Sometimes I Feel Like a Piece of Bologna

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Daily call helps keep seniors healthy

Here’s a new twist on keeping track of your parents. A high-tech Wayzata, MN company called Warm Health is using automated phone contact to help seniors stay healthy and independent in their own homes, while giving their adult baby-boomer children an online glimpse of how their elderly folks are faring.

According to an article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul StarTribune.com,
it's not quite Nanny-cam for seniors. But as 22 million American families provide some level of care for elderly relatives, the computerized calls are an innovative soft monitor for concerned baby boomers who often live in other cities and find themselves overstretched, juggling jobs and caring for teens, but with aging parents who want to be independent.

The daily four-minute Warm Health phone calls begin with a spiritual or nostalgic message--the senior gets to choose--and conclude with health tips and health questions. The seniors' recorded responses to those questions appear on the Warm Health website, accessible for designated family members to view and hear. The calls are one small answer in addressing the isolation and loneliness that can erode seniors' health. They also address the problem of seniors forgetting to take medications, the major cause of an estimated 125,000 drug-related deaths a year among elderly Americans.

For this holiday season Warm Health is providing a free 30-day trial to provide a lift for your loved one. The monthly fee after that is $34.95/mo.

What do you think? I’m not sure my mom would delight in receiving a computerized call every day. A nuisance, she’d say. But for those who are more home bound, it might be an option.

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