of approved e-mail senders; spammers and phishers cannot get through.

 

Also, if they need to have a virtual meeting with sisters and brothers about anxiety producing signs while visiting parents, there are virtual web meeting sites where family and friends can post messages to each other.

 

In these virtual meeting places family can keep track of all interactions in one place. Examples of this technology are Caring Bridge and Care Pages. If you want to choose an affordable teleconference link for you family to discuss Mom and Dad’s problems try Free Teleconference.

 

Technology moves in nano-seconds and changes almost as fast. Give clients and their families the updated information. For a totally overhauled technology chapter,” Technologies That Support Aging in Place “, by GCM Julie Menack and Berkeley’s head of the Center for Aging and Technology, David Lindeman PhD. Get the new Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition  now–  

 

 

Have a Happy Thanksgiving

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: gero technology, long distance family, long distance family on holiday, Thanksgiving with aging parents

4th edition of Handbook of Geratric Care Management Out Today

October 26, 2015

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The 4th edition of the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management  is out today. This has been over a year in the making and remains the only textbook and number one source for practitioners of aging life or geriatric care management.

 New to this edition are two key chapters. Care Managers Working with the VA by Dr. Len Kaye, Professor, University of Maine School of Social Work and Director, University of Maine Center on Aging and 6 VA representatives including Glenn Osborne, Dr. App. Sc. (Gerontology) Managing Director, Elder Veterans Legal Aid Group, Nashville, TM. The chapter is a how-to chapter lighting the  very difficult path to VA benefits that all veterans deserve. 

Seven million Americans over the age of 65 suffer from depression. A new Chapter on this crippling condition is now in the Handbook written by Dr. Anne Katz Anne Katz, PhD, and LCSW,

University Southern California.

 

Most chapters have new authors, rooted in academia, teaching aging Life and care management all over the US.  This includes a completely updated technology and aging in place chapter by Dr. David Lindeman of the Center for Aging and Technology at UC Berkeley, a national figure in gerotechnology and Julie Menack an expert in care management technology.

It will be out in Kindle in November.

 

 

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging life and geriatric care management, geriatric care manager, gero technology, Handbook of Geraitric Care Management

ChoosingThe Right Technology for Aging Clients- 4-5

June 16, 2015

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Dr. David Lindeman and Julie Menack, in their new chapter on Technology in the Handbook of Geriatric Care Management 4th edition offered 5 steps to choose the right technology fr aging clients.. Here are 4 and 5

 

4.     Follow-up problem solving: Schedule follow-up visits and/or contacts to determine if the technology is being used appropriately.

·4.     Evaluation: Determine whether the initial goal has been met, and if not, evaluate whether additional training is required or if the technology should be modified or removed.

Potential impediments to technology implementation should be kept in mind during this process. The care manager should anticipate that many clients are not familiar with specific technologies, have not used new technologies (including smart phones), and may not be comfortable with technology in general. 

Even more fundamentally, clients may resist the use of technology because they are in denial that they need care or may resent the loss of independence that the technology signifies, and thus may try to sabotage or avoid using it.

A client’s limitations, such as physical impairment (e.g., vision, hearing loss), technical difficulty, and impaired cognitive ability may limit the use of some technologies, but support from a care provider can easily help overcome some of these limitations. Consideration should also be given to balancing a client’s need for privacy, autonomy, and dignity with the usefulness of certain aging in place technologies.

Filed Under: Aging Tagged With: aging in place technology, aging technology, GCM technology, geriatric care manager, gero technology

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