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By Greg Bartlett

For family and caretakers, elderly individuals can create a lot of worry since they may wander off and become injured or killed. Individuals with Alzheimer’s, for instance, frequently wander off and become lost. Some, attracted to water, end up drowning while others can even freeze to death on cold nights if they can’t remember the way home.

GPS Tracking & Elderly

You naturally want to be sure that your elderly relative is safe. Sure, you can do that by practically locking the relative up and making sure he or she is always personally supervised, but that’s not much fun for the patient or the family and caretakers. You may not want to send your elderly grandmother to a nursing home or some facility that can care for her, but you aren’t able to be home and constantly supervise her. So what can you do?

GPS technology has recently been adapted to be used for tracking people, including children and elderly individuals who tend to wander and get lost. A GPS tracking device is typically small and can easily be attached to an individual – or they can even be made to go in clothing or shoes so that your grandmother won’t forget to put hers on in the morning.

Once you are monitoring someone with a GPS tracking device, you’ll be able to find out exactly where the individual is at any time. GPS is accurate to within a few feet, so if your grandmother wanders through your neighborhood, you can find out exactly where she is almost instantly. Furthermore, a GPS tracking device can be set up with geofences, or boundaries, so that if your grandmother crosses those invisible boundaries you’ll be alerted at once. If your geofence just includes your house and yard, for instance, and your grandmother manages to slip out the back gate, you’ll receive a text message, phone call, or email informing you that the geofence had been crossed. Of course the geofence won’t actually stop your grandmother, but it will alert you if she leaves the safe boundaries of your house and yard. Some GPS units can even set up particular paths and secondary areas, such as another relative’s house, which are still included in the ‘safe’ zones.

Worrying about your elderly relative is natural, considering how much danger he or she can get in if lost. But with a GPS tracking device, you’ll be able to monitor your relative and help ensure his or her safety.