Paul Carpenter was looking for a solution to keep his mother, Anne, safe in her home.
She had Alzheimer’s disease.
His family worried she would wander into the woods near her Minnesota home.
“She did get lost a couple of times, luckily, close by, and we were able to find her by just scanning the block,” he said.
The family wanted to locate her if she wandered away. But they couldn’t find the exact technology that suited their needs.
That inspired Paul, a software engineer, to create his own solution with the help of his father, Scott, who ran a tech company.
Called BoundaryCare, it’s one of a growing number of companies that offer technology to help families keep track and locate loved ones with dementia. The services operate using everything from GPS and cellular to wireless transmitters and Wi-Fi.
In the case of BoundaryCare, you need an Apple Watch, a smart phone, an app and a monthly subscription that starts around $25. The service uses GPS to track a loved one’s location.
“It gives you about a 10-yard level of accuracy,” Paul Carpenter told ABC15 in a recent interview. “That’s enough to go and find somebody.”
Here’s how it works: It sends an alert to your phone if someone wearing the watch goes outside the so-called “safe” boundary. The safe boundary could be a home, a care facility or whatever boundary you choose.
Another company, RF Technologies, uses a custom wristwatch and a wireless transmitter.
When the person gets to a certain perimeter, like a door that they should not get beyond, it sends an alert to staff. The technology can even temporarily lock doors, said Chad Burow, the company’s vice president of channel sales. The company has been around since 1987 and says it has more than 11,000 installations.
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“A lot of facilities are utilizing the technology, but many more should be,” he said.
Locally, an Arizona State University professor is working on a solution.
“We’re really making a dumbed-down version of a smartwatch,” said Michael Collins, an ASU health professor.
He developed a prototype and calls the technology “Want2bFound.” The technology consists of a waterproof wristwatch that uses Wi-Fi, GPS and cellular service. Another feature is a long-lasting battery.
“Twenty-one days is what we're projecting the battery life to be right now,” he said.
The innovation is not yet on the market; Collins hopes to have it available by summer 2025.
Collins wants the device to be affordable. The wristwatch is expected to retail for less than $200 plus a monthly subscription.
Technology is only expected to play a larger role in keeping people safe.
Every 65 seconds, someone in the United States is diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease, Collins said. The disease destroys thinking and memory skills, and people eventually are unable to do even simple tasks.
Sixty percent of people with the disease will wander and get lost, he said.
“Once they do that, they're going to do it all the time,” he said.
As of now, no states require long-term care facilities to offer tracking for residents. Some will offer them as optional services, but it’s not the norm.
The ABC15 Investigators have spent months reporting about older adults with Alzheimer’s disease or dementia, who wander away from care facilities. In some cases, they die.
ABC15 found at least a dozen cases of people who left their long-term care facilities or were left unsupervised outside and were found dead in the heat.
The long-term care industry refers to unsupervised wandering that leads to residents leaving long-term care facilities as “elopements.” The exact number that occurs is unknown because no Arizona state agency tracks elopements.
The lack of numbers recently promoted Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to call for changes in legislation.
“How do you solve a problem if you don't even know how big the problem is?” she told ABC15.
