Help and advice

There may be concerns about the ethical implications of installing this type of equipment, and how it may affect the privacy of the individual. Advice on ethics and telecare.

These systems do not connect to help / monitoring centres and consequently there are important differences between the safety features of these systems and those which are part of a telecare system. For example:

• They do not connect to 24 hour monitoring service which can provide a response at any time, on any date. However, alerting a nearby relative, friend or carer with a pager can provide a much quicker response than that resulting from a call to a help centre who then have to arrange a response.
• They may not have automatic safety mechanisms in place to alert you if their batteries fail or there is a mains power cut.
• These units' transmissions may not use industry standard radio frequencies and consequently could suffer interference, failing to trigger the alarm / pager. However, interference is unlikely and some systems can make multiple transmissions which helps to ensure the transmission is received.

You may also wish to view telecare enabled fall risk sensors which automatically connect to help centres if you move beyond a specific location or fall over, mobile alarms that work outside of a home environment or personal locators.