4HomeMedia (4HM), a Sunnyvale, CA remote monitoring firm, has just introduced at the CES 2008 its new fee-based monthly service called Home HealthPoint. The company wants its telemetry services to be used by seniors and others requiring 24 hour monitoring, to allow folks to achieve a significant degree of independent living (“IL,” as the company calls it). Erick Schonfeld from Techcrunch saw the technology in action, and was quite impressed with its performance.
From the company’s description of Home HealthPoint:
By creating a passive monitoring network around a senior in their normal home setting, both family members and professional care-givers can log into a personalized Web page and get historical trend data, real-time status updates, and proactive alerts about the health and well-being for that monitored elder. The Portal Server delivers three unique and customized user-experiences based on the same data generated within the home — for the senior in their house, for the family member caregiver remotely, and for a medical or nursing facility remotely…
The recommended starter kit for the IL service includes the Home HealthPoint, three motion detectors, and an emergency pendant. The motion detectors are strategically placed around the home during the professional installation in the bedroom, at the entrance to the primary bathroom, and in the main trafficked area such as a foyer or living room. Additional sensor devices such as additional motion detectors, access contacts on the refrigerator or doors, a smart pillbox, or IP cameras can be utilized to supplement the monitoring data sets being produced within the home. Safety, comfort, and energy saving devices for the senior can be added such as a networked thermostat, safety lighting in or outside the home, appliance and lighting control accessories, gas leak detectors, air quality & fire detectors, or an IP-based intercom system. 4HM, a member of the Continua Alliance, is a strong advocate of open standards in medical devices and its ControlPoint™ in-home software is able to support a wide variety of medical diagnostic devices to further supplement the health and well-being information for the senior, including a digital weight scale, a blood-pressure cuff, a glucose meter, or a pulse oximeter, depending on the needs of that particular monitored senior. Lastly, to battle psychological duress and the frequent isolation of a senior living alone- a common difficulty among the elder population that has proven negative health repercussions–4HM has integrated into the solution set friends-and-family photo sharing, interactive health surveys, and health and wellness video education.
4HomeMedia (4HM) Launches Broadband Home Health Service …