CAST Imagine: the Future of Aging Technology Pavilion at WHCOA
Event Details
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The CAST Imagine Pavilion - over 10,00 square feet - showcased more than 30 technology displays from a variety of companies and universities.
Technologies featured ranged from those just entering the market to those that could be available within the next 10 years. CAST premiered a vision DVD "Imagine: the Future of Aging" at the WHCoA. The video gives you a glimpse, through the eyes of one family, of what the future of aging could look like with help from developing technologies that are possible, practical, and affordable. View the video, Imagine- the Future of Aging
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Visit the CAST Newsroom for the press release, photos, media coverage and more!
Members of the media may e-mail Lauren Shaham lshaham@aahsa.org
Common Themes Addressed by CAST Imagine Technology Pavilion Exhibitors
- Chronic disease management
- Fall detection and prevention
- Medication compliance and safety
- Wandering detection
- Assistance with activities of daily living
- Earlier detection of dementia and preserving cognitive fitness
- Wound care management
- Sleep pattern analysis and restlessness detection
- Remote vital signs monitoring
- Mobility assistance
- Reduced prevalence of depression and social isolation
- Telerehabilitation and remote speech therapy for stroke and other conditions
CAST Imagine Technology Pavilion Exhibitors
The following organizations were part of the CAST Imagine Pavilion at the White House Conference on Aging. View a description of the technologies that will be shown by selecting an organization name.
Accenture
Online Health Services is a research prototype developed by Accenture Technology Labs - the R&D arm of Accenture -- that integrates a number of wireless health devices, including blood pressure cuff, weight scale, and Lifeshirt that monitors over 30 physiological signs such as respiration and activity rates. The patient's data is continuously gathered, and securely transmitted to a remote analytic engine, which aggregates, filters, extracts, and displays high-level trends about the patient's current condition. The system helps optimize care delivery by sending alerts only when the patient's personalized thresholds are violated. As a result, Online Health Services can catch early warning signs of potential acute conditions such as heart failure, and minimizes costly emergency room visits and hospitalization.
Besides Online Health Services, Accenture will also be showing Online Medicine Cabinet - a smart appliance that supports situated monitoring of medication compliance and real-time interactions with care providers. Together, these two prototypes demonstrate how a combination of wireless health devices, always-on connectivity, and advanced analytics is creating a new kind of healthcare delivery capability, i.e., continuous care, which can help transform the future of healthcare by reducing cost and improving quality of life among the elderly and chronically ill individuals.
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Adherence Technologies
AccuNurse is a voice-activated, hands-free documentation and communication system that improves nursing care in long term care facilities. Supported by research grants from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), AccuNurse incorporates Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP), speech recognition, Internet, and wireless technologies. Using the AccuNurse web site, nurses set up residents' care plans, which are then converted into voice messages accessible to nursing assistants via headsets. To document care, staff members speak into their headsets. "Speaker-independent speech recognition technology" ensures that the system does not need to be trained to recognize their voices. Noise cancellation technology allows the headsets to operate in a typical clinical environment. The software converts spoken documentation into text that appears in real time on the AccuNurse web site, making it available to nurses. AccuNurse also provides direct staff-to-staff communication by voice via their headsets. AccuNurse is now commercially available.
The Advanced Diabetes Management System was developed with the support of a research grant from the National Institute on Diabetes & Digestive & Kidney Diseases. Now completing its initial clinical trial, ADMS combines telephony, speech recognition, and Internet technologies to help patients better self-manage their diabetes and to provide a link with their healthcare providers to generate more responsive care.
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American HealthTech
American HealthTech is a software and technology company that serves the needs of the long term care industry. As an industry leader and innovator for more than 30 years, American HealthTech provides clinical and financial software and technology solutions to 3,200+ customers nationwide.
Long term care takes on unique challenges when it comes to implementation of an electronic health record. This is especially true due to the holistic nature of long term care delivery combined with the requirement to coordinate external healthcare provider services.
The focus of the technology to be presented will be based around the electronic health record with an emphasis on medication data capture triggered by physician orders and staff assignment and care delivery as a result of clinical assessments and planning. Both of these components within "Smart Charting" feed care alerts to a monitoring system if care results are outside baseline or care delivery is past due.
This real time notification of potential problems allows proactive communication between the extensive healthcare providers which leads to significant improvement in patient safety. Increased safety combined with more time spent with the patient leads to improved patient satisfaction.
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Carnegie Mellon/University of Pittsburgh
Our consortium of technologists, clinicians, companies, end-users and stakeholders is blending robotic, rehabilitation, information and assistive technologies-creating intelligent systems can enhance people's capabilities and enable them to live independently longer.
We are creating technologies that automatically identify and catalog activities of daily living and human behaviors. Our current prototype uses video and other sensors to create more extensive and thorough analyses of well-being than care givers can do on their own. We are developing intelligent mobility aids ranging from wheel chairs that sense their user's fatigue, to rollators that help guide vision-impaired users, to automated systems that deploy and stow power chairs in and out of passenger vehicles.
Because our work emphasizes the human element, we are conducting in-depth studies of how people deal with and learn to use technology. Some systems operate in the background-continuously monitoring a person's status and knowing how much and what form of assistance is appropriate and when. Others, like personal robots, are socially interactive. All need to work in unstructured dynamic environments, be neither overpowering nor overwhelming, and respect the privacy and modesty of the user.
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Eaton
Home Heartbeat is a wireless, plug-and-use home awareness product that remotely monitors safety, security and comfort issues in the home providing homeowners with peace of mind. Home Heartbeat™ has three main components: the Base Station, Home Key™ and detection Sensors. Home Heartbeat™ also provides valuable information to both caregivers and seniors. Caregivers can routinely check to make sure that an elderly relative is safe in their home by remotely monitoring sensors through a Home Key™ (looks like a key fob with an LCD), text messaging on a cell phone or over the Internet. On the other hand, seniors living independently can access the same information on their own to double check if they left the garage door open, unplugged the iron, or use the reminder sensor to take medications, etc.
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Elite Care
Quality in the 21st century will be driven by all stakeholders' access to information, which is timely and pertinent. Although technology is a mechanism of independence, without purpose there are consequences of disassociation and isolation. The purpose of Elite Cares' technology is to create a medium of connection and relationship through transparency. Transparency for all stakeholders allows for mutual peace and synergy in this system.
A few of the parts that we will demonstrate are:
- Web based real time data. This data shows how well our residents and facility are doing. This is real information, which is currently available to residents; resident approved family members, caregivers and management. This information is helping us form strong working relationships with all stakeholders, lowering our labor cost, reducing our liability, while increasing the quality of our elder's lives.
- Our bed monitoring system measures weight, restlessness, and time in bed. It also anticipates when a resident will get out of bed so that a caregiver can be notified, or a walker or other cue can be alarmed, if there is a fall risk.
- A communication system that brings staff, family and residents into congruency without the use of paper.
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Dakim, Inc.
Dakim's cognitive fitness system aims to improve quality of life for sufferers of Alzheimer's Disease and seniors facing the debilitating effects of brain aging.
Developed with guidance from some of the country's top Alzheimer's research scientists and senior care providers, the Dakim system is designed to help users hold on to brain functionality longer, improve mood, and reduce depression by providing cognitive mental stimulation therapy, a proven therapeutic intervention, within a highly involving and enjoyable experience. The system is intended for use in both professional-care and home-care settings.
The Dakim system engages the user with a vast array of mentally stimulating exercises, numbering in the tens of thousands, that exercise a wide range of cognitive processes (memory, verbal, computation, critical thinking, daily life skills, etc). Employing touch-screen computer technology, the system also integrates familiar film and music clips to stimulate reminiscence and encourage sustained use.
The system's long-term effectiveness derives from its ability to continuously self-adjust the level of difficulty, subject matter, and form of presentation across an extremely wide panorama of special interest areas and cognitive domains. This ensures a constantly evolving experience that extends across years of use.
The Dakim system will be ready for market introduction in 2006.
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Georgia Tech
The Georgia Tech AwareHome Research Initiative will present three demonstrations showcasing their research focused on communication and collaboration tools to support the caregiver network. The Digital Family Portrait, the Tech Coach, and the Memory Mirror will be on display.
The Digital Family Portrait reconnects family members by providing a qualitative sense of a distant aging relative's well-being while striking a reasonable balance between privacy and the need for information. From general measurements of activity to indications of the weather, the portrait attempts to capture the observations that would naturally occur to someone living next door or in the same home.
As more medical measurement tasks are passed on to patients in the home, the ability to assist aging persons in performing tasks will become more important. The Tech Coach combines intelligent monitoring of medical devices along with computer vision analysis of the tasks being performed to monitor tasks being performed and alert the user if a mistake has been made.
One major problem facing aging persons is remembering if they have taken medications or if they have taken them too often. As medications come and go from the cabinet, the Memory Mirror records the use of the medication and provides a graphical display of the frequency of medications.
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GrandCare Systems
GrandCare Systems of Wisconsin will exhibit a new product called Relaware. Developed over the last decade by chief engineer and MIT graduate, Charlie Hillman, GrandCare applies the latest in cutting edge Internet technologies to answer the timeless question of how to best care for our elderly parents living independently.
The mission of Relaware is to provide an affordable system to minimize the worry and stress of family caregivers while relieving the loneliness and isolation of their aging parents living at home alone.
Relaware's discreet sensors report to the GrandCare website and enable family caregivers to be aware of the household activity and safety of their loved ones. Relaware will monitor indoor temperature, medication access, stovetop use, motion activity, and ultimately health status.
Relaware also brings the communication power of the Internet into the home of an aging parent, who simply needs to know how to turn on the television. A continuous slide show displays email, instant messages, pictures, calendar events, word definitions, spiritual offerings, and other cognitive assists such as the date, headlines, and weather. These features are controlled online by extended family whether from next door or across the world.
Relaware is awareness and communication - for the good times.
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Health Hero Network
Health Hero Network develops and markets the Health Buddy® system for health improvement. The Health Buddy system serves as the interface between patients at home and care providers, facilitating patient education and monitoring of chronic conditions. The system includes monitoring technologies, clinical information databases, Internet-enabled decision support tools, health management programs and content development tools. Through increased communication, behavior modification, and prevention, the Health Buddy system improves the quality of care. Based in Mountain View, California, Health Hero Network's systems are protected by over 55 issued US patents. http://www.healthhero.com
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HealthMedx, Inc.
The CareMEDX Knowledge Management Solution is designed to gain insight and understanding from experience, focusing on acquiring, storing, and utilizing knowledge for such things as problem solving, dynamic learning, strategic planning and decision making.
The demonstration of CareMEDX includes:
- A digital dashboard that provides key quality and operations metrics at a glance
- Analytic drilldown to investigate the data underlying the key metrics
- A portal that provides secure access to external systems data, including scanned documents, images and voice data
- A workflow engine that provides alerts and manages tasks for provider-defined scenarios that impact quality, patient safety and operations
- Point of care data capture via handheld (PDA) or tablet PCs. Examples of data that can be captured real-time include Activities of Daily Living, vitals and provider-configured assessments and notes
- A fully integrated clinical and financial system that supports both the Long Term Care and Home Care industries
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Health Watch/Tunstall
Jointly the two companies will present examples of telecare monitoring systems that support independent living that are already being deployed successfully on a large scale in the United Kingdom. We will demonstrate the current and future generations of telecare and describe the new models of care which have proven their value in the United Kingdom and moved from pilot programs to operational services.
The systems use a range of smart sensors as part of a supportive care service. The sensors monitor risks, hazards and environmental conditions throughout the home and will trigger a call from the emergency response system to a response center or a caregiver when activations or exceptions occur. This infrastructure is extended further with additional sensors and software that enables an individual's patterns of daily living to be automatically analysed, and the possibility of health and wellbeing trends to be tracked.
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HomeFree Systems
HomeFree Inc. of Milwaukee, Wisconsin develops personal eldercare monitoring solutions for Dementia patients and aging residents at senior housing facilities and residential environments.
HomeFree's patented "Personal Watcher" is a watch-style, wrist-worn, sensors equipped Radio Frequency device that can be worn for long periods of time. It is common to all HomeFree systems, enabling continuous monitoring with positive identification of each monitored individual.
Current HomeFree product line ranges from active wandering and fall management to nurse call and staff safety solutions in long term care facilities. All monitoring tools are operated off of a single wireless communication platform. Monitoring data is continually logged, enabling the generation of resident behavioral and staff service level reports.
HomeFree presents a home security and well being solution that will address the needs of the growing elderly population residing at home. Using the Personal Watcher's readings, the system alerts central monitoring and/or caregivers of any deviations from normal function routines, or in case of emergency. The home system is also capable of continuous vital signs monitoring including heart, blood oxygen and body motion rates.
HomeFree was established in 2000 as a wholly owned subsidiary of Dmatek Ltd., listed on the London stock exchange.
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Honeywell
Honeywell Automation and Control Solutions (ACS) is an $8-billion strategic business group within Honeywell International. The products, services and technologies of ACS are at work in 100 million homes, five million buildings and thousands of industrial sites worldwide. Not to mention planes, trains and automobiles. We also help make it possible to miniaturize sophisticated, implantable medical devices.
The common denominator across the ACS portfolio is pioneering expertise in sensing and control. It's the science of capturing more and better data, and then applying the insight to make devices, systems and processes smarter, more capable and valuable. In its Life Safety business, ACS has developed solutions for the growing Life Care industry to meet the needs of the nation's aging population. In 2004, Honeywell acquired HomMed, a fast-growing company with leading-edge technology that produces and distributes the HomMed Health System, which tracks the vital signs of patients daily from their own homes and is monitored by a partner network of home healthcare agencies. Honeywell HomMed seeks to improve the quality of life of individuals and dramatically reduce the cost of healthcare. HomMed health tracking technology offers a strong complement to Honeywell life safety systems and medical sensors portfolio.
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IBM Corporation
In order to prepare for certain oncoming demographic trends, millions of people around the world approaching the traditional retirement age and declining birth rates, in parallel with improved health care enabling increases in longevity, IBM Corporation is applying its expertise to address this unprecedented situation. With a globally integrated business and profound commercial and public sector expertise, IBM has a multi-dimensional grasp of these changes. We are acting now - turning our knowledge into solutions.
For the Conference, IBM will be demonstrating four such innovative solutions:
- IBM's Web Adaptation Technology is aimed at making the Internet easier to use by older adults and people with disabilities. By enabling users to customize Web page presentation and keyboard and mouse features to their own personal needs and preferences, the Web Adaptation Technology software can dramatically help people increase their effective utilization of the Internet.
- IBM's Pervasive Care and Case Management Solution supports remote health monitoring, which promises to improve quality of life for the elderly by providing caregivers access to health status. The goal is to focus healthcare on preventive measures instead of emergency care and hospital admissions.
- With IBM wireless solutions for the mobile government worker, staff can now manage cases, claimants and providers nearly anywhere, anytime using a wide range of pervasive devices. They can disseminate and collect benefits, employment, program and contact information- tracking case histories of clients or groups of clients through all touch points within the organization.
- The National Pension scenario of IBM's on demand vision for Social Program Delivery uses portal technology that enables citizens to access their consolidated pension benefit information and financial decision-making tools.
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Intel Corporation
How can everyday technologies help improve the quality of life for an increasing population of seniors while reducing healthcare costs? For five years, this question has guided Intel social scientists who have been studying the needs of seniors and their families across America. The motivation for this is simple: the best path to new health and wellness technologies starts with a deep understanding of human values, needs, and practices. Our mission is to inspire, invent, and investigate new technologies for prevention, early detection, compliance, caregiver support, and independent living. We are currently testing the effectiveness of these kinds of proactive health technologies with seniors in their own homes, including:
- An interconnected system of phones, watches, PCs, and televisions to deliver personalized prompts to seniors taking multiple medications
- An in-home device to monitor Parkinson's disease for personalizing treatment
- A sensor network and intelligent software application that help seniors with memory loss to stay socially active
- In-home sensors to help seniors get more exercise and monitor their sleep patterns for signs of trouble
These investigational prototypes represent tip-of-the-iceberg possibilities to help reduce healthcare costs, enable new forms of diagnosis and treatment, and empower seniors to manage their own healthcare more effectively.
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InTouch Health
InTouch Health's Remote Presence™ Robot, RP-6™, and TotalView™ ControlStation enable physicians to more easily and frequently consult and round on hospital based patients thereby improving hospital throughput, physician efficiency, and quality of care. Remote Presence is the ability to project yourself to another location (without leaving your current location) and to move, see, hear and talk as though you were actually there.
RP-6™ is a wireless, mobile, Remote Presence robot that lets a physician "be in two places at once." Through the power of the internet, a physician seated at the TotalView™ ControlStation can simultaneously view electronic medical records while connected to an RP-6 Robot located in a hospital. By combining a hospital's existing electronic medical records (EMR) with Remote Presence a physician now has all the necessary information to conduct a medical consultation. Under the direct control of the physician, the robot moves untethered allowing the doctor to freely interact with patients, family members, and hospital staff from anywhere, anytime. RP-6 leverages the time and expertise of physicians across many locations to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of care delivery.
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It's Never 2 Late
Technology is universally recognized as a cost-effective tool that can improve the lives of older adults in their quest to remain independent for as long as possible. However, if the technology is not simple and user-friendly in design, these benefits will never be realized. It's Never 2 Late (IN2L) integrates a variety of assistive computer technologies to connect older adults and their caregivers to the benefits of computers and the internet. IN2L's picture based, touch screen platform enables almost anyone to use a personal computer, regardless of physical or cognitive limitations.
Our booth will display a variety of adaptive technologies that are now being used in dozens of nursing homes and assisted living communities throughout the nation to connect thousands of older adults. We will demonstrate a variety of next generation applications on touch screen computers that will allow the "greatest generation" to integrate technology into their lives in a way that will extend their quality of life in immeasurable ways, and with a minimal amount of frustration. Our research partner, The Myers Research Institute, will be on hand to provide outcome-based data that demonstrate the benefits of this type of technology.
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MedicAlert Foundation
MedicAlert Foundation is a non-profit healthcare informatics organization offering comprehensive personal health information linked to the MedicAlert® repository enabling exchange of critical medical information between patients and providers in the time of need.
The MedicAlert® E-HealthKEY enables immediate access to emergency information, as well as securely stored personal health information. This service will also provide critical data synchronization with the secure MedicAlert® repository combined with 24/7 support from the MedicAlert® Emergency Response Center.
The MedicAlert® Health Enhancement System helps patients (and their caregivers) keep track of their health and can significantly contribute to their well-being. Using voice and text prompts, the Health Enhancement System guides patients through a simple three minute procedure to collect information such as weight, blood pressure and answers to disease specific questions. After each session, this information is automatically and securely transmitted to MedicAlert and becomes part of the patient's personal electronic health record stored at the MedicAlert® secure repository.his information can be made available to the patient, their physician and any designated family members.
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Medtronic
In an industry where success is measured in heartbeats, access to knowledge is essential. Medtronic is the global leader in medical technology, alleviating pain, restoring health, and extending life for millions of people around the world. With deep roots in the treatment of heart disease, Medtronic now provides a wide range of products and therapies for chronic diseases including diabetes, neurological disorders, vascular illnesses and obesity.
Medtronic products link the levels of cardiac care from patients to medical professionals who need information to make appropriate and timely treatment decisions. When seconds count, medical professionals need to turn raw data into critical decisions that will save lives and improve patient care-fast. From the home or workplace, to the ambulance and the emergency room, on to the hospital and back home again, Medtronic is creating an interconnected platform of product solutions based on the seamless integration of vital patient information.
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Meridian Health
Medical and technological advances have transformed the state of healthcare, allowing seniors to age in the place they feel most comfortable-their own home. Meridian has given our communities unprecedented access to the evolving in-home health and wellness technologies at the earliest stages of development. Our vision is to provide seniors and their caregivers with state-of-the-art tools that will empower them to successfully manage their health with peace of mind.
- A key concern of families today is their parent's safety in their home. Daily living activities provide an important clue. Meridian will demonstrate how motion sensors can monitor activities and alert families to unsafe situations or the need for more in-home care and support.
- Meridian will demonstrate a unique consumer based device can use existing in-home technology to monitor blood sugars, blood pressure, peak flow volumes, weight and integrate that information with activities of daily living to create more complete health records.
- Medication compliance and safety is one of the most important issues among seniors and caregivers. Meridian has aggressively pursued technological aids that will help seniors take their medicines correctly, allow for families to be alerted to non-compliance in an effort to preserve health and independence.
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Oregon Health and Science University
The development of technology for unobtrusive monitoring in support of care for elders is increasingly seen as one way to confront the challenge of providing economically feasible proactive care while maximizing elders' quality of life. The anticipated sensor and ubiquitous computing systems will generate vast amounts of data that will be used to aid in diagnosis, coaching, assistance and remediation, all within a home environment. OHSU has been addressing major challenges to developing such systems, including gathering the data, inferring the state of the elder, and using the results for assessment, assistance and remediation. Key to the success of these systems, which require processing of enormous amounts of data, will be effective integration of the resultant information into the care-giving workflow to prevent overloading the caregivers with unnecessary information and false alarms. OHSU's exhibit, in collaboration with a number of industrial partners, will illustrate synchronized and integrated examples of wireless monitoring, assessment, reminding, coaching and remediation based on artificial intelligence techniques. Assessment of location using contact sensors and HomeFree systems will be integrated with a wireless cane equipped with sensors and actuators. Context-aware prompting will be demonstrated using a medication tracking device developed in partnership with Intel. Computer-based cognitive assessment and remediation developed with Spry Learning Co will be demonstrated using an example of self-motivating applications.
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Philips Medical Systems
Royal Philips Electronics is one of the world's biggest electronics companies. As a healthcare, lifestyle and technology company, with 161,000 employees in more than 60 countries, Philips has market leadership positions in healthcare, consumer electronics, lighting and semiconductors. Philips' mission is to improve the quality of people's lives through timely introduction of meaningful technological innovations. As a global leader in diagnostic imaging, patient monitoring and automated external defibrillators, Philips is developing consumer-centric technologies that will enable people to age at home while leading independent, connected lives.
At the White House Conference on Aging, Philips will exhibit several solutions that help seniors manage their health and well being in the comfort of their own homes. For release in early 2006, Philips Motiva is a broadband-based remote patient management platform that delivers personalized healthcare information through the television, intended to motivate behavior change in patients with chronic conditions such as heart failure and diabetes.
HeartStart Home Defibrillators are safe and easy to use, allowing people to respond quickly to help victims of sudden cardiac arrest - one of the leading causes of death in the U.S. Philips SunCare solutions are designed to make people feel better through innovative lighting: treatment for muscle pain and stiff joints using InfraCare infrared therapy, and enhanced energy levels on rainy days from the simulated sunlight of the EnergyLight. (SunCare products not available in the U.S.)
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pullUin software
pullUin software's goal is to design, implement and test an appropriate cognitive model that results in an autonomous, quasi-intelligent elder character based on predetermined, relevant key criteria (such as Quality of Life, or a selected disease state); test the customized virtual elder character; and to research, and identify multiple key criteria for a fully developed cognitive model for use in the simulation-based program.
Funded by the United States Department of Agriculture and the Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society, New Dawn Estates will be available online 24/7 providing access to even remote locations and rural communities. Anticipated release date for the first version is May 2006.
Established in 2000 as the software division of South Dakota Health Technology Innovations Inc., pullUin software of Vermillion, South Dakota designs and develops computer and Web-based programs for use in the health care industry and educational settings.
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Sears Methodist Retirement System
Senior Safe@Home is a member of Sears Methodist Retirement System. Senior Safe@Home offers innovations that provide imaginative and feasible solutions for our aging population. These new technologies make it easier and safer for older adults to live at home or in a facility and receive coordinated care thereby increasing quality healthcare outcomes. Senior Safe@Home unites three dynamics: comprehensive client assessment; coordinated use of multiple technologies to meet specific medical needs, medically trained staff and communications center. Technologies will be demonstrated onsite.
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Automated Medication Dispenser - organizes, reminds, dispenses, tracks medication delivered; web-enabled for activity reports and notifies for assistance when a dose is missed.
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Telehealth Patient Unit - monitors vital signs, oxygen saturation, weight, heart and lung sounds, and blood glucose. Audio/Video monitoring enhances optimal disease management.
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Tele-wound Care Technology - clinician uses a digital camera and touch screen laptop to take wound images in the home, and transmit the images over a phone or wireless connection to a wound care nurse or physician to address the wound treatment plan.
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Telehealth Command Center - caregivers monitor their loved ones under the Senior Safe@Home program. Families can monitor on a daily basis for health biometrics changes, medication compliance, passive monitoring, and total care management reports.
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Fall Detector - explores passive monitoring with an integrated care management platform.
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Tyco/ADT
ADT Security Services, Inc. strives for leadership in providing health monitoring products and services for medication compliance and vital signs, while encouraging a wellness-oriented lifestyle. Our goals are to reduce health care industry costs, while promoting patient independence, privacy, improved quality of life and caregiver peace of mind. ADT helps our customers stay active and enjoy the freedoms of living in their own homes. Our health monitoring and alert solutions are simple, affordable and unobtrusive. Research and development innovations have yielded promise in voice, video, wireless, GPS, and other advanced technologies. From ADT's Customer Monitoring Centers, installation trucks and advanced monitoring, notification and response systems, ADT is Always There ®. For over 130 years, ADT Security Services, Inc. has provided peace of mind to America - in homes, businesses, government, and transportation. The most highly regarded name in security, continues as a nationwide provider for electronic advancements in monitored health care products and services. ADT is proud to be a member of the Tyco International Fire & Security Division, a vital part of your world.
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University of Colorado
Challenges in communication impact the elderly in many significant ways. This exhibit will focus on two technology-based approaches to addressing these problems.
Nearly 90% of the 6 million + individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) worldwide have a speech or voice disorder. LSVT(LOUD) is an NIH-funded scientific efficacy based voice treatment for PD with documented changes in speech, swallowing, facial expression and brain function (PET), with recent applications to aging voice and stroke.
Speech clinicians in 26 countries deliver LSVT, however patients are often challenged in their ability to receive treatment due to accessibility issues. Technology advances, such as eLOUD (webcam) and LSVTC (software), offer the opportunity for elderly patients to access efficacious speech treatment in their home or neighborhood Senior Center.
The Digital Mailbox (Caring Family, LLC) represents a new and innovative service that enables assisted living and other care professionals to encourage active dialogue between elders and their families every day, regardless of location. Preliminary and ongoing studies suggest it delivers compelling therapeutic benefits, including enhanced physical and mental health. The technology will include the Digital Mailbox itself as well as a web-enabled laptop computer.
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University of Rochester, Center for Future Health
The Center for Future Health at the University of Rochester is committed to developing new solutions that promote continuous personal health knowledge for better health decisions and health care management. Through these solutions, technology can be used to monitor personal health and provide feedback in the home.
Chester, your personal health assistant is a conversational interface that allows you to talk with your personal health system and help you manage conditions, medications, activities, and decisions without the need for a keyboard or lots of buttons. Chester adapts to your needs and your queries, requires no training, and is intuitive about your questions. Our demo uses the scenario of managing multiple medications.
Motion detection as a new vital sign. In their early stages, many diseases such as stroke, dementia, and Parkinson's, show up as subtle changes in movement. Speed, fluency, and quality of motion may be affected. Understanding your normal pattern and capturing changes early provide a window into your health and the health of your family members before the changes are visible or harmful.
We are looking at motion analysis as a continuum from hand tremors in short time periods, to gait analysis, to movement in homes over longer periods. This new vital sign will allow passive, non-invasive assessment in the course of your daily activities.
Our animated model will show you the difference in movement patterns of a healthy person and a person with early dementia. Learn how this data is continuously captured and transformed into information to assess signs of dementia. We will also demonstrate our work with a game using a mouse to track hand motion for people with neuromuscular problems.
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University of Virginia
University of Virginia's Medical Automation Research Center is actively developing technologies to enhance the quality of life and care of elder individuals. Among these is a passive vital-signs system that measures and reports pulse, breathing and restlessness while a person is simply laying in bed. The system alerts caregivers if the individual's vital signs drop below or exceed pre-set thresholds or if there is an episode of sleep apnea. The technology can be embedded in, or easily retrofitted to, a bed or chair.
In field testing, care providers reported this system reduced employee workloads, lowered costs and helped them anticipate and detect problems among participating residents. Caregivers were able to detect urinary tract infections early based on a resident's increased restlessness in bed coupled with frequent nightly bathroom visits. Caregivers were able to use the information preventatively by encouraging increased fluid intake at the earliest of such signs.
Also in active development are technologies to reduce falls among the elderly. A highly sensitive passive gait monitor automatically converts step-induced floor vibrations into basic gait characteristics in order to measure a person's step count, average walking velocity, step length, and stride length-even on concrete floor. A standard walker augmented with force sensors on the handles and a laptop computer can obtain basic walker-assisted gait characteristics passively as the user pushes and leans on the walker during normal use. Both of these technologies can be used to remotely track an older adult's rehabilitation, determine if prescribed interventions are effective and further predict the potential risks of falls. The fall detection function of the gait monitor also could enhance existing pendant or wristwatch-based personal emergency response systems because it is automatic and does not require the user to push a button for activation.
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Vigil Health Solutions
Vigil Health Solutions Inc. develops monitoring technologies for long-term care facilities, particularly those catering to the growing dementia population. The Vigil® Wireless Dementia System builds on two earlier commercialized developments, the Vigil Dementia System and the Vigil Wireless Call System (Patent Pending). The technology summons assistance for residents suffering from Alzheimer's or dementia when they do not have the cognitive ability to do so for themselves. The use of the latest frequency hopping spread spectrum RF technology facilitated the development and use of wireless sensors, lowering the cost and allowing greater flexibility.
The system's intelligent software and proprietary wireless motion detectors and sensors continually monitor resident rooms to detect unexpected behavior, for example: extended time out of bed or in the restroom, leaving the room, even incontinence. Based on the data collected, the system identifies patterns of behavior for individuals. When residents depart from their normal behavior, a caregiver is automatically alerted via silent pager or wireless phones. The system is individual-specific and notifies by exception, improving the individual's ability to maintain their privacy and independence. This feature also improves the quality of care and staffing efficiencies by directing care where and when it's needed.
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Viterion TeleHealthcare LLC
Viterion TeleHealthcare, a Bayer-Panasonic company, offers versatile solutions for remote patient monitoring. Viterion TeleHealthcare is committed to investing in and developing the technology, products and support that will make a vital difference in the quality of service healthcare providers can give, and to improve the quality of life for individuals with chronic disease.
Viterion TeleHealthcare offers a variety of solutions for patient monitoring, from wellness monitoring, to chronic disease management, to post-acute care home care. Viterion TeleHealthcare monitors use highly reliable store-and-forward technology. Vital sign measurements, customizable disease specific questions, and advice messaging provides the ability to monitor and assess individual's disease knowledge and status. Videophone technology connects patient and provider for real-time visits.
Easy and convenient network access for providers is provided via the Internet. The Viterion ENET network offers providers a single, integrated interface for all Viterion monitors. The ability to customize and personalize vitals, questions, patient alerts, and advice messages results in improved clinical outcomes. Stringent security measures ensure the safety of all patient information. HL-7 connectivity with provider's POC software results in a single patient record.
Viterion TeleHealthcare has a team of TeleHealthcare Coordination Specialists that participates with customers to share best practices, and provides support in the setup, training, integration and expansion of the telehealth program.
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About CAST
The Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST) is a major new initiative
bringing together researchers from universities, technology companies, facility
administrators and government representatives.
The Center focuses on the application of technology and particularly the
policy issues that impact how technology will be used successfully and
priced effectively to provide aging services. CAST will drive technology solutions and play
a critical role in bringing together researchers and providers.
A Message From Our Chairman
Thanks to the many miracles of modern healthcare, Americans are living longer than ever before. But as our senior population doubles over the next two decades, we face a daunting mission: to increase the quality of care for a record number of seniors, while somehow reducing the nation's health-care bill before the system implodes. The current health care and long-term care systems cannot scale to meet the needs of this coming age wave.
If we are to deliver quality care to today's and tomorrow's seniors, we need a wellness revolution. That is, we need to apply American innovation to wellness technologies that enable prevention, early detection, increased compliance and new modes of remote caregiving and family support. But the revolution must begin today. We only have a few years to prepare for the first wave of Baby Boomers who will reach age 65 in 2011. It is imperative that our nation be proactive in putting forth a plan to prepare us for this age wave that will impact our health-care system, our economy and even our national security.
CAST was created to put the age wave challenge-and the opportunity for new technologies to help with this challenge-on the national agenda. We are working to catalyze crucial conversations and partnerships among American businesses, government agencies, aging services providers and university researchers.
- Eric Dishman
CAST Chairman
Intel Fellow, Digital Health Group
Director, Product Research and Innovation, Intel Corporation
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