Activity monitoring and personal locators

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Activity monitoring systems monitor your daily activities in your home and provide a chart of your activity via the internet. Small, wireless sensors are triggered as you move around your home. A carer or relative can therefore see if you have not gone into your kitchen all day, or have gone out and not returned. If they have any concerns after viewing this data they can ring you or visit you to check you are ok or offer assistance.

Personal locators are carried by you and enable authorised individuals such as relatives or carers to find out your location by logging onto the internet from a computer.

This section also includes wandering alarms which are used to alert a carer or relative if you move beyond a designated area. These systems may work in several ways, e.g: by monitoring if you go through a door, tread on a mat, gets up from a chair or bed or move beyond a designated range.

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 are NOT telecare systems and consequently there are important safety features that these units will not provide. For example, they may not have automatic safety mechanisms in place to alert you if their batteries fail or there is a mains power cut.

You may wish to consider Telecare enabled activity monitoring systems