However, other tech has really prolonged things. Fall detection, maps, hearing aids, and everything else has really allowed her to live a life relatively unchanged from when she was younger.
I'm not a fan of self driving cars as the solution to this problem space.
I carried an old lady with a walker stuck in the middle of the road. It was brutal on them even with the plowing, without zero ability to move around.
If if we designed public transportation so it was convenient and usable by everyone older people would have more options in all weather.
If we had consistent (24/7), frequent, high coverage public transportation that was subsidized at the same rate as car infrastructure, everyone would use it. If it was faster than driving in traffic rich people would use it and support it as well.
We choose to build a society that only works for a tiny segment and makes all of our own lives more difficult (and eventually impossible).
I've studied city planning. I run r/UrbanForestry on Reddit where I talk at times about city scale passive solar design.
Middle Eastern desert cities were historically designed such that daytime street temps were bearable by design.
It's doable. We just aren't bothering.
- eagerly clears the snow
- provides capillary public transportation
- provides city-wide heating
- encourages the development of large buildings (even connected with each other) instead of isolated homes
What amount of home care and nursing home care is purely down to our reliance on personal motor vehicles?
I'm commenting on tech trends.
One should not be leading the elderly to believe that self driving cars are going to be dramatically enhancing their mobility any day now.
She still lives on her own, can walk unassisted, volunteers helping old people (which apparently doesn’t include herself), still has a far better memory than I do, etc.
It's really unfortunate that people accept the status quo.
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2018/may/16/welcome-cycle...
Currently, I have a reminder on my phone to give them to her and watch her take them, but it’s not sustainable long term.
Ideally the solutions is something that enables her to take the meds on her own.
Put only one dose at a time in the firesafe so if it's left open, it's empty and no one cares?
Of course every kid/situation is different and needs to be met where things are at (and not where you wish it would be), but I think it's worth trying if you have bandwidth. They may surprise you.
When you think about it, most 5 year olds have ready access to very dangerous things; they can turn on the oven, toast things (not necessarily food), they often have access to sharp knives with a minimum of effort, etc. What keeps them safe is their understanding of the risks of those things. The real problem with grandma's pills is that the risk of them is not "accessible" to a child in the way those other things are.
In the long run, I think that a family providing such support should consider adopting some of the best practices of care staff who do medication management for clients. You want a physical log sheet that is formatted like a 2D matrix with recurring doses as row labels and dates written as column labels. The rows should also be sorted and grouped chronologically, i.e. the first row is the first dose to take after waking and it is ordered through to the last dose to take before bed. You typically also want to leave blank space after each dosing period so you can potentially write in new medications when there are changes ordered during the tracking period. You also want to keep a digital copy of the form that you can easily revise and print again as the forms are filled to completion.
The responsible party measures out the doses and marks/initials the cells of the grid for the individual dose and date being administered. In a professional setting, they might mark once for preparing the doses and once again after witnessing that they were consumed. The active log sheet is kept in the same storage area as the medications, readily accessible to the ones administering them. If there are multiple people taking medications, a separate series of sheets is used for each person.
In a professional setting, this supports audit. But in any setting, it also provides a simple process to help minimize dosing mistakes. There are no more questions like, "wait, did they already take this?" after a distraction has interrupted the normal, habitual process. This written formalism can also help you manage refills. Learn to think in terms of "N days' supply" to note on the grid when a bottle is opened, predict when it will be depleted, and mark down when it should be reordered.
I think there are might be some tweaks to make it suit your purpose. But it is worth looking into how it can help senior care as a follow bot.
P.S: I did a ton of research for small farm robotics and met very interesting startup founders in the healthcare/robotics area on the way. If anyone wants to brainstorm or even simply chat about senior healthcare and robotics, please reach out. This is something that is very close to my heart and if I can help make connections even if I can’t help in any technical/material way, it would make me very glad.
I mentioned this idea to my wife and she said it will only make our five year old want them more... maybe we will make a kids version that releases gummies :).
I think we already have a timed version for pet food in the market for portion sizes.
https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/tech/from-billions-to-bankr...
We have all the technology in the world to make humanity live better. But the people who control it get to decide if it’s profitable enough.
But really, the solution is more research into anti-ageing science. Not how to maintain the ill and the aged until they die.
I encourage all young people in geriatric healthcare to wear ageing simulation suits to understand the problem first hand to come up with better solutions. It’s less than 3k and can also be rented.
Please reconsider your comment if you would like me to engage in any meaningful exchange with you.