In recent times, the news that “a 89-year-old living alone is trapped in a house and risk climbing from 27 to 21 floors” has drawn attention to the emergency security of elderly living alone. Today, the market is rich in a variety of emergency equipment designed for the elderly, smoke sensors, lost position watch, fall monitors, emergency callers ... Almost all the scenes of the elderly's life。
But can these emergency equipment be “emergency” at a critical time? How can an elderly person escape hardship and seek help when they are in an emergency and their children are not around? Journalists' surveys have found that, in order for emergency products to be more deeply integrated into the day-to-day movement of older persons, it is necessary at a critical time to “take off the chain” and truly become “security guards” for older persons, and that work needs to be done on “accessible, functional and effective”。
Illustrative: product abundance without knowing where to begin
"that reminds us." ms. Li and her older brother take care of their 78-year-old mothers on a daily basis, but there are always two who are not around the elderly。
Ms. Lee had intended to install a smart camera for her mother to speak in real time, but she had made mistakes when she entered the internet shopping platform. "the original emergency products for the elderly are so rich that they say, "armed to the teeth!" ms. Lee said that a number of products claimed to use high-tech technologies such as artificial intelligence, beidou positioning, electromagnetic waves, and that the ads were also obscurous: “crash-proof technology”, “the true guardian of a single generation”, “pa and mom must have six life-saving devices” ..
In the case of the smart cameras that ms. Lee is about to buy, according to performances such as pixels, memory, night vision, rotation angles, networking, etc., there are thousands of products, while the functions of human monitoring, feature tracking, ai visualization, automatic cruises, etc., are more confusing. Ms. Lee is lost: “there are so many products, so many flowers, so afraid of ‘penetrating the pit’, i don't know which one to choose.”
There is a wealth of emergency products for the elderly。
Journalists note that according to the use scene, the emergency products for the elderly are currently broadly classified into kitchens (smoking alarms, gas detectors, leaching detectors, etc.), bedrooms (sleep monitors, signs monitors, etc.), living rooms, bathrooms (smart cameras, drop monitors, emergency callers, etc.), exteriors (discretionary locator watch, bracelets, chestplates, crutches, etc.), covering almost all day-to-day residences and activities of the elderly, including early warning, hazard recognition, emergency calls, etc。
However, it is not easy for consumers in general to choose products that are good for themselves。
Survey: old people use “shortboards”
Interviews with journalists found that the emergency products for the elderly appeared to be comprehensive, but faced many practical challenges in their practical application, and that security defences were ill-formed if these shortboards were ignored。
The first is that some of the equipment is complex and cumbersome and unfriendly to older persons whose vision and memory are declining. Journalists found that this was particularly evident on the smart watches of the elderly, where a shopping platform sold more than 5,000 pieces of smart watches showed that a 5-centimetre small screen, in addition to having an emergency function to prevent loss and fall, had additional features such as video calls, heart rate and blood pressure monitoring. While large fonts are available, it is difficult for older persons in emergency situations to get back and forth, to click with precision, and to miss the best call for help in case of operational error。
The second is that some of the equipment's batteries continue to be short-lived and rely on a wireless network, which will fail as soon as power is out. “the frequent charging means that it is often removed and repeated, which makes old people uncomfortable, and that it is more troublesome when electricity goes out.” mr. Wang's father was suffering from initial alzheimer's disease and, in an attempt to find a permanent depositionor for his battery to continue, he tested five products over a period of six months, eventually choosing a set of products for up to 10 days. In addition, some equipment needs to be re-engineered after the power grid has been cut off, and many older persons are in difficulty。
The third is that while many products are high-tech, they are actually “false intelligence”, and misreporting often occurs. “my falling surveillance camera is a bit of an artificial retard, and grandma used to take a nap, and the back-office guest called me, saying that the old man was standing still for a long time and probably fell down and hurt.” a social platform in which a cyberfriend shares a lightning-shielded smart camera has triggered a number of resonance: some fall-and-monger rings call the police when an old man waves and taps a table; others fall-on surveillance cameras, and miss the story when an old man bends, sits down and picks up something; and when an old man falls, the device is “blind.”。
Fourth, the high price of products and the lack of access to underground experience have reduced the willingness of many older persons and their families to buy. For example, the relatively single-key emergency caller, with prices ranging from $560 to $2300, with high-technology insignia monitors, with prices ranging from $1,200 to 1,000, or $34,000 if it is a “house-wide tailor-made package” combining different scenarios. After three years of service, many products are subject to an annual service fee, which, together with the small number of underground shops in the factory, makes it difficult for older persons to experience the experience of doing so themselves。
Question: some old people are not “old”
"we have here a collection of old products containing over a dozen emergency equipment from different manufacturers." in the first city-wide centre for the experience of aging-friendly wisdom in the hoangyang district, the head of the office, zhang yan, said that citizens could visit the experience free of charge and order services and products。
Centre for the experience of aging friendly wisdom in the sun-yang district。
A number of emergency equipment are visible in the sample room, including: a single-key emergency caller with a red “sos” big button, which, in addition to pressing a button, can pull a cord to alert; some devices are more hidden, such as a leaching detector installed at the bottom of the kitchen cupboard to indicate running water at home; others are full of equipment technology, and a drop monitor does not have a recording video function, but rather uses “mm wave radar point cloud imaging”, which is coupled with artificial intelligence algorithms that can accurately identify the downing behaviour of the elderly, even if the bed is not returned at night。
(b) vital signs monitor using millimetre wave radar technology。
“aging, insensitive, intellectualization is the direction of the development of emergency equipment for old age, but none of the products is perfect and complete.” zhang yan said that older persons needed to choose the most suitable products in combination with their own memory and mobility. “for example, when a family is an 80- or 90-year-old person, who is usually confused with cell phone calls and listening keys, the simpler the device is, the better it is, with a physical switch, a key fix, rather than pursuing high-tech multifunctionality.”
Zhang yuang has a variety of emergency equipment in the toilet。
Products are ageing, but some older people are not “agey”. Zhang yan said that she had observed that some older persons were “dissatisfied with old age” by looking at the older population that came to visit, and had seen the ageing of their homes as “lowing to life”. “emergency equipment is focused on prevention, early warning, rather than the staggered, reduced memory and installation. It's too late to regret an accident."
The equipment is bought to be more user-friendly and willing. Journalists were informed of a set of “suspicious” data from the sakayama rescue team, which in 2025 sought out 106 missing persons, 84 of whom were elderly, accounting for about 80 per cent of the total, but without any exception, the elderly were wearing missing watches, bracelets or stickers. Although some of the children bought products for the elderly, they were troubled, afraid of being embarrassed or forgetful, resulting in the installation of equipment. Therefore, children should be more careful and patient and hand-in-hand to teach the elderly how to use them, to be alert and to be vigilant。
Guarantee: to be “fitted, used, saved”
At the public emergency centre in the town of guangzhou, dynamaya, a staff member introduced journalists to the fact that, to date, the government has installed, free of charge, an emergency caller for more than 6,000 elderly people over the age of 70 years and for persons in critical fire care, and has added bracelets, which are “generally attached to the bed, and can be called to the police through hand rings if an accident occurs in the living room or in the bathroom”
The public emergency centre is on duty 24 hours a day。
In addition to the “one-click beep”, the emergency centre for the citizens of the town of xiu is linked to a total of 12,000 emergency units such as smoke, gas and electrical detectors in the homes of the elderly, which can be linked to various forces such as the town, the community, fire, public order and first aid. The centre adheres to the “one-minute response, three-minute presence and five-minute disposal” emergency response standard, which states: “as soon as the equipment alerts, the back-office system shows a detailed address, saving, on average, about 40 per cent of the time for emergency vehicles to reach their homes, which greatly increases the efficiency of life-saving relief efforts.” wynhof said。
" one key beep" installed at the bedhead position。
“at the age of 92, he fell on the floor, his head fell and he couldn't stand up.” the 85-year-old senior mother, remembering what happened last october, was still very afraid: “i was so scared, i cried out to my daughter-in-law, the daughter-in-law, and she pressed `one key' for me, and in a few minutes the ambulance arrived.”
Wynhoff (second left) patiently introduced her to the use of bracelets。
"this little thing saved my life twice with the old man." one time the tacos forgot to turn off the electricity, the living room was full of smoke, i didn't notice it in the bedroom, the other time i had earbles, fell and threw up. If it wasn't for "smoking" and "shooting" to call the police in time, we'd be dead."
Mrs. Xue's daughter said that she and her sister's brother took turns during the day to take care of the elderly, and that equipment such as “one-click beep” had just filled the gap at night. “even if the old man accidentally pulled the plug, there was a backup battery in it, and the staff of the centre would follow up quickly, asking why the power cuts had taken place, we did save much.”
It is stated that emergency products themselves need to be age-appropriate, less porous and affordable; that older people and their families need to know, be willing to use and be prepared in advance; and that governments and social forces need to continue to work on the bottom line of security and emergency response in order to finally “suspend their lives” at a critical time。
