Does anyone have experience with either Apple Watch as a medical alert device or another medical alert system?

My mom lives alone and we both agree it would be good if she had something that at minimum had fall detection.

She uses an iPhone and iPad and is comfortable with those devices, so we thought we would get her an Apple Watch, but as I learn more about it, it seems the Apple Watch can call 911 on your behalf, but if you're unconscious, it may or may not be able to relay your location to the 911 dispatcher.

OTOH, medical monitoring system are more like home security in that they have 24/7 monitoring service and are more designed to deal with medical concerns even if the person is unable to be communicate.

I had thought there might be an app where she could have the apple watch and have a subscription, but I'm not really finding options...

Anyway, does anyone have any experience with either the Apple Watch or medical monitoring services?

TIA!

If the Apple Watch has cellular data, it can't communicate the location? That seems surprising.

Don't have experience, but here's a comparison of Apple Watch to LifeAlert. At least outlines the things to consider...

https://www.safehome.org/compa...lert-vs-apple-watch/

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If the Apple Watch has cellular data, it can't communicate the location?

They say that they can't guarantee the 911 dispatcher will be able to pinpoint the location if the wearer is unable to communicate. Also, I've yet to read an explanation of information is conveyed by Apple Watch to the 911 dispatcher. If the dispatcher doesn't know the exact location, and all Apple Watch can do is relay a pre-recorded message, what does the dispatcher do? That's not clear.

Whereas a service like the one in the article linked by WTG has a call center, or maybe more accurately, a monitoring center, presumably functions like a home security monitoring center. You probably pre-set some phone numbers, and if the fall activation is triggered (if they have that, not all do) or if the wearer presses a panic button, then the monitoring center has the wearer's account info and can follow up in a more targeted way.

WTG, thanks for that page, I've been googling around but hadn't seen that one yet. I think my mom really wants an apple watch (tech-wise) but also wants the monitoring service as well.... Cake and eat...

The family of my elderly neighbor bought her an Apple Watch because of the fall detection feature. I have no idea what else they looked at or if it works well. My neighbor has moved to assisted living since she got the watch. And I don't think she's fallen since she got it....

This is all Greek Apple to me, but maybe it makes sense to you and/or you already know it....From Apple's website:

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If your Apple Watch detects that you're moving, it waits for you to respond to the alert and won't automatically call emergency services. If your watch detects that you've been immobile for about a minute, it will make the call automatically.

After the call ends, your watch sends a message to your emergency contacts with your location letting them know that your watch detected a hard fall and dialed emergency services. Your watch gets your emergency contacts from your Medical ID.

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208944

Ooooh!!! Thanks WTG!

That page has what I wanted to know:

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When the call connects, your Apple Watch plays an audio message that informs emergency services that your Apple Watch detected a hard fall and then it shares your current location as latitude and longitude coordinates. If you previously turned on the Share During Emergency Call setting under your Medical ID, your Medical ID is also automatically shared with emergency services. The first time the message plays, the audio is at full volume, but then the volume is reduced so that you, or someone nearby, can talk to the responder. The message continues to play until you tap Stop Recorded Message or the call ends.

So, if the contents of your medical ID includes your address, I bet that would get relayed as well.....

Hmm, this is good.

I think my mom really wants the Apple Watch because she wants the apple watch, but she wants to make sure it has this important health function as well. And she doesn't want to have an apple watch plus a separate health alert device.

I will share this info with her and see what she thinks. Thank you, WTG!!

We got my mom and Apple Watch for similar reasons. She has severe osteoporosis (leading to a spontaneous spine fracture last year) and my dad is frequently away. Her watch is set up to call both 911 and her emergency contacts (both me and my father) in case of a fall.

In addition, she went to the emergency room for concerning chest pains and her concerns were completely brushed off. She didn’t push it but was privately concerned it was something to worry about. She got the Watch and it flagged Afib patterns on a couple of occasions. She presented the data to her primary care physician and he immediate ordered a bunch of tests to figure out what was happening.

It’s definitely not going to solve all possible problems, but if it’s something your mom is looking at anyway there are some great benefits to it.

Oh two more things. I had my Watch go off for a hard fall once that wasn’t actually a hard fall. There’s plenty of time to cancel a false alarm before it calls anyone.

A friend’s sister was hit while riding her bike and the car raced off. Her Watch called 911 and when the ambulance arrived she was still alone and unconscious on the side of the road.

Dol, thanks for these comments!! I am definitely leaning toward the Apple Watch now!

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A friend’s sister was hit while riding her bike and the car raced off. Her Watch called 911 and when the ambulance arrived she was still alone and unconscious on the side of the road.

Oh my goodness, how scary!!! And thank goodness for the watch calling 911! Wow!

BTW, my mother still very active, and the good thing about the Apple Watch is that you don't have to be at home for it to do its thing. Some of the medical alert systems I've seen are only useful when the person is at home.

My mother had a medical alert system that was on a lanyard she wore around her neck.
Asked her where it was a few times when she did not know.
A watch that stays on might be better.

Yeah, she was pretty clear that she didn't want a lanyard or something like that.

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Originally posted by CHAS:
My mother had a medical alert system that was on a lanyard she wore around her neck.
Asked her where it was a few times when she did not know.
A watch that stays on might be better.

You have to take the watch off to charge it.

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You have to take the watch off to charge it.

Yes but my mother has put on and taken off rings and a watch probably her entire adult life, I think the watch would be easier for her to incorporate into her daily routine.

A few things about location determination and Apple’s “Medical ID” feature:

1. There will always be some technical limitations on how accurately a device’s location can be determined, so you will always see reputable companies qualify their location based features like they “may or may not” able to correctly determine a device’s location. But for single family homes with adequate cellular reception, location determination technologies will most likely work well enough for the vast majority of people.

2. With Apple stuff, you can verify her Apple Watch’s location, if only to convince yourself that it will work well enough. Instructions here: https://support.apple.com/guid...apd1132106dc/watchos

3. Apple’s Medical ID feature does not really support an “address” field (as of this writing), so if you really want to you can put the street address as part of the medical notes. Though per points #1 and #2 above, you most likely won’t need to. Putting in a fixed street address in medical notes may actually be confusing if an emergency call gets triggered while she’s away from home but somehow the home’s street address got sent along with her Medical ID information.

4. Where there is no cellular reception, her iPhone may try to make an call through Wi-Fi. This typically requires the user to consent to making telephone calls through Wi-Fi, and the carrier typically wants you to provide a street address for 911 purposes. You do this one time only when you enable the phone to make calls through Wi-Fi. This is where you want to manually put in a street address because it’s meant as a last resort when the technologies cannot automatically determine your location.

Recognizing the demographic trends, more tech companies are developing technologies to help seniors age in place. So these things will get better over time. Good luck!