Home fall? Just shout for help
PENSIONERS who fall while alone at home can now call for help with a voice-activated service.
They simply have to shout: “Alexa, start My SOS Family” and an Amazon Echo gadget will alert a series of preset phone numbers and email addresses.
The service is the brainchild of Moony Victoire-Nijjar, who started working on the idea two years ago when his mother-in-law was diagnosed with dementia.
He said: “As soon as we saw what Alexa could do, and that the Echo Dot was less than £50 to buy, we thought it was perfect for our system.
“It makes it easy for the elderly to use technology just by talking, so it’s the perfect extension to the My SOS Family alert assistant.”
Mr Victoire-Nijjar, from Bromley, Kent, devised the original SOS service two years ago.
It costs £30 a year – compared with centre-based monitoring systems which can charge up to £300 annually – and can be used from any mobile phone.
The system allows pensioners to alert relatives by touching a single button on a mobile phone if they fall or have a health emergency. It then auto-dials, texts and emails relatives, who can then respond accordingly.
Amazon’s Echo system can carry out hundreds of voiceactivated commands, such as playing music or reading the news.
In the US, another service allows older people to ask their gadget what medicine they need to take and what they have already taken.
If family members do not receive a daily email, they will be alerted to a possible problem and can take action.
UK users can link their My Family SOS account to their Echo device in as little as five minutes.