Hello fellow caregivers! This is a guest post about a FREE safety app that caregivers can use for senior friends or family members who live alone. I think it sounds great and I wish I had been able to access it when my Mom lived alone and refused to use any device for fall alerts. She was the stubborn parent described below! Read on and feel free to download and try out the app if you are caring for someone who lives alone. Warm wishes, Donna
This post is not about fall prevention, even though it’s Falls Prevention Awareness Week in the US.
It is about dealing with what happens when prevention fails, and a fall does occur – and how adding a free app can make life safer for seniors living alone and the family caregivers worrying about them.
Fall prevention is a well known, important topic, and we should of course continue to train and educate on it. With that, it is important to remember that prevention is not enough. Falls still happen, and we must prepare for when they do.
Over 14 million US adults aged 65+ report falling each year, according to the CDC. In Canada, it’s more than 1.5 million.
1 in 5 falls become a “Long Lie” (Sheffield/NIHR), getting stranded on the floor for an hour or more.
We’ve all heard of people getting injured (and worse) from lying on the floor for many hours or even days. In those cases, it is often the “long lie” that does most of the damage, not the initial fall.
It is even more important for seniors living alone. About 1 in 4 adults aged 65+ live alone in the US and in Canada (according to AARP and ACL) – 14 million in the US alone. When you get stranded with nobody near you, the question becomes – how quickly will someone notice, and how quickly can help arrive?
The research here is clear: time saves lives. In a study on older people found helpless at home (Gurley et al., NEJM), the death rate for long lies of 72+ hours was 67%, compared to 12% for under 1 hour. The long lie increases the death rate 5x! Similar stats apply to being able to return to normal function after a fall.
So how will someone know?
Traditionally, solutions for this issue revolve around wearable devices (SOS bracelets / pendants), or dedicated sensors / cameras – with the costs, complexity, and privacy issues involved.
The most invasive options (sensors / cameras) typically apply to people who are already with limited function and under close observation, and tend not to be used broadly.
The more common options are SOS buttons, bracelets and pendants. This is a multi-billion market, with millions of devices sold. So why do we still have so many long lie injuries?
Wearables have three main limitations:
1) Cost: these devices are not cheap. They involve a setup cost, and an ongoing subscription. This immediately limits the number of people who get them. Some families may not be able to afford them, some may think twice before getting one.
2) Technology: ultimately, the button has to be pressed, or a fall has to be detected. If the wearer is unconscious, no alert goes out. If the button is on the bedside table when a fall occurs, no alert goes out. If the emergency is not a fall (e.g. never woke up), no alert goes out.
3) Refusal: these dedicated wearables are often refused by their intended users, explicitly (“I am not THAT old, I don’t need that”) or quietly (after a few months, the button gets left on the bedside table). When not worn, wearables cannot function.
Today, as more and more 65+ folks use smartphones (and that figure grows fast every year), there is a new approach.
A safety layer that is free, nothing to wear (or to forget to wear), and works even in non-fall cases - and no privacy invasion.
It’s called CareTrigger.
CareTrigger is a free phone app. There is no dedicated device and nothing to wear – just the phone they already use.
You also don’t need to do anything or press any buttons. Once installed, CareTrigger automatically learns when the user typically uses the phone, and if they suddenly go inactive for unusually long – family gets an alert. Note that “unusually” is personal: different people use their phones differently – and CareTrigger adapts to that to minimize false alerts. Of course, alerts are not immediately and take several hours, by design – but that is much better than no alert.
Plus, there is also the peace of mind of opening the app to see that Mom is active this morning.
This is a free safety layer that anyone can get.
It covers important situations that expensive wearables cannot:
- Not wearing the device during a fall? Wearables would not issue an alert. CareTrigger will.
- Wearing the device, but unable to press the button? Same story.
- Non-fall incapacitation: “never woke up”, collapsing in a chair, crumbling incapacitation – these wouldn’t cause wearables to alert, but CareTrigger will get triggered.
Does this replace wearables? No. It acts as another safety layer.
When wearables are acceptable, use them AND CareTrigger both. CareTrigger is a fallback for when the wearable fails (and it’s free so why not?)
And when wearables are refused, or too expensive – at least get CareTrigger. A free safety layer is much better than nothing.
Most of us either care for someone living alone, or know someone who does.
Download CareTrigger at caretrigger.io , on App Store or Google Play, anywhere in the world – or share this with someone who needs it.
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