Insights Into Health Care: The Sandwich Generation

Vicktoria Baylor

July 1, 2008

Y ou’re connected, you’re wired and you’re on the go. Life is going at its 24/7 pace when suddenly the needs of an aging parent bring you to a sudden stop.

Welcome to the “Sandwich Generation.”

According to a recent Pew Research Center report, you’re not alone – nearly 40 million Americans are raising children or supporting an adult child while giving a financial hand or providing caregiving support to an aging parent.

While the challenges of caregiving are emerging as one of the top health care issues facing America today, services and technology only now are beginning to apply their solutions to the pressing issue. By 2010, nearly 40 million Americans will be over the age of 65 and more adult children and families will be facing the challenges of caregiving.

The process of caregiving usually begins easily enough. You might begin to call your aging parents several times a day to check on them. Then it progresses into daily visits, if possible, and before long you find yourself thinking about the next step: Can Mom or Dad truly live on their own?

With this question, you have a whole new series of questions to face: Is my house big enough to move them in? Can my siblings help? Should I look at buying a bigger house? Can my parents afford assisted living? Can I afford assisted living for them? How can I monitor them without being there every day? How do I convince them it may be time for a change? How will they handle being less independent?

Somewhere in all the questions, you think there must be a way that technology can help. It can. Technology brings families alternatives to help fill the gap between what your parents may need now and their needs in the near future. With the emergence and adoption of smart technologies, you have more help than ever to address the issues of caregiving in your family.

Today, companies are applying “smart technologies” to help families connect with the person in need and with the caregiver without being a nuisance or impeding a sense of independence. In addition, these technologies must bridge the distance between families that can live within the same community or even on different coasts.

Currently, two types of “smart technologies” contribute to the caregiving field in different ways but offer the connectivity families seek and easier way to monitor the well being of the person in need of care.

First, simple sensor systems apply “smart technology” to monitor remotely, identify patterns and sense anomalies. QuietCare is a Florida-based senior care monitoring service that implements a sensor system to keep families connected when regular face-to-face visits are impractical. Complete privacy is maintained since QuietCare does not use cameras or any other type of invasive devices.

The wireless sensor technology simply monitors the senior’s daily living pattern and alerts the family when a significant change is noted. Sensors are placed at various points of interest throughout the home, and different protocols can be put into place depending on the preferences of the senior and his or her family.

Second, “smart technology” is taking advantage of the Internet to create interfaces that allow for more effective interactions between everyone in the caregiving network. InteleHealth is an Atlanta-based company whose system, the eeBee – a first of its kind – uses a secure Internet connection and a simple interface to provide wellness information for the family caregivers and more frequent, enhanced communications with their elderly relatives.

The eeBee service emphasizes delivering value to the family, caregivers and care recipients. A key advantage of the eeBee’s novel interface is that the caregiver or the person in need of care doesn’t need computer experience to benefit from, and interact with, the communication services and to provide his or her family with important wellness information.

AmeriCare is partnering with companies that drive technologies to address the needs of the entire caregiving network: family, caregiver, person in need of care.

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