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By Greg Bartlett

One unfortunate part of life is growing old. While this usually beats the alternative, there are some maladies of old age that drastically diminish a person’s mental capacity. Alzheimer’s Dementia is one such malady that often robs people of their memories of everything and everyone they have ever known. More than one elderly patient with such an affliction has wandered away from the hospital or nursing home where he/she was receiving care and died of exposure before being found.

The advent of GPS technology has reduced the number of such deaths by a huge margin. Patients can now have a GPS tracking device fitted to a bracelet or necklace that they are unable to remove. In the event that they wander away from the facility, the device can be activated and the patient located within just a few minutes using a computer with an active internet connection. Finding these lost patients quickly is the key to saving many lives among patients suffering from Alzheimer’s. They are recovered and brought back into the facility before they have time to become hopelessly lost in the surrounding countryside.

Another group of patients that are often tracked by hospitals are young children. It is a sad testament on the state of the world today, but there are people out there now who would walk into a hospital and abduct a sick child to take somewhere for their own twisted entertainment. By having these children wear personal tracking devices, a program can be initiated that will sound an alarm in the event a child leaves the premises without the proper releases from a doctor. In addition, hospital personnel can assure themselves that the person taking the child off the premises, even with proper releases, is indeed the child’s parents.

The lives of our children and our elderly are very precious to us. Unfortunately, there are often times when neither group is completely able to care for themselves. Elderly patients who suffer from Alzheimer’s or other forms of dementia in nursing homes and hospitals, and children in hospitals who are of an age to attract predators can benefit a great deal from wearing GPS tracking devices that allow their caregivers to know where they are and provide for their security 24 hours per day. In the event a patient wanders off or is taken without proper authority, these GPS trackers can aid in locating and recovering the individual before they are injured or lost so badly that they die before they are able to be found.