Is it spying on Mom or Dad, or a technology that’s about to take off? Sue Shellenbarger’s Work & Family column in the Wall Street Journal looks at a raft of new technologies that offer peace of mind to seniors and children providing care who want to keep tabs. Her conclusion: privacy issues aren’t a big concern, and families like the monitoring. This business appears to be really moving, fueled by the huge number of long-distance caregivers. A 2004 Metlife study identified 34 million Americans providing care to older adults, with 15 percent of those living at a long distance. Key players include QuietCare Home Health Security Systems, which uses motion sensors to detect seniors’ motion and comings and goings, and feeds data to a network that customers can monitor via a website. We’ve also noted heavy R&D and product commitments from tech giants like Intel and Honeywell.

The WSJ piece also features an interesting companion video.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 29th, 2007 at 10:30 am and is filed under Aging, Health Care, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.