This past week we were in Palm Springs, California for the 10-year anniversary of the Medical Alert Monitoring Association’s (MAMA) annual meeting of executive minds. MAMA is the only professional trade association representing the needs of the medical alert monitoring and personal emergency response services industry, and is directed by committed leadership that is focused on professionalism and the advancement of technology in our industry. Each year, this event brings together professionals in the alert monitoring and PERS industry from all over the United States and is a unique opportunity to exchange valuable insights and join forces towards improving the Personal Emergency Response Systems sector as a whole.
Our very own Director of Sales for Essence USA, Joshua Locke, led the “Connecting to Connected Health” discussion with a panel of experts consisting of:
- Chris Hendriksen – CEO, VRI
- Christopher Baskin – CEO, American Two-Way
- Lisa Schmitz Mazur – Partner, McDermott Will & Emery
- John Bojanowski – President, Honeywell Life Care Solutions
This panel had an open dialog on the needs of caregivers and the aging population, regulatory aspects, the status of reimbursement programs, current available solutions and the tremendous role platform’s play in this market. It was very evident from this discussion that devices will play a much smaller role than platforms as connected health evolves. It is the data and what is done with that data that is most important and has the greatest impact.
In one form or another, aging in place is deeply seated in all of the participants’ mission statements. This is also the desire of our mutual consumers. These consumers wish to more proactively manage their health in their own homes in order to have better quality of life, more sense of safety, and ultimately be more connected to their health. As we know, technology is getting smarter as well. This is leading to tangential opportunities in which smarter aging is possible.
Essence has understood this concept for many years, offering much more than “a box and a button” to the aging population. The real value of these services is the data that is provided to our cloud and thoughtfully presented to the stakeholder’s in this consumer’s care.
At this year’s event, we presented our new solution, Care@Home Active, an innovative extension of Essence’s award winning Care@Home Aging in Place suite of products that seamlessly extends the protection of senior residents outside of their homes. This is a perfect solution for younger seniors who value their independence and wish to stay active as they keep aging, as it provides unique new mobility features that allow them to lead a more active life in the knowledge that they can move between their home environment and outdoors while their system automatically maintains connectivity with their families and monitoring center without requiring them to remember to take any new devices with them.
