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Elderly Home Turns to Wearables for Contact Tracing, Sidestepping Apple-Google Limits


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An elderly home resident wears the Tempo wristband.

The Legacy at Town Square senior living facility in Amarillo, TX, is having staffers and residents wear high-tech wristbands from CarePredict to support contact tracing.

Credit: CarePredict

The Legacy at Town Square senior living facility in Amarillo, TX, recently accelerated contact tracing by having staffers and residents wear high-tech wristbands from  CarePredict.

The technology demonstrates a way to conduct contract tracing using wearable computing products, while bypassing the limitations of Google and Apple's smartphone-based solution.

Although the Google-Apple system promises to improve reliability in contact tracing, devices that use it would need Internet access and a government-sanctioned application.

CarePredict's Tempo wristbands use infrared light to connect with beacons on a wall in each room of The Legacy facility, documenting who has been near whom, where, and for how long.

Such technology "makes you ready to make the best operational decisions at a moment’s notice,” said Joseph Walter, executive director of the Legacy facility.

From Reuters
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Abstracts Copyright © 2020 SmithBucklin, Washington, DC, USA


 

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