Pioneering new personal alarm wristbands are being trialled by Mansfield Woodhouse-based Your Home Care, a domiciliary care provider that is the first of its kind in the UK to use the technology.

The Call4Care wristbands, which have been developed by Intelligent Recording Ltd, based in The Tangent Business Hub, Shirebrook, utilise Flawless Connect cloudless telecoms technology to help keep users safe.

The lightweight devices look similar to a smartwatch, but do not have LCD screens. They can detect if a person has fallen and alert friends or relatives via a phone call, and use What Three Words and Wi Fi settings on any nearby devices to enable exact locations to be shared. There is also a function to set a geofence, so that if a person goes out of a certain area, an alert is sent to specific connections.

The wristbands are linked to a friends and family app, so that a user’s health can be monitored remotely.

For example, the app can take indicative blood pressure readings, monitor activity levels such as how many steps have been recorded, take blood oxygen readings, and highlight body temperature changes.

While this information can be accessed through the app, work is taking place to integrate it into Your Home Care’s own systems.
Paul Pitchford, who co-founded Your Home Care with Scott Marsh, said: “This wonderful and unique technology has the potential to be a real asset when ensuring the safety of vulnerable or elderly people in their own homes. They should help give even more confidence to families that the health of their loved ones is being monitored.

“As we already regularly use Restore2 health checks, we see the wristbands as working in tandem with that process and data being integrated with our information.”

A number of Your Home Care clients will be given a wristband to use, while some will be available to members of the public to buy.

Funding for the wristbands has come from a grant from Digital Notts, a partnership of organisations that are collectively responsible for improving the health, care and wellbeing of local people.

Philip Hill, of Intelligent Recordings Ltd, said they use talented people from across the world to create technology that makes a difference.

For example, the company developed telematics technology that is currently being deployed in thousands of ambulances.

Philip said: “The wristbands compact into a small space a number of amazing features that together create something unique and ideal for a number of settings, including home care. It’s an exciting product.”