Published Sunday, October 08, 2006

At first glance, it might appear to be Big Brother-like technology. Seven sensors are set up throughout 78-year-old Lydia Russeth’s apartment to monitor her during all hours of the day, tracking activities like where she goes and when she eats.

It seems intrusive, but Russeth doesn’t mind.

“I don’t even know it’s there,” she said.

Her daughter and son, Elizabeth Stellmaker and Paul Russeth, know it’s there, and they couldn’t be happier about it.

“It makes us feel more secure,” Stellmaker said. “It’s more for our sake than hers.”

Russeth’s apartment at Lakeshore’s assisted-living homes in Duluth was one of the first in the city to be set up with QuietCare, a system of motion detectors that tracks residents, looks for changes in their behavior

and relays the information back to the facility’s staff.

Lakeshore’s parent, Ecumen, Minnesota’s largest operator of independent and assisted-living housing, began testing the program last summer at a nursing home in the Twin Cities before bringing it to Duluth in September.

The system was set up in all 20 apartments in the facility’s memory care apartments, which house patients with Alzheimer’s, dementia and other memory-related dysfunctions.

The residents don’t wear any wires and are not videotaped. Instead, the monitors, which are installed in the bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms and refrigerators, take two weeks to record established, normal routines of residents, keeping track of where and when they move.

Anything out of the ordinary is text-messaged to nurses, who can go and check on the residents.

Donna Goetsch, Lakeshore’s director of home care, said the technology has been invaluable in spotting when residents might be having problems.

She said it lets them know if residents have been going to the bathroom too much, aren’t eating enough or aren’t getting out of bed. If someone falls and hasn’t moved in a room for an extended period of time, Goetsch said, staff members will be alerted to the problem.

“If someone is making more than usual trips to the bathroom at night, it helps us determine when we should be going in to help them,” Goetsch said.

If a resident doesn’t want to be monitored, said Renee Gerlach, Lakeshore’s administrator, they don’t have to be in the program.

“But so far, no one’s asked for that,” she said.

One of the reasons for that is because the technology isn’t only for staff, but for the resident’s family, who can log onto a Web site and check on QuietCare’s data.

“This is very reassuring for family members as well,” Gerlach said.

Paul Russeth, who said he has worked in nursing homes in the past, said the technology would actually be less intrusive on his mother.

“I used to have to check (on residents) every two hours. I used to feel guilty,” he said. With QuietCare, he said, “staff wouldn’t have to come in as much.” Stellmaker said: “It’s like having another smoke alarm. It just increases safety.”

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http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/articles/index.cfm?id=25204&CFID=1422504&CFTO... 10/9/2006