The New Old Age: A Shoe for Wanderers

I hear from lots of publicists touting technology products that supposedly help older adults, and I ignore most of the gizmos they’re promoting. Without a skilled and unbiased Consumer Reports-type lab to test these inventions — and could someone please create one soon? — it’s too hard to tell which actually work well.

Some are clearly too complicated or too expensive. A lot rely on sending alerts — of falls, health problems, missed medications — and thus are only as helpful and reliable as whoever supposedly responds. Some are based on very questionable science, or no science.

But I’m intrigued by the GPS Shoe. Andrew Carle, a former rehab hospital director who now directs a senior housing program at George Mason University, coined the term “nana technologies” for such things. (A play on nanotechnology and grandmas – get it?) It was Mr. Carle who alerted GTX Corporation, already developing location-tracking shoes for marathon runners and children, that it was missing a key market.

“I pointed out why this was an ideal technology for people with dementia who wander,” Mr. Carle explained to me. “Little kids can carry cellphones with GPS. We have far more seniors wandering off every day who don’t call for help.”

When people with Alzheimer’s and other dementias walk off — quickly, sometimes — “they don’t think they’re lost,” Mr. Carle pointed out. “They may actually hide. Paranoia is a manifestation of the disease. So search and rescue is hard to do.” Even when wanderers are found, by the police or friendly strangers, they may be unable to supply their names or addresses.

GPS devices carried in pockets, worn on wristbands or clipped to clothing are less reliable aids, Mr. Carle said, because people can and do lose or remove them. Ditto for bracelets or pendants bearing their names and family contact numbers. They may be less likely, however, to take off their shoes. The GPS Shoe, manufactured by a New Jersey company, hides a miniature locator in the heel of one shoe and counterweighs the other so they feel balanced.

A family member sets a perimeter, a “geo-fence,” so that the wearer can freely move around the house, around the yard, perhaps around a familiar immediate neighborhood. “But if he breaks the fence, Google maps pops up on my computer or my phone to show me where he is,” explained Mr. Carle, now a consultant to GTX.

Even if your parent is in Tennessee and you’re not, “I can call the Memphis police and say, ‘My dad has Alzheimer’s and he’s wandering and he’s at the corner of Fifth and Elm. Could you go get him?’” Mr. Carle thinks that possibility could be enormously reassuring “for family caregivers who are afraid to go to the bathroom because when they get back, their loved one may be out the door.”

The device will work wherever and as often as cellphones — which is to say, not every moment in every location, but most of the time (including in a car). The shoes, going on the market at the end of this month, won’t come cheap: They cost almost $300, plus a monthly subscription fee of $30 to $40.

Of course, it’s still best to try to prevent wandering; the Alzheimer’s Association has published some apt suggestions.

But whenever I drive the highways of New Jersey and see a “Silver Alert” on the overhead signs, I think there have to be better ways to find vulnerable elderly wanderers. Maybe a shoe with a locator will prove to be one.
(Source: www.nytimes.com)