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Hi-Tech Devices to Help Senior Citizens Introduced
at Senate Hearing
April 28, 2004 - At a Special Committee on Aging
hearing yesterday which demonstrated new, cutting-edge high-tech devices
to help senior citizens, the chairman of the committee said that seniors
of the future will increasingly need these types of electronic aides to
help them remain independent.
During the hearing several new high-tech devices
were demonstrated, including a robot named Pearl, and a device called an
Autominder. The later mechanism uses artificial intelligence, which
automatically recognizes when a senior is eating breakfast, and is then
able to help the senior remember when to take their medications. Earlier
types of reminder systems were essentially “glorified alarm clocks,”
said University of Michigan professor Martha Pollack. The newest systems
are able to reason about whether and when to issue reminders.
“Worldwide, the number of people over the age of 60
will nearly double over the next several decades, and of course, here at
home, the 77 million-strong baby boomer generation will begin retiring
only a few short years from today,” said Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho).
“For seniors and their families, assistive technology offers hope. For
America’s technology industry, it offers an exciting and expanding
market. And for policymakers, it offer real potential to free up scarce
resources – resources urgently needed as America ages.”
To make that happen, President Bush has ordered
federal agencies to streamline the process of granting greater access to
federal land to enable broadband providers to install high-speed
fiber-optic connections nationwide, and he also called for the federal
government to streamline specifications for Internet broadband
transmission over existing power lines – a new delivery system which
will compete with cable television and phone lines for Internet access.
“A large body of research has shown that Americans
prefer to maintain independent households as long as possible, and
indeed, 95 percent of our elders live in private residences.
Additionally, institutionalization has an enormous financial cost, for
elders and their caregivers, as well as for the U.S. Government,”
Pollack said. “Technology that can help seniors live at home longer
provides a ‘win-win’ effect, both improving quality of life and
potential saving enormous amounts of money.”
Lydia Lundberg from Milwaukee, Oregon, also
demonstrated her company’s high tech nursing home at the hearing. Using
a real-time link, she showed how a daughter or son could monitor their
parent’s well-being in a senior citizen’s room via computer. Monitors
hooked up to a bed in the high-tech nursing home can relay information
detailing how often a senior turns at night, how much they weigh, and
which staff have entered their room and for how long. If the senior is
restless – or listless – it can indicate problems with medication. A
lack of weight can help indicate other problems.
Noting that a one year stay in a nursing home for a
person with Alzheimer’s disease now costs $64,000 a year, and that
Medicare costs for beneficiaries with Alzheimer’s are expected to
increase nearly 55 percent in the next six years, Stephen McConnell,
senior vice president of the Alzheimer’s Association told Craig’s
committee that the new technological breakthroughs hold a promise of
financial relief.
“Utilizing assistive technologies to prolong a
person’s ability to live independently, thus reducing the need for
expensive institutional care, has the potential to save billions of
dollars in Medicare and Medicaid spending, as well as family budgets,”
McConnell said.
Those sentiments were echoed by the chairman of the
nation’s leading public-private partnership technologies for the
elderly.
“There are hundreds of technologies sitting in
the labs of American universities and technology companies today that
could save billions of dollars in our nation’s healthcare bill if we
could only focus some of our nation’s imagination, innovation and
investment dollars on the health and wellness needs of our aging
population,” said Eric Dishman, Chairman of the Center for Aging
Services and Technologies (CAST), a program of the American Association
of Homes and Services for the Aging.
For more about the hearing, click "HERE."
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