Aging In Place Directory

#19 - Exploring Assistive Technology to Simplify Aging in Place

• Esther C Kane CAPS, C.D.S. • Season 1 • Episode 19

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In this episode, I promise to unlock the potential of assistive technologies that transform daily living for older adults. From my heartfelt personal experiences, I showcase an array of smart gadgets—from voice-activated assistants like Alexa and Google Home to automated vacuum cleaners such as the Shark vacuum, perfect for pet lovers.

We'll delve into the security perks of the Ring doorbell with camera capabilities and the convenience of smart home systems, all designed to enhance both safety and peace of mind.

But that's not all. Learn how advanced health and safety devices can be game-changers—smartwatches that track vital signs and medical alert systems that offer discreet protection.

Hear about innovative solutions like fall detection lamps and smart walking aids that redefine mobility. We'll also discuss the importance of creating an accessible home environment with adaptive devices. I encourage you to dive deeper by accessing the comprehensive PDF linked in our show notes, and don’t forget to subscribe to stay updated with our latest episodes and YouTube content!

Click Here For A PDF of a List of Assistive Devices

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Speaker 1:

Hi everyone, welcome back. I'm Esther Kane, your host for the Aging in Place Directory podcast, episode number 19. Today I wanted to talk about some of the amazing products assistive technology basically that can really help to make life a lot easier and safer. Make life a lot easier and safer. I personally love these gadgets. They have contributed so much to my life and they give me the time to do the work, like this podcast and newsletter, and manage the aging in place directorycom and a plethora of other websites as well, and also gives me leisure time, you know, to spend time with my friends.

Speaker 1:

So the products that I use, the assistive technology products that I use that I very much love are the voice activated devices, such as Alexa and Google Home. They help me to, you know, make it easy to access my calendar, to make phone phone calls, to do video calls, to control my lights, my television you know, even my alarm system. Everything can a lot of things can go through. That makes it much easier. And also my phone my smartphone also has can control just about everything. It seems like. And what I like about it also is that I keep the location tab, the location feature, on it, so that my friends and family. If I go missing, they can at least find my phone. Hopefully I'll be attached to it as well, so it is a security feature for me as well.

Speaker 1:

Another product that I like very much are the automated vacuum cleaners, and I know a lot of people I know are familiar with Roomba, but I I tend to use I use the Shark vacuum. I have one upstairs and one downstairs, and the reason that I chose the Shark was because the Roomba has a brush and that brush was constantly getting caught with cat hair I have two cats and it would constantly be caught up with that whereas the Shark product has a plastic blade instead of a brush, so the hair doesn't get caught up in that anywhere near as much so, and both of them work, you know, amazingly well. They go to a station, empty themselves out, and I can even control them with my cell phone, which is quite amazing. But anyway, those are, those are the main problems. Oh, and also I use the ring doorbell with the camera. It's amazing. I mean, just a few nights ago, at almost nine o'clock at night, my doorbell rang. Of course it was dark, you know why would somebody be ringing my doorbell at nine? And then I could just. I just pulled up the camera on my phone and I saw that it was four men. I could just. I just pulled up the camera on my phone and I saw that it was four men standing outside. Well, I wasn't going to open the door four men at 9 pm, so I could at least speak to them via the the camera and, you know, find out, they were just soliciting at 9 pm, can you imagine, anyway? So those are the assistive.

Speaker 1:

Those are the tools that I tend to use the most, and I very much am grateful for each and every single one of them. They have made my life a lot easier. Of course, I would love to have the Jetsons, rosie the robot, but I don't know that that's going to happen in my lifetime. I wish it would, but there's so many amazing assistive technology products that you can use and you may not be aware of. So, attached to this podcast or YouTube video, whichever one you're watching, is on or listening to, I'm going to have a link to a PDF that lists the individual products themselves. So, but in this podcast there like over, I think, 200 of them on here. So obviously that would be a very long podcast and not too exciting. So I'm going to go ahead and just speak about them generally here, and then you can click on to the PDF to look for any products that you may be interested in.

Speaker 1:

So obviously, smart home technologies and home automation systems are the buzzwords these days, and I have the feeling that in the not too far away future, more and more homes will be automatically wired or created with these built-in, especially as older adults, especially as the population continues to grow older it's 10,000 people a day, turning 65 for many years to come so why not go ahead and incorporate all of those things into a home? It certainly makes it more sellable, more value in the home. But some of the home automation systems that you may or may not be aware of are obviously lighting control, and you can put those on timers. You can also put them onto a voice-activated device, have an app on your phone and you can control the light from wherever you are. There's nothing more annoying than crawling into bed on the second floor when you realize wait a minute, I don't think I turned off the kitchen light or you know whatever. I have to go back down, turn it off, come back up. This way you can just check to see if you've turned it off and control it on your phone. This is especially true for anyone that may have some mobility issues or balance issues or just doesn't have the stamina to to constantly do that. Going up and down temperature regulation is also another one. Oh, that's. Another one that I use is the ring yeah, the, the ring thermometer, and what I love about that is that I can set it for the heat and the cool, so it goes to a certain temperature when the house gets warm and then it goes to a certain temperature when the house gets cold, so I really never even have to touch it. Once it's set, then it just automatically either turns on the AC, or the AC is on, or the central heat. So that part is actually quite lovely.

Speaker 1:

Security cameras are also very important to have throughout your house, especially outside. You want to have them by your garage. I have one on the outside of the garage and I also have one on the inside of the garage just in case, for whatever reason, something happened or someone happened to come in through the garage. I wouldn't know it. It's a nice way to get an alert and they're very inexpensive these days and a lot of them operate on Wi-Fi, you can recharge them. So what I do is the first day of the month I tend to take all my rechargeable items my security cameras, my batteries, my car battery charger, anything that I have that is rechargeable. I tend to charge them all on the first day of the month and that way I know they're always charged. So you can certainly set up a schedule like that makes it much easier.

Speaker 1:

So the voice-activated assistants that I talked about before, like Amazon's Alexa or Google Home, those are amazing. You can set reminders for medications, for appointments, you know, for your washing machine, for the wash to get done. You know parties to attend, anything at all. You can control the devices, smart home devices. You make hands-free phone calls, which I do that a lot. You can provide, get information from them, entertainment. There's a lot of things that you can do.

Speaker 1:

Now I will say that the Alexa devices have a lot more skills. They call them skills, which are basically features. They have a skill where, once you turn it on, it can detect if glass breaks, and that's good. If someone is trying to break in through your you know glass window, it will. It will alert you. It can. I'm not sure if you can set it up that it will then call 9-1-1, but it would definitely will alert you. Google home is better for making searches, so if you were to ask Google Home a question, more than likely it will give you the correct answer. If you ask Alexa, that same question, you may probably get. I don't know how to answer that, and the reason is is because Google Home is working off the Google search engine, which is the largest search engine on the planet but think of it as the largest library and Alexa is working off the Bing search engine, which is a much smaller library, so it doesn't have all the information that is on Google.

Speaker 1:

The other type of products that I think are so amazing as far as technology goes are the health and safety devices. These days, you know pretty soon it's going to get to the point where you'll be able to wear something, and I think for some devices it's already there. Blood pressure you'll have a watch that can record your blood pressure and automatically send it to your physician. Diabetic your sugar levels automatically send it to your physician. These types of medical alert devices used to be where you know. You would wear this large pendant around your neck and it was just like screaming. Yes, I'm an old person, I need this medical alert device, but nowadays they're getting much better. Need this medical alert device, but nowadays they're getting much better. They come in the form of watches, gps trackers, so you can even put in your shoes and your purse, your backpack. They have a lot of. Them have two-way communication, you know, with monitoring centers. They have this wonderful little necklace I can't remember the name of it but I'll put a link to it in the description and the notes for the podcast but they have a lot of just nice tool, nice equipment it doesn't look like equipment and medical alert system, which I think is so amazing.

Speaker 1:

Health monitoring devices. Health monitoring devices, again, check your heart rate, your blood pressure, your sleep patterns, level of physical activities. If you wear a smartwatch, a smartwatch will usually tell you it's been 20 minutes. Get up. Some even offer ECG features and fall detection. I know Apple is very good about fall detection, which is, which is great, another fall detection product you may want to consider. It's not a wearable, it's an overhead lamp, it's a ceiling lamp and it's called Nobi N-O-B as in boy I and the Nobi lamp is beautiful because it's just a simple light that sits on your ceiling and it has a fall detection so it can detect if you've fallen in the area under the lamp. Obviously it goes out. It's not just directly underneath, it can detect a certain radius around the lamp. But I think that's an ingenious product and something that a lot of I would think that a lot of senior assisted living places would want to incorporate that into their homes, into their apartments.

Speaker 1:

Medication management systems are another technology tool that has come around and definitely has gotten much, much better. These products can dispense medications at certain times, they set off alarms, they can provide reminders, send texts to your phone and even send texts to family caregivers so in case they need to call and remind you mom, did you take your pill, just in case maybe you have trouble hearing or whatever the issue is, and they this will then track medication adherence, which again could be something that is sent to the physician to let them know whether or not you are adhering to the medication. Because if you're not, what is the issue? Is that a cognitive issue? Are you able to take care of yourself? Because if you can't take, can't recall to take the medication on time, perhaps it might be time to get some you know, some help from the outside.

Speaker 1:

Another one of the amazing things that's coming out now are smart walking aids. One of the newest things that's come out lately is a product called gozen. It's g-o--Z-E-N, and what I love about this product is that it's a mashup between a walker and a wheelchair and it does multiple things. Not only does it turn on a dime, but it also raises up. So if you are using it as a wheelchair, be it temporarily or permanently, you can push a button and the seat will pop up. That way, you are at eye level with whomever it is that you are speaking with, and you can use it as a wheelchair at that height. So can you imagine having that at the grocery store, where you can just raise it to get something from the top shelf or higher shelf and then lower it back down to keep on going, or you can stay up there, I guess. But what I love about it is that if you are someone that has a lot of fatigue or difficulty walking, so occasionally needs a wheelchair or a seat, but also has the the walker also uses a walker, then you can stand up and because the wheelchair is behind you and the armrests are there off to your side, then you can use it. You're belted into the Gozine and then you can use it as a walker with the seat behind you. So I love that. It promotes exercise, it promotes mobility and it just makes it so much easier and user-friendly for anyone who needs that type of equipment.

Speaker 1:

But there's also other smart walking aids. There are canes and walkers that can detect an obstacle in case you have low vision, then navigation assistance, gps features, health monitoring features. There's so many amazing features that a lot of the advanced canes and walkers are currently incorporating another great technology. Our products are stair lifts, ramp and residential elevators. These obviously make it easier to navigate multi-level homes and ensuring that all areas of the home are as accessible as possible. So another one are electric wheelchairs and scooters. These provide enhanced mobility, not only for outdoor but for indoor, and it allows older adults to be as independent and active as possible. So another area where technology is working amazing is communication and entertainment. Amazing is communication and entertainment. So with communication, one of the main products that has been developing a lot of features are hearing aids.

Speaker 1:

Today's modern hearing aids are not just hearing aids, they're also Bluetooth enabled so you can connect them to your phone. You can listen to music. You can use them as the listening device and talking them to your phone. You can listen to music. You can use them as the listening device and talking device for your phone. They also are GPS enabled so your family members can track you in case you tend to get lost, or just use it as a security type of feature.

Speaker 1:

But in addition to hearing aids, there's the smartphones. Some of them are getting made with large buttons, easy to read buttons, a video calling systems. You know, sort of like a zoom kind of thing built into the phone, and there's so many features that a phone can do. And I think that in the next five to ten years so many apps are going to be coming out targeting not only older adults and what they need and want, but also families who have aging parents, aging parents. And then there's, of course, the entertainment systems. You know all the amazing remotes that do everything. Of course, if you can bring everything down to one remote, that would be much, much easier. But then there's e-readers and like the Kindle, where you can adjust the text size and read your books and magazines, and then, of course, audio description services for anyone who's visually impaired, and yeah, and then also the visual services for anyone that is hearing impaired.

Speaker 1:

There are so many amazing products and then, you know, I'm not even this has even brought up the issue of the driverless car. At some point that will be a viable product that is on our roads and I know some people are very and be safe, because can you imagine, you know, if you are simply an unsafe driver because of your age or disability of some kind, being able to still have that independence with a car to go anywhere or do anything? It's quite amazing. I think the next 10 or 20 years are going to bring about an absolute revolution of new products, especially since the last couple of years has really opened up Pandora's box for artificial intelligence. That has cleared the way for so many new technologies to be created.

Speaker 1:

It is scary, it's true, but anytime there's change, anytime there's something new coming around the horizon, it's always a little frightening. It's always good and bad to everything, but a lot of these adaptive devices can certainly make your life easier and safer and, at the end of the day, that's what we're really concerned about and that's what this podcast is for. All right, so I'm going to have a link to the pdf of some of the exact products that you can look into that can help you to create an easy and safe home for yourself and or your loved ones. All right, have a great day. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast, our YouTube channel, and I will see you in the next podcast. Thank you, bye.

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Esther C. Kane, CAPS, C.D.S.

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