Controversy dogs dementia patient tracking tags
In Britain, there’s growing support for a controversial government proposal to use electronic tags to track people with dementia. It’s meant to help hospitals keep tabs on dementia patients. But critics warn the program will see technology replace genuine care. (BRENDAN TREMBATH)
There are about 700,000 people in the UK with dementia. Sixty per cent feel the urge to walk off from their homes, and of these 40 per cent actually get lost, causing distress to themselves and their families. Now the Alzheimer’s Society has backed a plan to use electronic tagging to track down those people who wander. (STEPHANIE KENNEDY)
ANDREW KETTERINGHAM: It does sound like Big Brother, and that’s one of the reasons, I think, why we’ve all been a bit hesitant about it. And there is, really, a very careful balance that has to be struck here between a restriction in privacy, and possibly civil liberties, but at the same time empowering people to be freer than they have been before, and giving peace of mind to a carer.
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: The Government flagged the proposal a few months ago, arguing that using this sort of satellite technology to track dementia sufferers is about giving the elderly dignity and independence in old age.
Marilyn Loveday cares for her husband Christopher. He has Alzheimer’s.
MARILYN LOVEDAY: My husband has passed us now, unfortunately, but in the earlier stages I would’ve welcomed it. He just used to leave the house and we didn’t have a clue where he was, and quite often he’d be gone for hours. It would have stopped a lot of anxiety, us knowing where he was.
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: Katie Ghose, the director of the British Institute of Human Rights, warns against the technology replacing genuine care.
KATIE GHOSE: I don’t think it should ever be a substitute for proper resources being there, both for Alzheimer’s patients, for the carers and the family members, and also the more formal carers, people working in care homes. And I think that’s why some people are rightly questioning this and wanting to be very sure that it’s not going to be something that would just be used for convenience when there could be other measures that could be taken, both to protect people for their own safety, but also, perhaps more fundamentally, to enable them to carry on being as free as they possibly can.
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: Dr Richard Nicholson, the editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, is one of those people questioning the use of electronic tags.
RICHARD NICHOLSON: The problem with this is that you could see second-class care using it as a way of making life easier for carers, rather than as a way of making life safer or more pleasant for the person with Alzheimer’s.
STEPHANIE KENNEDY: The Alzheimer’s Society says decisions about whether to use a tracking device should be discussed with the patient in the earlier stages of dementia.
