Just5 Introduces a Mobile Phone Designed Just4 Seniors
The Just5 Phone in One of Five Available Colors
With all the attention given to iPhones and Evo and 4G networks, it’s easy to forget that not all mobile phone users need all those features and apps and elegance. Many seniors simply want a pared down phone that’s easy to use and doesn’t demand much in the way of eyesight or motor skills.
A company called Just5 has introduced a phone for seniors that’s really rather well designed for its intended market. The phone has a large, bright numeric display to address weakening eyesight. Over-sized keys for ease of dialing. Extra loud volume to accommodate declining hearing. And then they added an SOS button, clearly labeled and placed on the back side of the phone. It adds to the cellphone many of the functions of a Personal Emergency Response System (PERS); those emergency pendants that summon help in the event of a fall or health emergency. When the phone’s SOS button is pressed, the Just5 phone starts texting and dialing 5 pre-programmed numbers until one is answered. It also switches the phone to speakerphone/loudspeaker mode so that the user can be heard even if he’s dropped the phone or cannot hold it to his face. And finally it sounds an alarm to summon help from passersby within ear shot.
The one feature I was hoping to find on the phone is a foolproof way of retrieving voicemail. I never leave voicemails on my elderly mother’s cellphone because I’m pretty certain she has no idea how to retrieve them. It looks like Just5 has a one-touch voicemail retrieval solution for T-Mobile subscribers. For AT&T subscribers it’s a bit more complex. And, since the Just5 website makes no mention of other carriers, I assume that the phone isn’t available for Verizon or Sprint network customers.
Oh, and the phone also functions as an FM radio and as a flashlight!
The phone has won several design awards, for good reason. Learn more about the Just5 phone its website here. Or watch this promotional video on YouTube.
Need More Reason for Your New Year Resolution?
An article published today in the Wall Street Journal reviews the latest studies on the benefits of exercise and concludes that inactivity poses as great a health risk as smoking. Regular, vigorous activity, on the other hand, offers benefits like:
- Lowering stroke risk by 27%.
- Reduces the incidence of diabetes by 50%.
- Reduces the incidence of high blood pressure by 40%.
- Can reduce the mortality and risk of recurrent breast cancer by 50%.
- Can lower the risk of colon cancer by 60%.
- Can reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by 60%.
- And finally, can decrease depression just as effectively as prozac or behavioral therapy.
So, get out there and walk briskly 30-45 minutes each day. Or, first read the entire WSJ article here.
Understanding Medical Laboratory Tests
For anyone who’s been prescribed a medical laboratory test, you know that the experience can be rather stressful and confusing, leading to a variety of questions like “What does my doctor suspect?” and “What is a normal or non-normal result?” A new website (Full disclosure: the editor of this site was a co-creator of it) attempts to take the mystery and stress out of the most common 300 medical laboratory tests by explaining each of them in clear, patient-friendly terms. Please see the site at www.LabTestHelp.com.
Maybe simply using the internet improves the aging brain’s function.
We recently reviewed a variety of computer-based cognitive exercises that claim to boost brain fitness in the elderly. Research to be presented next week by Dr. Gary Small, a psychiatry professor at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA suggests that simply using the internet regularly for search improves conginitive function in the aging.
In a study of 55 to 78 year-olds, Dr. Small showed that brain activity increased – as measured with MRI scans – for subjects who had recently started using the internet one hour per day for search exploration.
Brain Fitness
I spent time recently with Lisa Schoonerman, the co-founder and CEO of VibrantBrains. VibrantBrains is a San Francisco Bay-area company that sells and administers cognitive exercises or “brain fitness” activities for the aging from two retail locations. Lisa and her business partner each have personal stakes in the field of brain plasticity and improvement. Lisa’s mom was diagnosed with frontotemporal dementia (see) and consequently Lisa became interested in how she might be able to avoid the condition herself. Lisa’s business partner and co-founder suffered a traumatic brain injury in a car accident and underwent extensive neurological rehabilitation and retraining.
I asked Lisa to explain to me the assortment and usefulness of the various computer-based cognition products available today, since the market is relatively new but expanding swiftly. She and I sat down in one of her stores, snacked on a bowl of walnuts (excellent brain food) and Lisa obligingly answered my questions. Here’s what I discovered:
A handful of companies around the world have developed computer or device-based brain fitness products. Posit Science is one such company, with an auditory processing exercise that it calls Brain Fitness, and a separate visual processing product that it calls Insight, which has also been developed into a driving acuity product called DriveSharp. Each of these products sells as a shrink wrapped, take-it-home, product. Brain Fitness and Insight cost $395.00 and Insight – with its more limited benefit – costs $129.00.
Cognifit delivers its cognitive improvement product over the internet on a subscription or purchase basis. Unlike the Posit products that focus separately on auditory and visual acuity, Cognifit’s products claim to work on fourteen mental abilities simultaneously. Their Cognifit Personal Coach is an online product that incorporates an online mental assessment at the outset of the program and costs $19.95/month or $179.00/year. Mindfit is the boxed CD-based equivalent product that apparently offers about the the same function as Cognifit Personal Coach, but costs $149.00 for 24 CD-based training cycles. Finally, Cognifit, like Posit, offers a senior driving product called Cognifit Senior Driving that hones 10 driving-related cognitive skills and sell for $19.95/month online or $179.00/year.
A Swedish-based company called Cogmed has a software-based product that develops what they call “working memory” with varieties of the product targeting juveniles, adults and seniors. The argument for developing one’s “working memory capacity” (Learn about it here) seems well researched, and has relevance both to ADHD and to age-related memory loss associated. Cogmed’s products are probably the most scientifically tested and proven, although all the products mentioned here have some level of scientific or clinical substantiation to back them. Cogmed, unfortunately, goes to market not as a CD or an online exercise, but rather as a clinical service delivered by a small cadre of licensed professionals at what appears to be (see example) a rather high price.
Lumos Labs has an entirely web-based product at www.Lumosity.com that assesses users’ mental acuity in nine separate areas like Short-term memory, Spatial Reasoning, Working Memory, etc. and then drills and hones those skills via several dozen exercises, some of which are pretty artful and entertaining. Of all the products I’ve described, only Lumosity permits free trial, which I readily took advantage of. Once the free trial period is over, Lumosity costs $9.95/month or less, depending upon the enrollment duration you select.
Most of these products, and more, can be purchased or experienced at Vibrant Brain’s two locations in San Francisco or Foster City, CA. Thanks to Lisa Schoonerman for her time in introducing me to this fascinating array of cognitive excercise products for the aging, and the not-so-aging.
The FDA reported on September 22 that there have been six strangulation accidents reported in the US and Canada in the years 1998-2009 associated with the Philips Lifeline personal emergency response pendant. At least three of the six cases resulted in deaths.
Phillips presently has 750,000 users of the device, which is typically worn on a cord around the neck and is used to summon help in the event of an emergency.
Six adverse events over eleven years in a user population of 750,000 means that these sorts of accidents are extremely rare occurrences. But precaution should be taken in placing these devices around the necks of the elderly, especially if they are mobility impaired or surrounded by equipment upon which the neck cord might snag.
GlowCaps promote medication compliance.
This is one of the more elegant technologies I’ve seen to promote compliance with prescriptions. Hopefully it will soon be expanded to promote compliance with other high-stakes medical behaviors like glucose monitoring.
A $99.00 “GlowCap“ replaces the customary pill bottle cap. The cap is armed with an electronic transmitter that knows when the bottle has been opened. It transmits a reminder to a flashing light when it’s time to take a medication. If the patient fails to see or react to the flashing light reminder, the transmitter next dials the patients telephone. In parallel, it creates an e-mailed compliance report that can be sent to family members or medical professionals summarizing compliance.
This video from the company’s website demonstrates it all quite nicely.
Vitality GlowCaps from Vitality on Vimeo.
Update:
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The company contacted AgingInGear to point out that their Glowcap is available free of charge under certain conditions, which are detailed here.
Tapestry Medical Introduces At-home PT (prothrombin) testing.
Coumadin (or warfarin) therapy is commonly prescribed to people with valve abnormalities, valve replacements, deep-vein thrombosis, atrial fibrillation, and others conditions. The purpose of the therapy is to prevent blood clots, and Coumadin does so by chemically interfering with the normal blood clotting process. Patients on Coumadin therapy have to be monitored closely for their prothrombin time or “PT” levels, which is a measure of clotting ability. Levels have to be carefully monitored and maintained in order to assure that clotting ability isn’t diminished to a dangerous degree. Maintaining clotting ability within target range is complicated by the fact that various foodstuffs, vitamins and dietary supplements also influence coagulation time.
Patients new to Coumadin therapy often have blood drawn for PT tests almost daily at first, later diminishing to weekly or bi-weekly. Tests have traditionally been performed at a doctor’s office or a medical laboratory.
Now Tapestry Medical of Livermore, California has brought to market a device that permits patients on Coumadin therapy to self-test their PT levels at home, savings trips to doctors’ offices or medical laboratories. This offers an appreciable benefit to those who no longer drive, are too feeble for regular office visits, or need especially frequent monitoring of their PT.
Using a small device similar to a blood glucose meter, users of the Tapestry Medical device draw a small blood sample, check their own blood coagulation, and then phone the results in to their doctor’s office. The Tapestry Medical device is delivers results that are accurate as those measured in a doctor’s office or a laboratory.
For more information on in-home PT testing, visit the Tapestry Medical website at www.CoagNow.com.
Hearing aids have come a long way since the bulky flesh- colored things that used to dangle behind Granddaddy’s ears. Those things squealed (although he never heard it), needed batteries all the time, and made a hearing disability as visual as it was auditory.
Among the most interesting in a line of improvements to the hearing aid is the Lyric®, which its creator takes pains to never actually call a “hearing aid.” The Lyric® is a tiny device that’s inserted deep into the ear canal by an audiologist, placing it so deeply into the ear that it’s invisible and so close to the eardrum that hearing is said to be very natural, even when talking on cellphones. Lyric is worn constantly. In fact, the user doesn’t remove it at all except in an emergency or in the event of a medical procedure like an MRI. The device is professionally removed and replaced 3-5 times per year when its battery dies and/or it gets clogged with ear wax. (Yuck). Then a replacement Lyric is inserted. Owing to its disposable nature, the device is sold on a subscription basis rather than purchased. Vanity and sound quality don’t come cheap; a one year subscription for two ears runs $3,000 – $4,000 according to published reports.
A remote control permits users to adjust the volume and put the the device into un-amplified sleep mode during rest.
Learn more and find out which audiologists near you are installing the Lyric by visiting the company’s website here.
The Kindle and Macular Degeneration
The Kindle – in case there’s anyone wondering about t the topic of this post – is the new-ish electronic reader from Amazon. I don’t have one yet, but I was intrigued to read in a recent letter from a Kindle user that it’s a near-miracle for people suffering from macular degeneration. The device’s expandable text size and bright LCD back-lighting permit readers even with rather advanced MD to keep on reading. And, it comes equipped with a text-to-voice feature for if/when a reader’s vision totally fails.
I have contacted Amazon’s public relations department to see if we can get their comments on this. It seems, though, that they’ve created a device that lets macular degeneration sufferers read longer.
