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This looks similar to the Loc8me story posted here 31 August, the Yorkshire Safe-T story from 28 January and even the Irish TopLocate story from 30 January. What’s not explained is how these services track people within, say, shopping centres and other such indoor locations where GPS doesn’t work. If you know, please post a comment below. Thanks.
Blue Tree Services press release on its ‘OurSOS’ service.
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Telehealth and Telecare Aware posts pointers to a broad range of news items. Authors of those items often use terms 'telecare' and telehealth' in inventive and idiosyncratic ways. Telecare Aware's editors can generally live with that variation. However, when we use these terms we usually mean:
• Telecare: from simple personal alarms (AKA pendant/panic/medical/social alarms, PERS, and so on) through to smart homes that focus on alerts for risk including, for example: falls; smoke; changes in daily activity patterns and 'wandering'. Telecare may also be used to confirm that someone is safe and to prompt them to take medication. The alert generates an appropriate response to the situation allowing someone to live more independently and confidently in their own home for longer.
• Telehealth: as in remote vital signs monitoring. Vital signs of patients with long term conditions are measured daily by devices at home and the data sent to a monitoring centre for response by a nurse or doctor if they fall outside predetermined norms. Telehealth has been shown to replace routine trips for check-ups; to speed interventions when health deteriorates, and to reduce stress by educating patients about their condition.
Telecare Aware's editors concentrate on what we perceive to be significant events and technological and other developments in telecare and telehealth. We make no apology for being independent and opinionated or for trying to be interesting rather than comprehensive.
There are lots of new devices arriving and we shouldn’t close our minds to the use of the technology to enhance the quality of care delivery. However I do advise caution to purchasers when considering these; particular consideration must be given to the back-end infrastructure service and reslilience of the systems. The accuracy of the device location has been questioned by another poster where GPS doesn’t work, this can be overcome by various means – firstly by A-GPS where GPS ‘predictions’ are made and updated based upon a comparison of the last known GPS position, the time and the characteristics of the device location when compared to mobile network cellsite data. Also, the mobile network operators have very sophisticated ‘triangulation’ capabilities that can be accurate enough to locate someone to within 50 to 250m in town.
That’s a helpful contribution, Tom. Thanks.
You are right these systems all seem similar. Possibly some users of triangulation might post their views on here. The key to GPS tracking is continuous tracking. Constantly recording the position means that you can see a “bread crumb” trail if you can’t get a signal, and can set up real borders or geofences which exist on the server side or the system. If the tracker is in an area where there the signal is weak, like a shopping centre, it is true that you will not accurately be able to find it. However if the unit leaves the centre, you have it. This provides some measure of security for these difficult areas. Our units include a movement sensor so that you can tell if the tracker is taken off. This is important both as an alert to you but also as a way to provide a start position for searching.
Thanks Mike. It probably seems like a side issue to providers, but when I was talking to people who run services for autistic children and people with learning disabilities (who are interested in these types of services to help permit their clients greater independence) this particular point seemed quite a stumbling block for them. There’s a potential market out there in that field, and reassurance on tracking in these situations would be a particular selling point.
There is another device to help parents on the move. It gives both the parents and the child’s position. This is based on a continuous track and when the parent moves the unit shows their direction relative to the child and a gap so you know how far away you are. There are no maps involved just two dots (hard to describe in words) it works for “finding” someone in a hurry. Very simple and will show many children at once. Its called BlueMap.