If you are in charge of an elderly loved one or family member, you may find yourself in a difficult and unfamiliar situation. Making sure that your loved one is getting the care they need in their home and is safe if and when they are left on their own can leave you feeling simultaneously drained and as if you are not doing enough. Get to know more about geriatric care and the ways in which the use of technology can improve your elderly loved one's care. Then, you can be sure that you, your loved one, and their professional home health care providers all work together to incorporate these technologies into their care.
Digital Records and Logs
One of the ways that your loved one's professional care providers can improve the care of your loved one is to keep all daily records and logs digitally rather than on paper. Using cloud-based technology through a secure portal, your loved one's home health nurses and other providers would be able to more easily track trends in your loved one's eating, drinking, and bathroom habits as well as other behaviors and general mood and condition.
This can be very helpful if your loved one falls ill or begins to develop a form of dementia. Additionally, digital records can also be accessed by yourself and other guardians for your loved one as well as their general practitioner and other physicians more easily. This will help to foster better communication between family, home care providers, and other physicians and provide your loved one with better overall care.
Personal Response Systems and Health Monitoring and Treatment Systems
Another way that technology can be well-incorporated into your loved one's geriatric care is through personal responses systems and through systems that monitor their health and treat specific conditions. Personal response systems are items like necklaces or bracelets that your loved one can wear that will keep track of any time they fall, slip, or have other incidents that could be dangerous. The system will send an alert to the company the device came from as well as emergency medical services to send help to your loved one as quickly as possible.
Health monitoring devices, like heart monitors, EKG readers, and the like can also incorporate smart, digital technology to send a continuous feed to health care providers. This allows doctors and nurses to know when there is a potential medical emergency and act quickly. And even treatment systems like insulin pumps and pace makers can be linked to a company for live monitoring and adjustment.
Now that you know more about how technology can help with your loved one's geriatric care, you can better understand how to incorporate it into the routine you have with your loved one and their other care providers.
For more information and options, talk with some services that offer geriatric care, like Elderlife Experts.
Share8 April 2016
When I started looking for a care center for my mother, I decided that I needed to learn a little more about nursing home amenities. I wanted her to be in a safe, happy, fun place, but I didn't know what to look for. To make my search easier, I picked up a piece of paper and a pen and started calling different facilities. I made a list of all of the exciting, new features that places were offering, and then I showed the list to my mom. I let her decide where to stay and what she wanted to do. This blog is all about recognizing great nursing home amenities, so that you can keep the people that you love happy and content.