Innovative Building and Remodeling Solutions
for Independent Living

As part of our outstanding service to our customers, remember that we offer an in-home assessment, a valuable tool in planning to remain safe, comfortable, and independent in your home. We’ll conduct a thorough assessment of your current lifestyle and home to identify what can make your home safer and more accessible.

One of our qualified Certified Aging-in-Place Specialist (CAPS) contractors will conduct a careful analysis of your home as well as a personal assessment of your needs. Through this in-home visit, we’ll meet with you and your family, tour your home and help you determine which renovations will improve your safety, comfort, and the value of your home, as well as answer any of your questions.

And through the end of May, Home Evolutions is pleased to announce that we are offering a FREE in-home assessment, a $200-value. Although we serve most counties in Western Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, this limited time offer is currently available only to residences within Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.

If you’re interested in this free, limited time offer, please fill out our contact form today and one of our representatives will be in touch to schedule a convenient time to visit you in your home.

Finally, if you haven’t done so already, please sign up to receive our free 63-point Quality of Life and Home Safety Checklist. This special offer is available to anyone. It’s simple. Just fill out this contact form, and after submitting the form, we will email you a PDF of the checklist.

A recent article described how some new and innovative technologies can help seniors and people with disabilities live more comfortably and independently.

Motion sensors are currently being utilized in some situations to monitor people in order to insure their health and safety. For example, after Eva Olweean had back-to-back hospital visits for heart problems, motion sensors in the 86-year-old’s bed were used to determine and evaluate her recovery.

Pneumatic tubes were tucked into Olweean’s mattress and beneath her easy chair to measure weight shifts. In addition, tiny sensors hover unobtrusively over the toilet, shower, and doorways to detect her movements inside the apartment.

Researchers and caregivers at the University of Missouri-Columbia study the data and note changes in behavior that could signal problems. Unlike the more common medical warning badges worn by some seniors, motion sensors are far less intrusive or cumbersome and their success doesn’t depend on the cooperation of patients. University nursing professor, Marilyn Rantz, explained, “Our intent with this project was to incorporate [sensors] into patients’ daily lives—and make them invisible to their daily lives.”

As more and more baby boomers make the commitment to age-in-place, high-tech companies are racing to develop practical gadgets that can help aging Americans remain living independently in their own homes.

Earlier this year, the International Consumer Electronics Show (ICES) in Las Vegas featured a special section devoted to high-tech senior living for the first time. Among the products showcased at the ICES, were motion sensors—the kind that allowed Olweean’s nurses to figure out what was keeping her up at night.
At Oatfield Estates, a private retirement home in Milwaukie, OR, the movements of its residents are tracked by “bed bugs.” Actually, these are embedded motion sensors that can detect when someone’s behavior might trigger a medical alert.

Other nifty items include “smart carpets” that can alert monitoring agencies if someone has fallen and remains immobile. The ICES also displayed talking pill boxes that remind people to take their medicine at regular intervals. If this doesn’t happen, the boxes can then alert out-of-home relatives and caregivers. There are even robotic companion pets that mimic the real things!

According to Jason Hess, CEO of Elite Care (the company that owns Oatfield Estates), motion sensors, “smart carpets,” and other tracking devices will be the norm in both private homes and group settings within the next decade. He added, “This will especially be true as insurers start embracing these cost-saving devices.”

Researchers are also fine-tuning a more advanced monitoring system using virtual-reality silhouette images to allow the observation of posture, gait, and other movements. These silhouettes are considered a preferred alternative to more invasive video cameras.

For more information on up and coming high-tech products, visit the website for the Center for Aging Services Technologies (CAST). CAST is leading the charge to expedite the development, evaluation, and adoption of emerging technologies that can improve the aging-in-place experience.

Companies like Home Evolutions can remodel residences while incorporating many new technologies similar to the ones described in this piece. This combination of specialized construction and high-tech living products can greatly facilitate aging-in-place for you or your loved ones.

Use your imagination…What are some technologically-advanced products (realistic or unrealistic) that could help you or your loved ones remain living independently and safely within the comfort of home?

Whether you yourself have made the decision to age-in-place, or you are overseeing loved-ones as they remain living at home, let’s face it, everyone can use a little help sometimes.

Agencies like Visiting Angels are available to help seniors and people with disabilities continue to live comfortably, safely, and independently as they age-in-place.

Visiting Angels is the leading, nationwide network of non-medical, private-duty homecare agencies that provides senior care, elder care, personal care, respite care, and companion care. The agency helps those who decide to age-in-place by facilitating a family-based alternative to assisted living institutions and nursing homes. Its caring and experienced caregivers provide up to 24-hour on-call assistance.

The agency strives to make aging-in-place at home the most positive experience possible. Clients can select their own caregiver from a group of experienced caregivers; this allows seniors and people with disabilities to maintain their personal schedule while acquiring personalized care.

Visiting Angels ensures that its clients receive excellent care. The agency accomplishes this by tailoring a program of care based on individual needs which is also flexible and can adjust as different needs arise.

This is all achieved by reviewing the needs of seniors and people with disabilities through discussions with them, family members, and when necessary, their healthcare providers. A service coordinator then carefully selects the caregiver with the necessary experience and personality that is best suited to the needs of each client. The caregiver then visits every client’s home so that they can participate in the selection process. After services begin, Visiting Angels implements its unique system of ongoing personalized communications with family members and caregivers to make sure that the care recipient is receiving the best care available.

Some of the services provided by Visiting Angels include:

• Assistance with Walking and Mobility
• Assistance with Writing and Paying Bills
• Assisting with Attending Outside Social Events
• Companionship
• Errands and Shopping
• Hygiene Assistance
• Light Housekeeping Service
• Meal Preparation/Diet Monitoring
• Medication Reminders
• Respite Care for Family Members
• Transportation to Doctor Appointments

Visiting Angels is an excellent option for families who are separated by long distances, but who continue wanting to provide care for loved ones who choose to age-in-place. To initiate services, the agency will conduct a free, no obligation, in-house assessment.

Homecare agencies like Visiting Angels, in conjunction with house remodeling companies like Home Evolutions, can greatly help you or your loved ones age-in-place with complete comfort, independence, and peace of mind.

What are some things that an agency like Visiting Angels can do to facilitate aging-in-place for a loved one you know or for you personally?

University of Virginia researchers are working on a home monitoring system that could allow seniors and people with disabilities to live in their homes longer.

It has developed technological solutions for in-home monitoring of residents in order to provide quality of life indicators. The in-home monitoring system is composed of a suite of low-cost, non-invasive sensors (strictly no cameras or microphones), and a data logging and communications module, in addition to an integrated data management system, linked to the Internet.

The system, created as part of a collaboration between the university’s architecture and engineering schools to design and build eco-friendly modular homes, is gathering data in the first ecoMOD home in Charlottesville that was finished two years ago.

According to Paxton Marshall, a professor in the department of electrical and computer engineering, the goal is to design a marketable system, and software, that reports information in real time. This allows children of seniors to use the “as-it’s-happening” system to monitor their parents remotely from a computer or cell phone.

The new system also allows for breaking down, second-by-second, when utilities are being expended and in what amounts, if needed. For instance, the system could detect which appliances are being used by the energy they’re drawing. It can also detect where energy is being wasted.

It is anticipated that the use of this technology will result in:

• Improved informal care effectiveness without increasing intrusion.
• Reduced cost of informal care, which is particularly high for senior populations.
• Reduced burdens on the informal caregiver, and hence reduced stress and improved mental and physical health conditions.
• Involving the care recipient in health promoting activities and decision-making.
• An extended healthy, active and dignified life for seniors that can be widely accessible to the low-income strata of society.
• Delayed admittance to specialized institutions, and hence a reduced cost of formal elder care.
• Reduced formal care burdens, and hence improved formal care.

The in-home monitoring system has the following unique characteristics:

• Implemented in simple low-cost sensor technology, which makes it affordable to the lowest 30% of income earners.
• Adaptively retrofits into existing home structures, with minimal impact, modification and cost.
• The data-mining component yields unique health status reports that can be made available to the occupants, their medical advisors and their family members.
• The system is customizable to the individual’s needs, as well as different cultural needs.

What do you think of the new in-home monitoring system? What impact can it have on living independently?