It’s no secret that nursing homes and other senior care facilities have been hit harder than anyone else by COVID-19. Seniors are especially susceptible to health problems when it comes to this virus and as a result of this, the elderly have comprised a good portion of the people who have succumbed to the disease. Nursing homes have seen more than their fair share of tragedy because of this.
One way that nursing homes and others are trying to help seniors is by using wearable technology to help with COVID-19 contact tracing. Contact tracing involves looking back at where a person has been and who they have been around to ensure that the individual has not come in contact with anyone who has been infected with the novel coronavirus. Through smartwatches, bluetooth devices, and other tech items, the staff of nursing homes are finding that they are better equipped to track coronavirus infections and make sure that those who have come in contact with it–infected or not–are not spreading the illness within nursing homes.
Even with the best of tracking methods, this is a complicated thing. By putting all of this data into a program, and then using wearable tech to send alerts and updates so that staff are informed of any danger in real-time, keeping people safe from the disease has become a lot easier. Hopefully, this is a trend that can continue to improve and be used on a wider basis. Hopefully, it helps save lives and keeps the people that we love as safe as they can be.
We often don’t think about the link between technology and senior care. Instead, we tend to focus on things like the latest iPhone, smartwatches, and the internet of things. Sometimes, we think about things like renewable energy and how technology can help improve the environment. Unless you’re actively involved in the world of senior care, it’s not something that’s at the forefront of your mind. However, for those of us that are involved with seniors on a daily basis, the topic of technology is one that comes up consistently.
Technology does a lot of good things for us, and it certainly has helped make senior care a lot easier to find and administer. With all of the good that it has done and will continue to do though, technology can’t do everything. Human contact does a lot that technology will never be able to do. A mixture of both is needed to keep the people in our lives as safe as possible.
There are more than one million seniors living in nursing homes across the United States. Although most states have instituted extreme measures during this pandemic to help keep residents of these homes safe, there is always more that can be done. Hopefully, using technology to monitor individuals will be one more safeguard to keep the people in our lives safe. Yes, there are a lot of privacy concerns that contact tracing provokes, but this is a topic for another discussion. At this point, our number one concern is helping to keep the people that we care about as safe as possible, all while giving them the love and attention that they deserve.
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