One of the less featured uses of medical alert pendants–because it has a fear factor–is for personal security. This report from Marion, Ohio describes how a 93 year old woman, using her PERS pendant, and an alert dispatcher signaled police to an assault and home burglary. The assault was on her (she managed to press the pendant and announce an accident before being tied up), the dispatcher stayed on the line, quickly notified the police and could hear with excellent sound quality the two armed (with a BB gun) teens threatening to kill her and steal her car. Kudos to this gutsy lady (reportedly uninjured) and the savvy VRI dispatcher! Medical alert helps Marion police catch intruders
[The only PERS company Editor Donna is aware of, which has promoted PERS for personal security for some time to a younger older adult group and even to younger women living alone, is Life Alert. Could this, with a cool design and at the right price point, be a wholly new market?]
On the other side of the coin, our story of three months ago [Medical alert summoned police–with tragic consequences], where an agitated older US Marine veteran attacked police summoned by his PERS, has resolved with a Westchester County, NY grand jury saying the police were justified in tasering and killing Mr. Chamberlain. The audio recording taken by the monitoring company was a large part of the (perhaps equivocal) evidence.NY Daily News.
Hi Donna,
Great find.
I agree that there are massive opportunities to add value (eg. using caller ID to link EHR’s with 911 emergency medical calls) but I disagree that there is a wholly new market available for PERS.
One of the big advantages of a device to which technology is converging is that there are billions of mobiles in use and PERS is just one of the reasons for their adoption. It’s obviously not the only reason but neither is the alarm clock, email, camera, calendar, diary, etc.