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Contact: Todd Cohen, University Relations, (785) 864-8858

KU evaluates device for locating missing people with dementia

LAWRENCE -- Any time a victim of Alzheimer's disease wanders away from home, it's a race against time to find them.

Twenty percent of all missing Alzheimer's patients are found dead. Another 35 percent require hospitalization once frantic relatives and caregivers find them, a national Alzheimer's Association study found.

For the past decade, nursing homes and some search and rescue teams have used electronic monitors, the same technology developed to tag and track endangered species, to locate endangered people.

Now, one company, Care Trak of Carbondale, Ill., is trying to provide the technology for use in private homes. The idea is that a caregiver, usually a spouse, and the person with dementia could safely remain home and out of costly nursing homes.

"It would allow older couples to stay together or stay at home longer," said Mike Chylewski, Care Trak vice president.

The question is how well it works. And that's where researchers at KU and its Gerontology Center come in.

The center has a grant from the National Institute on Aging to evaluate the Care Trak device. The KU team, led by principal investigator R. Mark Mathews, associate director of the Gerontology Center and professor of human development, is seeking caregivers and family members of people with Alzheimer's disease and dementia to survey about the device.

Researchers will demonstrate the device at 2 p.m. Friday, Dec. 4, in 2092 Dole. They are asking area residents and KU faculty, staff and students to view the presentation and complete a survey. Researchers also will test the device with area residents suffering from dementia.

Dementia is an umbrella term used to describe the loss of cognitive or intellectual function.

The researchers are not affiliated with the company that makes the device and the presentation is not a sales pitch, noted Deborah Elaine Altus, assistant research professor of gerontology and co-investigator on the project.

The device consists of a miniature transmitter worn in a case resembling a wristwatch and a receiver used by the caregiver.

When a person with dementia leaves his home or wanders beyond a certain perimeter, the transmitter begins sending a signal to a receiver and a door alarm system.

The mobile locator, which transmits a signal up to a radius of one mile on the ground, has the ability to cut search times down from hours or even days to minutes, Chylewski said. A helicopter can pick up the signal from as far away as 15 miles, he said.

The device was originally developed by Care Trak's parent company, Wildlife Materials Inc., which began making animal-tracking devices nearly 30 years ago.

Care Trak, which sells and rents the devices from its Illinois office, also is offering the device to families of children who suffer from Down syndrome or autism.

The grant funding KU's current study focuses solely on people with dementia. However, KU hopes to receive a grant to study the device's feasibility for tracking both adults and children, Altus said.