Gps Enabled Walkers For Elderly Patients

Posted on February 29, 2008 by Jamie Slaughter, with 11416 views

The wonders of GPS have made for increased navigation gadgets, specifically on mobile phones and attached to cars and other forms of transport.

GPS is now being utilised to assist elderly patients, in an effort to improve their sense of awareness and simplify their efforts to move around without feeling lost or running into problems. The gadget itself is a walker attached with a GPS system which acts as a guide to help increase their mobility in a secure manner. The device is under tests in Nursing Centres, and is a product of a student project, yet the technical details still a bet sketchy.

The GPS Walker makes use of a Wi-Fi based system to navigate patients around using five buttons and large arrows to make it easier on the user. The arrows, as you would expect, indicate the direction to take.

The devices have been in operation in one Nursing Centre for many months, as experiments and tests are being continually carried out and usability observed. It is unlikely that these will become mainstream, but for certain individuals looking to move about when before it was a hazard, it may just be what they've been waiting for.