When the Eye on Older Patients Is a Camera

New sensors are changing the nature of home care for families with a loved one with dementia

Some monitoring systems include wearable watches for fall detection or can track GPS location. Syda Productions/Shutterstock

In the middle of a rainy Michigan night, 88-year-old Dian Wurdock walked out the front door of her son’s home in Grand Rapids, barefoot and coatless. Her destination was unknown even to herself.

Wurdock was several years into a dementia diagnosis that turned out to be Alzheimer’s disease. By luck, her son woke up and found her before she stepped too far down the street. As the Alzheimer’s progressed, so did her wandering and with it, her children’s anxiety.