Tech Gizmos for the Seniors: A compilation of Current and Upcoming

Hope you will find these products and applications useful in monitoring your elderly relatives and at the same time they help lead an active independent lifestyle.

1. iPhone: Apple’s iPhone has changed the way we live and work in many ways. For the seniors, while the ease of use is great, there are number of applications that help them which makes the difference  –  reQall, www.reqall.com a memory tool that helps in remembering and reminding things like taking medicines, diet, groceries and such, iPhone Sugar Tracker app that helps to track Diabetes with monitoring sugar/insulin levels and also get reports. Or even simple apps to keep the brain active and fit, http://iphoneapplicationlist.com/2009/05/11/brain-fit/
2. Telepresence: With Rovio from WowWee Technologies, (www.wowwee.com) , keep an eye on elderly parent with the ability to navigate about the house and communicate. An interesting add-on application that works via Rovio is Buddibot, www.buddibot.com that helps in scheduling a reminder, playing a message or even a song.
3. Elder Care Robots: Couple of companies in Japan and US like iRobot Corporation which makes the Roomba vacuum cleaner robot which is quite helpful for keeping home clean for the seniors, are beginning to design robots that could help care for seniors in the home.
4. Body Monitoring: Wireless band aids are being developed containing a sensor that measures things such as heart rate, blood pressure and amount of oxygen in the blood. The band aid can wirelessly transmit this vital signs data to a smart phone and from there to your doctor or your care givers.
5. Hearing and Visual aids: Few other interesting elder-gadgets  include Wireless hearing aids from Oticon and Amazon’s Wireless reading device Kindle 2.

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