New wireless technology from France Telecom Orange and Ember may someday enable eldercare facilities and people with elderly family members to keep tabs on their loved ones from afar.

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France Telecom Orange's R&D Group is developing a ZigBee-based network system that lets caregivers track the movement of elderly relatives living independently, as well as nursing home residents. Elderly people wearing a ZigBee-based tagging sensor, would automatically set off a notification of their whereabouts if they wander away from a premise.

The system will enhance eldercare safety by providing a wireless “panic call” capability for residents who find themselves suddenly incapacitated. It also enables caregivers to remotely monitor the state of exit doors and identify unauthorized entries or departures.

The ZigBee-based system is in a three-month test trial at an eldercare facility in Orgères en Beauce, France. During this trial, France Telecom intends to acquire the knowledge to deploy ZigBee solutions in the field and integrate them with France Telecom Orange's network and service infrastructure. The technology developed for the eldercare facility was a significant challenge spanning several buildings, and incorporating portable devices with limited battery power.

The trial will help France Telecom Orange to understand the kind of involvement people in health and elderly care expect from an operator.

The France Telecom system uses Ember's EM250 ZigBee system-on-a-chip and EmberZNet ZigBee software stack to create self-organizing, self-healing wireless networks that can operate for years on inexpensive batteries. With virtually no retrofit wiring or construction required, this approach makes it easy and cost effective for users to deploy and scale up their monitoring networks as needed. The system's mesh network topology makes it highly reliable.

The network of ZigBee-based zonal location sensors and controls communicate with a gateway device that enables caregivers to monitor residents' movement and location from a local network console or remotely over the Internet.

It is an ideal solution for monitoring the safety and well being of aging family members who want to live alone in their homes, as well as for eldercare facilities that are challenged to keep track of their residents.

“With an increasingly aging population and dwindling healthcare workforce, we designed the system to help families and nursing homes address this need and improve eldercare safety easily and cost effectively,” said Roland Airiau, France Telecom Strategic Marketing, Smart Environments program director. “However, to do so we needed a wireless platform that was reliable and field proven. We selected Ember because it has the most mature, feature-rich ZigBee development platform and delivered the performance and battery life we needed.”

For more information, visit www.orange.com; www.zigbee.org and www.ember.com.