Senior health care is getting a boost with medical alert monitors are critical to improving health care among the elderly while assuring caregivers that seniors are safe.
The British Medical Journal estimates that seniors using personal emergency response systems fail to push the button 80% of the time. 40% of the elderly fall each year, representing 70% of senior deaths. This can happen even in a living facility.
Senior Health Care Firm Leads the Way
According to Chris Otto of Halo Monitoring, a personal health and monitoring company, this adds $19 billion a year to U.S. health care costs. Halo is an excellent example of the fast growing wireless health care industry.
Despite seniors’ use of medical alert bracelets, necklaces and other medical alert devices, more robust systems, such as the myHalo health monitoring system, not only improves senior health care monitoring but, in the long term, may lead to earlier discovery of chronic conditions that affect senior health as people age.
Halo Monitoring and Senior Health Care
A major challenge to caregivers of seniors—frequently sons and daughters of aging parents—is staying in touch with the elderly who want to live at home rather than in a professional facility. However, caregivers with busy lives find it challenging to monitor loved ones who frequently live alone. Companies like Halo Monitoring may provide a solution.
myHalo, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in early 2009, includes a wireless chest strap, other body monitoring devices and a wireless gateway to transmit senior health information to the company’s secure servers. Text messages or emails are then sent to caregivers and emergency medical teams who can take action if a senior falls, fails to arise from bed in the morning or has an acute medical emergency.
myHalo provides automatic transmission of body temperature, pulse rate, sleep patterns, level of activity and other medical information to mobile phone users. The iPhone application provides easy access to Halo’s website that maintains a health database on each senior for viewing by sons, daughters and other caregivers.
The system helps users better manage their health needs from home, encouraging independent living for the elderly while giving peace of mind to busy sons and daughters who may live thousands of miles away from parents.
Podcast Interview with Chris Otto at Halo Monitoring
In the podcast interview with Brian Prows, Chris Otto describes how myHalo is superior to other senior health medical alert monitoring systems. Halo’s recent partnership with Microsoft’s HealthVault Service, along with an iPhone application that provides constant health information, keep caregivers aware of medical alerts requiring attention.
Chris also describes Halo Monitoring’s strong interest in senior mobility (30% of seniors fall outside their homes), expanding Halo’s medical alert information to the Blackberry and other mobile phones and adding new Halo senior health services leading to better detection of medical conditions.
Medical alert devices like myHalo also increase user compliance and medical information security when monitoring senior health. Listen as Chris Otto describes how Halo Monitoring supplies health care solutions to seniors who want to live and thrive independently.
Halo Monitoring
Halo Monitoring is a health technology company focused on improving the quality of life for aging seniors and their caregivers. Halo’s flagship product, myHalo, is an advanced personal health monitoring and alert system.
Unlike traditional PERS (personal emergency response systems)–devices that require seniors to manually press a “panic button”–myHalo automatically detects serious health problems (such as a person falling) can immediately notify designated caregivers and emergency personnel without the user taking any action. Halo’s mission is to deliver novel and innovative solutions that help seniors maximize their independence, lower healthcare costs, and to remain at home longer.
Chris A. Otto
Chris A. Otto co-founded Halo Monitoring after looking for available notification and monitoring solutions for his mother who was providing care for his grandmother.
Chris had already pioneered wireless sensor networks for ambulatory health monitoring, published a number of related articles in journals and conference proceedings and wrote his Master’s thesis on the same subject.
His work has been recognized in the field of Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) for ambulatory health monitoring. Before founding Halo, Chris worked as a senior design engineer in data and voice communications.
Chris has 2 issued patents and nine pending patents in the fields of ambulatory health monitoring, wireless networks, data communications, and motion signal processing, including human fall detection. He holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Engineering from The University of Alabama in Huntsville.
Halo Monitoring
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