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Last updated 10:08 am CT February 09, 2010.
Tracking Alzheimer's Patients
The Alzheimer's Association is adapting technology developed for
monitoring prisoners to let caregivers track where their loved ones
drive or walk - and alert them if they go beyond the virtual fences
each family can set.
The association's new Comfort Zone program uses a Web-based
mapping service that works with multiple brands of tracking
transmitters.
More than five million Americans are estimated to be living with
Alzheimer's, as many as half in the disease's early stages.
Increasingly early diagnosis means many patients still have years
of independent living ahead of them before they have to give up the
car, and eventually give up going out alone at all.
At some point, nearly 60 percent of Alzheimer's patients will begin what's called wandering, requiring more intense supervision to keep them safe.
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