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New £100 GPS-tracker mobile phone is built to help elderly

O2's new £99 handset can detect whether its owner has had a fall, and alert families or doctors.

O2's new £99 Help at Hand handset can detect whether its owner has had a fall, and alert families or doctors.

A new mobile phone could allow the elderly to leave home safely - and even save lives.

O2's new £99  Help at Hand handset can detect whether its owner has had a fall, and alert families or doctors.

The new phone automatically phones an emergency hotline if it senses a fall - and also includes a GPS tracker to help locate elderly patients.

Most monitor systems are tied to home phone lines - which leads, O2 claims, to infirm people being 'trapped' indoors.

The Help at Hand handset is tied to a £20 per month contract - and 200 elderly patients who tried the handset last year said it helped to restore confidence and independence.

One user said it enabled her to take up cycling - knowing she'd be monitored.

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The innovative handset can track a person's location by GPS in case they go missing or wander off, potentially useful in the case of early dementia patients, or tell if the mobile has moved outside of a set 'safe zone' geographically.

It also recognises when a person has fallen and can automatically call for help while a one-touch button goes through to a 24/7 emergency centre, which can summon the emergency services or loved ones.

Nikki Flanders, Managing Director of O2 Health, said: "We all know someone who has to care in some way for a friend or family member. It's only natural to worry about them – even if incidents rarely happen.
 
"The Help at Hand mobile care service gives people who have a health condition or feel vulnerable the confidence to get out and about safe in the knowledge that help is the press of a button away."

Luen Thompson from the Carers Trust added: "Three in five of us will become a carer at some point in our lives. Tools which help carers to care but give them the confidence to get on with their own lives at the same time are a great addition to the package of support that carers may be entitled to."

The O2 project is just one example of a booming healthcare technology industry across the globe. Britain now has 10 million people over the age of 65 but this number is expected to rise by 50% within 20 years with the fastest growing group being those over 85.

The Telecare Services Association says 1.7 million people in the UK are reliant on telehealth monitoring alone right now with that number expected to soar as more intricate devices become available.

Those who have grown up with technology will also naturally have different expectations for how technology can aid them compared to parents and grandparents.

But healthcare tech is not just for the elderly. One company Skin Analytics claims it can detect potentially cancerous moles by monitoring them using a mobile phone app while last year there were reports of the creation of a breast cancer detecting bra that could notice different temperature changes in skin tissue to offer early warning signs of the disease.

Another futuristic example is the 23andMe project in the US allowing people to send in a sample of their saliva along with a $99 payment to get a DNA check highlighting any medical conditions they may be prone to.

And in a similar vein, InsideTracker can analyse a sample of blood for 20 different biomarkers such as Calcium, Vitamin D, Glucose and Hemoglobin levels while so-called 'health dashboard' TicTac has been developed to pull in personal health data from a range of platforms for users to compare them, understand problems and set interconnected goals.

There are already a plethora of fitness apps that can be linked to running trackers alongside gizmos such as Wi-Fi-enabled scales and blood pressure monitors. Some devices such as the new Fitbit One have now been adapted to monitor sleeping patterns too.

Experts believe we are just scratching the surface of what can be achieved, with smart solutions being developed to allow doctors to provide online video consultations and wirelessly monitor a patient's heart-rate from afar, for example, as well as checking their respiration and motion.

Others can check on symptoms of Asthma while new consumer apps keep watch on someone's mood or can try and change their outlook. The likes of Lift or Good Habits both track how long we spend doing different tasks to identify those that have a positive influence on our life against those that cause negativity.

Digital Health expert Stephen Davies writes a blog about the sector at bionic.ly and runs a Digital Health UK LinkedIn group for those interested in developments. He believes these innovations are just the start and predicts growth in this area will boom in the next few years.

He said: "We're really at the beginning of a new era in healthcare. Like numerous industries before it, technology is impacting the traditional model of health and empowering people with tools and information about their bodies in ways which were previously not possible.

"New health devices and services from tracking mood and stress to analysing how much quality rapid eye movement sleep we receive each night are helping individuals live happier and healthier lives by allowing them to understand their bodies with actionable data."

Stephen added: "It's not just from a technological point of view either. New bioscience services such as personal genotyping company 23andMe allow people to understand their genetic makeup in the form of their ancestry and disease risks.

"What once cost thousands of pounds now costs hundreds and in the future the cost will be negligible. We're really just at the beginning of a health revolution."