I’ve been dealing with some of the issues associated with aging family members recently, and coping with things like memory loss, difficulty planning and remembering scheduled activities, etc.
In my scenario, there’s things that need to be done daily:
1) Take morning medication
2) Twice daily check and record vitals (blood pressure, pulse, temp, weight)
3) Take evening medication
4) Plan for and follow through on any scheduled activities
Being a technology guy, I see technology as the answer to everything. Can’t remember schedules? Put them in Google Calendar. Can’t remember names, phone number, and address, put them in Google contacts. Computer’s getting too hard to use? Get an ipad.
But there’s a certain point where even an iPad becomes too difficult to use. Like if I unlock it and hand it to them with the app already open… *maybe* they can read their email or check facebook (shudder). Push notification on bills that need to be paid, and electronic payment via USAA’s ipad app have helped a lot, as have Mint and PageOnce.
Still – the iPad will probably be too complicated in the long run. When I saw the projects for Go Free Range Printer and LittlePrinter, I thought – well that’s easy. Print out a daily checklist, include any appointments and schedule and how easy is that?
Then I realized I already have that printer – it’s my HP D110a. Sure, it’s the usual HP rip off on printer cartridges – once or two a year you will spend $60 to put in ink in it – but that’s really not horrible for a printer/scanner with wifi. Now you can add it to Google Cloudprint easily, that makes for some interesting options.
In theory – all I need is a script that does:
———–
1) Pull new email summary – maybe truncate each item to one line of text, maybe max out at 10 lines or something.
2) Pull daily schedule – truncate each event to one line of text
3) Print out daily checklist with a check box
4) Print via Google CloudPrint or HP ePrint
bonus points, get Parents to scan each page after they put their metrics on them and get those items recorded into a database.
This seems like it could be a great and easy service – and highly popular among our rapidly growing geriatric audience.
Added page: Cloudprint.con.