Sure it’s cheaper but requires someone be nearby with an iPhone/android. Ankle monitor I presume has gps and SIM card… I guess that’s an optimized iwatch for battery life.
I am skeptical of anything with a battery. My mother who is 80 can keep absolutely nothing charged. Batteries die and they are not recharged until someone charges and reconnects.
Ideally some future tech will not require batteries or they will last a year or so.
Great project, I am happy to see this area pushed forward.
I'm aware of a guy who was in house arrest for a while. Apparently ankle monitors false alarm so very, very, very frequently. And every time they do, the officer (whether of the court of of the law) who's in charge of monitoring you needs to get involved to ascertain that yes, you are still at your house, and yes, it is the shitass lowest-bidder carcerial-system trash that's faulting _again_ and wasting everyone's time and energy, and no, you are not getting cute or clever and wasting everyone's time by running away, or tampering with your shitass anklet.
Long story short, some entity who actually gave a shit (and also wasn't gunning for you to replace it with a new model every three years) would need to build any such device.
My reply is totally against the guidelines, but the image of some bio-curious hacker sticking needles in the perineum and putting high voltages on them in a home lab is such an absurd mixture of horror and embarassement that your sane reply had me in stitches.
We just moved to Mexico for this very reason. My mom now has 24 hour nurse care (at home) for 1,200 usd per month. In the US we were quoted 10k per month and not 24 hour. My mom receives a small pension which puts her in a spot where she qualifies for no government benefits but also cannot afford care at the current market rate.
It’s not for everyone but she is much happier here than in a nursing home.
I suspect a lot of boomers will discover this option soon. As soon as you retire, say at ages 60-65, it is more optimal to leave the US and live in Mexico/SE Asia until health permits. Then return back to the US in your early 70s with the full support of medicare and SS.
My parents stayed in Mexico after their Medicare and SS kicked in.
Once you've been down there for 5-10 years, why would you come back? There are huge communities of retired expats in Mexico. We're talking 5-10k expats all visiting the same grocery stores, churches, etc.
My parent's best friends down there grew up in the same era they did, often in the same regions of the US. I don't know what my parents would come back to the US for?
> I don't know what my parents would come back to the US for?
Sure. Once you have a community in another country, there are very few reasons to return back. But not everyone can build a lasting community. For them, returning back is still an option.
That said, I agree that even hospice and LTC is cheaper in other countries. Just take your money and live there in peace.
Heh, you write "full support of medicare and SS" as if that's a solution. It's not really a solution (as the article alludes to). IME -
1. Kid(s) that will take care of you, or at least hands on supervise your care and fill in gaps in staff.
2. As little time as possible between being in rehab/hospital, and hospice.
3. Money
If you have at least two out of those three, you won't have a horrible experience dying. Otherwise you end up in the state-paid nursing home gristmill, where you can at least take solace that they've checked the boxes on the paper saying they're turning and cleaning you.
Only 2 and 3 are viable options for many. 2 is unpredictable. But 3 can be achieved by simply spending less in retirement. Plenty of countries out there where you can live on $1k/mo.
Yeah I don't disagree with your overall point about people retiring in low cost of living areas globally. I just don't think those people will be coming back, or would even plan to come back. Of course doing so greatly removes your ability for #1, which is about the only way to make sure you're not fleeced and discarded.
Not just younger devs. I am an older dev who has extensive experience with WPF and was relieved when I moved on to another stack. Having worked with winforms extensively wpf sucks on every level. Xaml is an atrocity that should not exist. Please Microsoft abandon xaml and back fully another established framework like react native for windows.
Interestingly, my experience is totally different. I loved working with XAML and C# for building Silverlight apps, and would have preferred using that across more platforms. Especially with a nice editor like Expression Bland that got folded into VS.
Totally had your experience as well. I thought that the bridge between XAML and the underlying object model was pretty rad.
There were quite some rough edges, especially surrounding dependency properties. Those had way too much boilerplate. Also their hip new event system needed some fine tuning too.
This is going to be out there in left field and our experience so far.
1- (will not help you but for the benefit of others) My wife has MS and the doc said if she gets pregnant it may help. She got pregnant and yep sure enough life changing results for the better.
2- Covid vaccine helped her. She felt better after getting both phizer shots. Like her body needed it.
3- She has Been using a machine called truerife for Lyme and says it also helps. She takes a lot of fish oil every day, not the cheap stuff you find at the box store. Lookup nutridyn omega pure.
4- Along with medical professionals find a naturopath. We see one that is semi retired that changed my mind from snake oil to he knows what he’s taking about and saved me from pretty major surgeries twice now.
I have PPMS and have been trying acupuncture. Symptoms feel a tad better, but might be placebo. Correlation is not causation. However, my perspective is that the MS weakens the signal, and acupuncture might just turn up the volume.
Separately, ongoing physical therapy is a must for me.
I have it on all the time due to the volume range going from soft to insanely loud to soft and it’s annoying… when the kids are sleeping this is also a show stopper
Any reasonably cost solution for a 80 year old with one functioning arm to take her meds in such a way that also prevents a 5 year old from getting to them? This is what we are up against.
Currently, I have a reminder on my phone to give them to her and watch her take them, but it’s not sustainable long term.
Ideally the solutions is something that enables her to take the meds on her own.
Keep them out of easy reach but don't go to crazy lengths. If you can, talk to your 5 year old. Ideally, involve them in the process of making sure grandma takes the medicine. Kids can be very responsible when they understand something is important, and why.
Of course every kid/situation is different and needs to be met where things are at (and not where you wish it would be), but I think it's worth trying if you have bandwidth. They may surprise you.
When you think about it, most 5 year olds have ready access to very dangerous things; they can turn on the oven, toast things (not necessarily food), they often have access to sharp knives with a minimum of effort, etc. What keeps them safe is their understanding of the risks of those things. The real problem with grandma's pills is that the risk of them is not "accessible" to a child in the way those other things are.
If concerned about unsafe access to medications, I think putting them in a locked cabinet or room is the best solution rather than thinking that something like a bottle cap is going to control access. Unfortunately, many elderly also suffer cognitive declines which make it risky for them to manage their own medications, even if they are physically capable of the task. Missed doses or accidental double-dosing can potentially lead to other health problems, exacerbating their cognitive struggles and increasing the risk of dosing mistakes.
In the long run, I think that a family providing such support should consider adopting some of the best practices of care staff who do medication management for clients. You want a physical log sheet that is formatted like a 2D matrix with recurring doses as row labels and dates written as column labels. The rows should also be sorted and grouped chronologically, i.e. the first row is the first dose to take after waking and it is ordered through to the last dose to take before bed. You typically also want to leave blank space after each dosing period so you can potentially write in new medications when there are changes ordered during the tracking period. You also want to keep a digital copy of the form that you can easily revise and print again as the forms are filled to completion.
The responsible party measures out the doses and marks/initials the cells of the grid for the individual dose and date being administered. In a professional setting, they might mark once for preparing the doses and once again after witnessing that they were consumed. The active log sheet is kept in the same storage area as the medications, readily accessible to the ones administering them. If there are multiple people taking medications, a separate series of sheets is used for each person.
In a professional setting, this supports audit. But in any setting, it also provides a simple process to help minimize dosing mistakes. There are no more questions like, "wait, did they already take this?" after a distraction has interrupted the normal, habitual process. This written formalism can also help you manage refills. Learn to think in terms of "N days' supply" to note on the grid when a bottle is opened, predict when it will be depleted, and mark down when it should be reordered.
https://mygita.com how about something like a Gita Mini which is a follow bot? It is for paved outdoors as well as indoors. You can lock it from your phone and can follow the elderly person.
I think there are might be some tweaks to make it suit your purpose. But it is worth looking into how it can help senior care as a follow bot.
P.S: I did a ton of research for small farm robotics and met very interesting startup founders in the healthcare/robotics area on the way. If anyone wants to brainstorm or even simply chat about senior healthcare and robotics, please reach out. This is something that is very close to my heart and if I can help make connections even if I can’t help in any technical/material way, it would make me very glad.
Thanks for the idea! irony, I am a hardware/software eng working in the home health space... I am thinking of a keurig type device with a integrated finger print reader button. the dispenser only releases dosage if the biometrics match.
I mentioned this idea to my wife and she said it will only make our five year old want them more... maybe we will make a kids version that releases gummies :).
My mother recently moved in with us. At the age of 80 she needs more help than we can provide. Her pension is high enough that she does not qualify for assistance but well below market rate for home health aides (help with daily activities such as shower, dressing, meds, etc) or a nursing home.
Long story short, we are moving to another country where she can easily afford 24 hour care by a nurse.
Home health (non-skilled) here in the states is about $25/hour, out of pocket that adds up quick.
